[lethc]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

If your goal is to have a bullet proof and reliable design within one off season, and your goal is to learn many practical things that can be applied to real build seasons, build a quality tank drive. You'll be reaping the benefits of that prototype for many, many seasons.

Swerve is, quite frankly, a trap. A flashy, cool trap that is extremely hard to execute, and even when executed well is rarely a big advantage over a tank drive. Only the very top teams in FIRST can make great swerve drives both mechanically robust and reliable in software.

Agreed. The reward for a well put together swerve drive is minimally higher than that of a robust tank drive, and swerve is much, much harder to pull off. A tank drive is more than enough for most FRC teams and its simplicity will allow your team to focus on more complicated design challenges (scoring).

I'd recommend developing a robust tank drive first for use in future competitions and then exploring swerve after you've done that. A tank drive like a WCD will perform perfectly fine for nearly all FRC games.