[Jon Stratis]

One thing our team is doing that seems to help a ton is using a cubic function: motor = (input - 127)^3/127^2 + 127

The real nice thing about this method is that when the joystick is at either extrema (0 or 255), your motor is at the extrema too... But moving the joystick a little moves the motors even less near the center. For example, plugging in 157 (only 30 'ticks' forward of the center of the joystick) gives you a motor output of something like 130. Basically, you make the robot less responsive to the joystick near the center, but gradually "ramp up" the responsiveness as you move the joystick out.