Congrats on doing some off-season research! Selecting a set construction method for your team is immensely important and I see it often overlooked resulting in some 'slapped together' style robots that tend to fail often.
Having done both gussets+bolts and gussets+rivets each for a full season, rivets are pretty awesome. We used 1/4-20 bolts in 2013, and in 2014 replaced them with 1/4" rivets. Our hole patterns and everything were treated just as if we were using bolts, but instead we dropped rivets in the holes. And if worst comes to worst and you break a rivet for whatever reason (which has not happened yet) you can drop one of the million 1/4-20's you have laying around through the hole in a pinch*. Some would argue the weight loss is a plus as well. We've used 1/8 tubes with 1/8 plate for gussets but you could go for a thinner gusset plate and probably tube wall for sure.
2013
2014
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Clarification #2: We have used a lot of rivets in the past, and do like them for certain applications; however, I'm specifically interested in trying out bolts on the critical parts of the frame- primarily drivetrain- where it can see a lot of stress due to collisions or hard driving. These would be parts that we shouldn't ever have to disassemble or replace between matches (fingers crossed) so I'm not really concerned about the speed of installing/removing them.
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With the right kind of rivets, I guarantee you wont see them break.
Here's what we've used successfully for a couple years now. They might even be overkill, but we opted to go for slightly stronger because of a bit of paranoia just to guarantee no issue. I have not used smaller rivets before, but I've also seen teams use smaller sizes (I believe 3/16"?) with a more aggressive pattern.
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Our kids also rigged up a system using the old KOP air compressor to allow us to rivet in our pit, which was pretty nice.