Swerve doesn’t seem as necessary for CRESCENDO as it was for CHARGED UP. The advantages I have heard so far is playing against defense (especially swerve defense), just generally moving around the field, and lining up with the AMP. For teams that didn’t do swerve last year, is making the leap all that much worth it for CRESCENDO? My team specifically can do tele op with swerve pretty good but is still working on auto.
I think the answer remains the same from year to year, it depends on what good enough means to your team.
But I do think that to be able to play the game, tank will always be good enough, to do well competitively it will be harder. I say if you guys are getting swerve developed already to try it, but have some caution.
Which style of drivetrain can you build the best, program the best, and drive the best? That’s the drivetrain you should be using for this game.
If you aren’t sure of the answers to this, it might be a good idea to set up an objective test via a design matrix.
Depends on what “good enough” means. Good enough to do well in elims? yes. Good enough to win a district/regional? Depends on where you are. Swerve doesn’t let you intake or score faster this year which makes it less strong than it was in 2022 and 2023, but swerve still is so much better under defense and at playing defense than tank drive is due to the maneuverability. Defense will likely be a viable strategy this year due to being able to waste the opponents amps by defending the robot for those 15 seconds, so avoiding it will be pretty beneficial.
I’d probably suggest using swerve in that case as its definitely possible to learn how to do auto with swerve, especially if you can get a chassis assembled early. Much of the auto pathfollowres these days primarily focus on swerve. Additionally, swerve has much quicker learning curve when it comes to driving which means that for a given amount of practice time, a swerve driver will often be a lot better than a tank drive.
If you can make a good enough mechanism on a tank drive, you can offer stiff competition on a regional level. I’ve seen some tank teams in Colorado vastly outperform swerve teams. A great mechanism on tank is much better than a middling one on swerve.
Clearly it seems “good enough” needs some clarification, my b . Could you see tank drive teams winning as many events as swerve teams or even winning as many champs divisions? The kicker here is that most top teams will probably just have swerve anyways, so maybe try to imagine a competition with 25 teams that each have 2 bots that are identical except drive train. Idk maybe this isn’t a very useful conversation in the first place.
As many events, no. Most teams capable of winning events are on swerve these days.
If 254 built their robot on a tank drive this year I would expect to see them still win their regionals and rank highly in their worlds division.
Ok but that’s the GOAT. They could even find a way to win with mecanum I bet.
the loss of diferenttal swerv is a hit but it depends on what you drivers and progrmaers can do my team swiched to java and labview last yeat all at once.
there was 1 team in mi still on tank last year pushing 30fps it comes down to driver controll and line up if your driver can line up good the first time tanks fine but the ability for 360 controll is gona help line up. its more diffcult to code swerv but the things you can do with it are larger like sutamted line up using an april tag
In 2022 you had game pieces that would get dumped in multiple different directions and could shoot from anywhere.
In 2023 you had narrow lanes that gave the ability to strafe sideways a clear advantage.
This game doesn’t do either of those things. In that sense, the advantages swerve brings to the table don’t feel nearly as oppressive for those running tank.
nah
swevs biggest up is ease of line up and tank is pushing power
I wouldn’t discount the pushing power of a swerve.
Last year, someone made the comment that swerve could just go around defense. I responded something to the effect of “defense has swerve too”. And this past season just confirmed that.
How about Vectored Intake wheels?
I see no reason why there’d be a difference in pushing force between a properly designed swerve and tank drive. both are likely to be traction limited and you’ve got the same number of motors
Tank handles uneven front/back weight distribution better since the motors are mechanically linked. My understanding is that this problem gets magnified in a pushing match, but I’m not an expert on the forces at play.
Getting tank up and running with a mildly representative center of gravity/ weight and you get in hours of practice
Vs.
Swerve with programming issues, and no driver practice.
I’m going to go with tank every time.
If you have access to swerve, I’d use swerve. There’s nothing that tank can do better than swerve in this game. Especially with the new rule that bans anything more than a 4 motor DT, there is no benefit to using tank for defense. The only reason to use tank nowadays is when there’s terrain on the field, in my opinion.
Also if you need the programming time to be spent on getting your mechanisms working.
Due to the domanance of swerve last year, I was hoping that this year’s game would have an element to counter it. It seems like swerve is going to be the most efficient drivetrain again for a competitive bot.