Recent Kit Base Performance

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Often the kit base gets a bad rap for being inadequate and this year without modification it was, but I want to talk about how they perform in more average FRC conditions aka a flat carpeted floor. In 2014 and 2015 my team used a 4 CIM kit base and did relatively well, in fact if you ask anyone on the team they will probably say that those were some of our best robots in recent history (last 6 years). I would credit much of their success to how quickly they were running for drive practice and testing. With this in mind I want to ask 2 questions.

1. Does your team frequently use the kit base?

2 a. If yes to q1. Do you modify it and if so how?
2 b. If no to q1. How do you reliably develop a drive base to be quickly usable for on field testing, have you formed your own kind of "kit base" that is the origins of each year's design?

I ask because I am interested in encouraging my team to work on developing other types of drive trains in the off season but I'm not sure if it is worth it because of our very good experiences with the kit base.