[cjl2625]

Swerve drive (field-centric).

This year, we used swerve, and it worked out pretty nicely.
We had been prototyping for the past couple years, and we managed do deal with the complexities of the drivetrain decently well.
However, it was difficult to get working correctly. During our week 0 event, we could hardly move. But by our first real event, it worked nicely.
Our main problem throughout the season was dealing with gyro drift in our field-centric system. It was not until this offseason that we managed to alleviate these problems.

This gyro drift was the only major issue with our drivetrain, and in my opinion, the swerve was ultimately advantageous.
We were pretty quick, and obviously had exceptional maneuverability.
We can't win pushing matches versus powerful tank drives, but we can still play effective defense. And if defense is being played on us, we can just slide around them.

Next year, if we do swerve again (which is likely), it will be even better now that we have all the issues worked out.

tl;dr:
If you can figure out how to build a swerve and make it work, I think it is very beneficial to have.