Re: Tips for Team Promotion to Scouts
 

I know you will probably tell me this is the exception but when you balance on a coop bridge with a high seed alliance and they want to pick you but confuse you with a similar team number that tipped when trying to balance, there's a problem. You are saying to rely on their scouting. I say we didn't distinguish ourselves enough. There were good suggestions in here for doing that. Making our "uniforms" and robot's aesthetics recognizable, showing pictures (should have printed the picture of us balancing and given it to them), something to bring attention to robot when it accomplishes a function, pit board with key important aspects, etc. would all help do this.

Re: Tips for Team Promotion to Scouts
 

In the competition this year, a lot of the second pick robots come down to teams that A have a good hybrid program or B have good triple balancing capabilities (a wide base, a small robot base, a balance assistance mechanism). These capabilities are incredibly important, but for the triple balance capabilities at least, may not be revealed during the qualifying matches. If you think that your robot could easily be part of a triple balance, don't just tell someone that, show them. Get out onto the field on Thursday during practice matches and attempt to triple balance. On Friday, if you still aren't being courted, get together with a high ranked team you want to be with, go to the practice field and triple balance with them.

956 in Portland was seeded 40th, had an OPR of 1.8, which gave them the OPR rank of 48th. By most scouting metrics, they were not a great team. But because of good scouting- scouting beyond just how many points they scored on the field- they were identified and picked. They won the regional.

TL;DR-
If you can convince high ranked teams that they can easily triple balance with you, you will most likely be selected for eliminations.

Re: Tips for Team Promotion to Scouts
 

A robot or team that stands out can help ("those are the guys with the bunny ears, right?") but don't rely entirely on it. There aren't any colors that *someone* isn't using.... One thing we do is take pictures(1) of *every* robot, and we project those at our Friday pick list discussion so everyone knows what robot we're discussing. So one thing you can do is when someone from another team comes by to take a picture, make sure you clear out some space. That would also be a good time to point out "take a look at our bridge wedge, and how we lock it down", and encourage a picture of the specific.

Ask if the photographer is part of the team's scouting group, or if they're just an interested spectator. If the former, tell them what to look for next time you're on the field (and tell them when you'll be there). As other people have said on this thread, we'd be more likely to look at a feature on your robot if you can relate to us why our alliance would need that.

When I'm teaching them how to debug code I tell my FLL kids to look at what the program *does*, not what they *want* it to do. Big difference, and seems obvious when you think about it. Robot performance is exactly the same thing..tell teams what you've done (or what you've fixed to make something work that hadn't been) and tell them what to look for. Good scouting is hard; you can help be noticed if you help the process.

And one other thing: please make sure you listen when we're trying to explain to you why we think you might want to pick us.

(1) when you get to the point that you're taking pictures you get a lot better view of the robot if you take a diagonal shot, not straight on from either the front or the side. And always make sure the bumpers are on.

Re: Tips for Team Promotion to Scouts
 

We do not promote ourselves to other teams by telling them what we can do. We show them on the field and in the statistics. Sometimes at the end of Friday, I share our scouting data with the top 24 teams if there is something about us that should be highlighted. I never look at flyers that other teams give us. I am usually way to busy analyzing the data.
We take pictures of every robot with their bumpers on so we know what they look like during our scouting meeting Friday night. We have every bit of scouting information about every robot to make our decision. We have 6 students on a rotating basis to watch every robot of every match. Last year we even tape every match so we can go back to review them if needed.
One suggestion is on Saturday morning, if your team leaves a student at the pit, make sure that student knows about the robot and can answer questions. When I stop by to ask questions, I am interested in that robot and I may not have time to come back a second time if I don't get the answer from that student the first time.
We rely heavily on scouting data, OPRs and notes from watching matches to make our alliance selection list. We put teams into 3 categores, good, average and below average (do not pick) teams. We go back to look at the average category robots and ask questions to finalize where we put teams on our alliance selection sheet.
We usually go back to each pit Saturday morning to confirm

Re: Tips for Team Promotion to Scouts
 

On Thursday, our "pit scouting" is limited to what kind of drive train teams have -- we don't ask questions about functionality, because teams will inevitably tell you what their robot was designed to do, and not what it actually can do. For all other information we rely on field data.

Ideally, concentrating on what you're trying to show off should help you win matches. It doesn't always work (three non-scoring robots vs. 1507, 340, and an immobile box), but it's at least putting up the best fight you can put up. If the relevant feature isn't helping your alliance, it probably won't help a tournament alliance either.

In years past we have eliminated potential picks from our list because they wouldn't stick to a plan agreed to in a qualifying match. I'll bet other teams make the same decision for the same reason.

Yup. That's a big deal! When asked if we could feed balls at Buckeye, we switched our autonomous mode and fed balls the next match, and told those who had asked to watch.

Be ranked 3rd! :p

Ours, too. We don't make flyers and try to be painfully honest when discussing capabilities in Qualifying Match strategy meetings.

...or putting up "safety fliers" that tell us things like the bathroom floors may be wet? ;)