To swerve or not to swerve

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by inkling16

I think that this sums up pretty well many team's experience with swerve.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...1&postcount=28

Seriously, the team that posted this has 70+ members, a couple of good years under their belt, and this still happened to them. Don't do swerve if you haven't already prototyped it over the pre-season. I don't really care how big your team is or how much FRC experience you have. Just don't do it.

As that team, I can tell you that our performance that year was tough for a lot of us to swallow-- especially the juniors and seniors who spent countless hours not only during the season, but also prototyping and designing before hand. Your team is the only ones who can realistically assess whether you can pull off a swerve drive. We made that assessment and thought we could pull it off, but we were wrong. Be prepared for that if you do end up going with swerve having never tried it before.

If your priority isn't to win competitions and you have little to no experience actually building and programming a swerve drive, it's still a completely valid option for this year's game. Just understand that what you might be gaining in knowledge you will most likely lose in terms of being competitive on the field.

In summary I guess, I can say "Been there, done that, got burned." But sometimes it's necessary to get a bit burned in order to learn a lesson.