[JesseK]

My personal preference is the same as forbes' for the Mechanical setup. It's simple and easy to build since it requires very little modification from even the KOP chassis.

My personal preference for Controls is to drive it like a normal bot ("Tank" controls or "Arcade" controls) and use a joystick hat to control 8 possible strafe modes (where "Up" and "Down" on the hat are the same as forward & back). This greatly simplifies the control element and allows a driver to gain practice very early on.

For most teams, I'd say let the rest of the robot integration sway the vote for wheel setup/orientation (wide vs. long). So long as the bottom makes an "O" & c.g. isn't way out of whack, the robot will not have problems turning. "Integration" in this sense is "how wide" the robot needs to be in order to accomodate the forseen mechanisms your team will come up with (intake to conveyor systems are predominantly wide drive, whereas most other years it can flip either way).