[joeweber]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Mecanums notoriously lack "pushing power". The combination of a lower coefficient of static friction and the wheel's inherent inefficiency (Only ~71% of the output torque is transmitted in the direction of travel) would make your assumptions pretty accurate. Of course, prototyping for yourself is the best way to figure out to what extent these problems exist and whether or not you can live with them.

Mecanums generally try to avoid defense rather than overpowering it. This doesn't work particularly well in my opinion. Teams using mecanum should maximize their use in portions of the game with limited defensive interaction. For example, team 230 straddles the bump using mecanums in order to hang.

With our new drive design we were able to play great defense. The addtion of a set of omni wheels increased our ability to push by quit a bit. We were holding our own against standard six wheel drive robots.