So in the 2016 off-season we built a swerve-drive, and I told my team that if it were 100% perfect by the end of December, we could put it on the list of possible drive trains for the year.
By the end of December, it was largely, but not entirely, there–they had missed the target spec.
When the Steamworks game reveal showed a flat field with little pegs and gears you had to put on them, and little wiffle balls to put into a boiler, they insisted that we use the swerve drive. I overruled them–they hadn’t made spec–and my mentors threatened to walk out if I held to that overruling, so against my judgment and warning we used the swerve drive…and had the single worst season of FRC that 1551 has ever endured, worse even than our rookie year, worse than our second year where we barely moved but had a sick end game. We made every alliance we were on worse.
That exact same swerve drive probably would have been mostly fine for Power Up, because a 4’ platform is a much, much more forgiving target than a tiny little spring on a peg. Probably. But we went 9-2 in quals in Power Up with a kitbot tank drive.
Swerve is, essentially, a very expensive way of punching the KISS principle in the face. And sometimes, maybe, that’s necessary–but a lot of the time it simply isn’t.
My advice is as follows: if you are unsure enough to have to ask here, don’t risk your entire season on doing it just because you have it. My follow-up advice is: possibly reevaluate when you see the game…if line-up is more like Steamworks and less like Power Up, lean harder toward “maybe in 2021,” while if it’s more like Power Up than Steamworks, maybe weight the possibility of swerve just a little bit more (but not too much more).