Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

Several teams don't have proper scouting, leading to biased picks. Teams with proper scouting know what they're going to pick, regardless of team number.

1501 got 4028 this way and we won the Boilermaker regional with them and 1756.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

THIS. We have our team of scouts watching every single match with each one assigned to a different robot. Trust us, we have all the data on your robot.

Again, teams collect all sorts of data on the robots. We were looking for some very specific things in our scouting this year. We don't even use the FIRST rankings because we use our own system to rank teams. Just because a team is ranked lower doesn't mean they aren't good or useful. If a team started off badly because of code/mechanical issues but improved throughout the day, we'd put them lower down on our pick list with a note to see how they do in the rest of their matches. Sometimes they got paired up with an unlucky alliance with teams who didn't show up, didn't have a robot, had a robot that didn't move, etc.

Often, teams use their 3rd pick to be their alliance's defensive robots. As was already pointed out in this thread, defensive robots typically do not seed very high. For example, our third pick at the 2006 Las Vegas Regional was team 8, who went 6-5 in the qualifications. We knew they could play some serious defense, though, which is why we picked them. I used the LV regional as my example here because it was our team's first time travelling out west so most of the teams there were unknown to us, much like a rookie is at their first event.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

just an example of good scouting vs. using FIRST rankings

We (3929) are a rookie team, who were ranked roughly 35th by the end of the qualifications, but were picked by 25 & 222 in eliminations, 2nd round of picking they were 3rd alliance from the top. We went on to win the Mount Olive competition yesterday. From the limited competitions I have seen, good scouting goes much farther than looking at rankings.

Happy April,
Max

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

Not sure if we were an example of bad scouting...or if our robot just sucked that much...

Our team could do 2 ball auto by itself, and had a pretty consistent rate of getting it in from the middle...We also had the ability to feed our alliance, if it was needed.. Our shooter was also pretty good, and were getting some points in teleop, we had problems with our shooter not being consistent, but that was changed...Our team could push down the bridges with some difficulty, but we could get over the bridge and we pulled a 2-way balance...

We could have done many things, but for our last regional, we were not picked...Even being seeded at 11th out of 55.... I am guessing it was because of our lack of scouting...Because we should have been in the elims :/ So scouting is going to be a big thing for us next year...

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

3928 seeded 5th at midwest, and with a coop balance that was stopped by a ball in our last match would've jumped to 3rd I believe.

best way to be a rookie in elims? be a captain :p
(our kids kinda did awesome)

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

Probably more of a case that you just didn't fit into what alliances wanted for their first or second pick. As stated earlier, 111's alliance in 2009 had 971, the 66th seed. Look how well they did. It's possible you filled a very niche role that just didn't fit into the 8 alliances. Don't be discouraged. Maybe you should ask some of the alliance captains how you could have been a more appealing pick; maybe you can use this information for next season to build a more desirable bot.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

Scouting can not be understated at competition. The rankings are almost never the best metric to go off of when it comes down to alliance selection, especially in years that the GDC feels like experimenting with the seeding algorithm.

I will use our experience this year as an example. We ended up seeding 29th at our regional not due in particular to poor play or poor strategy, but due to the fact that in 9 matches we only got 1 coop balance due to a little bad luck. We also needed to zone in our shooter to our hotspots throughout the course of the regional and did not get it to peak functionality until our second match on Saturday for both hybrid and teleop. We weren't bad before then but we weren't where we wanted to be.

Despite being a very solid team I think that our low ranking caused us to be largely overlooked throughout alliance selection dropping all the way to the second pick for the fourth seed who had done their scouting on us throughout the weekend and communicated with us, we were upfront with them as far as what problems we had and what we had done to fix them. Ultimately their scouting and selection of us allowed our alliance to upset the number one seed at our event, set and break the high score of the regional three times, and post a perfect 36 point autonomous.

By the end of the event I would estimate that we were possibly a top 5 shooting bot, top 3 bridge bot, and the best bot at our regional at traversing the field, and yet we were the 21st robot into elims at our event.

I agree that it is possible for teams to overlook others, be it rookie or veterans due to different factors such as high team number or ranking, but those that know what they are doing and scout properly do not let those factors get in their way.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

I really believe our robot should have been in one of the few alliances...It was all a scouting problem.. But really, I need other teams to comment on this.. Will contact them soon enough :/

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

Team 3992 was chosen in elims during the South Florida Regional by 1557, and joined by 179.

I don't know whether it was a scouting problem or not, but among the 12 rookies at our regional, only us and 3932 were in elims. Then again, I can't say a lot of the other rookie bots were major forces, or consistent.

We were pretty darn good at balancing.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

I worked closely with our scouts this year and last, and can honestly say that team number has had NO impact on our rankings. It's about these things: (1) individual robot performance; (2) reliability; (3) whether the functions that the robot does well are the things we need to compliment our alliance; and (4) whether we think the team is a "team player," ie. will follow the alliance captain's strategy.

For example, this year in CT we were seeded 10th and fairly certain that we would be moving into picking position. We decided that we needed two robots that could reliably score in hybrid, one that was a faster shooter than we were (we were decent, usually getting 3-5 balls in the 3-point basket in teleop but knew we needed someone faster) and a third robot that could play defense and feed balls from the other end of the field. We also wanted both robots to be wide, or at least able to rotate on the ramp, because we were a long robot that could hang off the end of the ramp, and although we never tried a triple balance we did not want to preclude that possibility.

In the end, we were selected by Team Max, 1071, who was the 5th seeded team. At the time we were 8th and could have declined, but we accepted their invitation. When our scouts saw that Apple Pi, team 2067, a fairly prolific scorer and good balancer with a wide configuration, was still available for our second pick, they and the 1071 scouts agreed that they would be a good offensive pick, and Team Max agreed to be our defensive threat.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

How many times did you make both balls in? How many shots did you make (on average) during teleop? How long did it take you to get the bridge down? How many times did you balance? Did you get any penalties? Did you have any major issues with your robot during the competition?

I can tell you that when were putting together our pick list for Lenape, we wanted both of our teams to have highly consistent auto modes and the ability to consistently balance on their own so we could continue to score balls while the other two balanced. We also wanted one of the teams to be able to score quickly and well in teleop. Our scouts take down information on each team about how many points they scored in autonomous and teleop for each match. We sorted our information by these two things and used that as a starting point for our pick list.

Honestly, if your robot was one of those in the middle of the pack, it might not have had anything to do with you. There are usually a limited amount of top tier robots at each event, then there are those in the middle tier who all sort of run together, and then those at the lower end. Middle tier teams can easily get lost in the mix and this is when being a well-known team tends to help. Teams may be more likely to pick a team they have worked with before and have a good relationship with over a team they do not know very well when the robots are of similar quality. Additionally, teams often use their third pick for a defensive robot (we usually eliminate any teams using omni wheels or mecanums from being high on our pick lists), which leaves some of the middle tier offensive robots in the wind.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

Ah, irony, our robot could go over the middle bridge..and go collect balls...and then shoot them back to our field.....another utilization that would have been possible.. if we were picked :)

I wonder if if our robot could pull a triple balance though..we only pulled of a 2-way balance...

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

Again, were you able to balance in every match? Did you have any issues with your robot at the event? How long did it take you to balance? How consistent were you in auto? Did you ever have any issues not showing up to the field on time, missing matches (due to the robot not working or because you hadn't passed inspection)?

I wasn't at the event and haven't seen any match video so I can't really speak specifically about your robot, but it's really hard for us all here to judge without all the information. Being seeded 11th doesn't really mean anything to me. There are teams that sometimes get carried all the way into the top 8 by getting paired up with good robots every match. I'm not saying this is the case with you because I don't know the facts.

I've also seen you posting in other places about not getting picked. Well, it happens. It's fine to ask for advice on what sorts of things the teams in picking position were looking for. But most of the posts I've seen by you have just been reiterating the point that you really think you should've been picked. You just keep parrotting "We were 11th seed and could double balance." That's fine and dandy, but doesn't really add to the conversation very much and it gets irritating to check back on this thread to see that you're in here again complaining about not being picked.

Am I being a bit harsh? Maybe. But one of the thing that really bothers me about CD is that some people come on here largely to just toot their own horns and highlight their own team.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

I couldn't agree more. I feel like we had a very good robot that had a very nice and consistent hybrid mode along with a average teleop, but we were told that we had the best bridge manipulator and it was also one of the simplest. When we went into the alliance selections, we thought we wouldn't get picked because of or low ranking of 17th but we were told that we had a high chance due to the fact that we had the most bridge points at 120pts. We found out that teams had been scouting us like no other. But when the eliminations came down to our matches, we never actually used our bridge manipulator, or our hybrid mode.(well we used our hybrid but we didn't have time to tweak it so that we could have another robot drive in front of us. Now many probably are trying to see what im getting at, but when it came for us to use what we had been so good at the entire weekend, we only really used our programming which allowed us to balance the double bridge with just a push of a button. showing that it doesnt take the mechanical to show what it takes but it takes the programming that people find to be useful and also i would like to point out that we ended up getting 3rd place.

Re: Rookie Teams in Elims
 

Despite not ultimately being in a picking position at the end of saturday we did far more scouting this year than we have in the past. You guys were definitely not below our radar, I don't have our scouting sheets on me off hand, but you were definitely in our top ten. We also had the pleasure of playing with you in the very first match on friday. Hopefully we can get together again in the future.