Mecanum vs. Swerve Drive

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by Siri

I think it's less about being fancy and more about ditching the Wile E. Coyote syndrome:



Mecanums, even (especially) those driving in tank, will attract bad situations more than their high-traction counterparts. These situations can often be avoided or disengaged from more easily via mecanum attributes than tank-driving-mecanum attributes. At the same time, they can also set up a lot of plays that don't benefit (and actually exploit) tanks, but they're exceedingly rare. So there's a ton of Coyotes running around who are utilizing all the negatives of their choice and few of the positives.

For what it's worth, swerves could also spend most of the time driving tank and just swerve when "needed". There's nothing wrong with tank drive. But if you're going to make another DT, be it mecanum or swerve, whose physics provides such starkly different competitive advantages disadvantages (vis-a-vis tank), why wouldn't you leverage the advantages?

While I've never done a swerve, I actually believe many swerves would benefit from using a tank like "mode". A tank mode is much easier to learn and is much better for long distances. You can still switch to swerve when needed, to take advantage of it's benefits(small adjustments, getting around defense, etc.)