Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

Yep. You had exactly what we needed. And you did a great job, by the way. With your help, we were able to pass over alliances that had more offensive potential but who complemented one another less and were less reliable. One "X" factor you had: you were experienced and poised under pressure. I think of when you ran over and put a spare can on the single available tote in the remaining three seconds of the match. You squeezed every point possible out of the resources you had. That sort of mindset can make the difference between winning and losing and can get overlooked in a purely quantitative approach.

The silver medal feels good, doesn't it? :)

Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

When trying to make a pick list our team has a key philosophy. If there is a team below you and you don't want ot go up agaisnt them. Pick them. In other words, If you can't beat them, pick them. That has helped our team speed up our making of our pick list, but only by about 20-30 minutes.

But most importantly pick teams that work well with your strategy and your drive team. There will be some teams your drive team cant work well with, so having your drive team work with your scouting team to make your pick list is a great benefit.

Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

We try to keep feelings out of pick lists. We don't pick teams because we're scared of them (or because we like them), we pick teams based off of real numbers, specific comments, and match video review.

Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

There is something to be said for picking a team because you don't want to go against them, which is what I think halowaffle meant.

Ex: I seeded first at a 2014 event. I have the 2nd best finisher at the event. I could either pick Team A, who's a phenomenal trusser, or Team B, who's the best finisher at the event.
Do you pick Team A because they're a very good trusser who would work well with you? Or do you pick Team B, so you don't have to face the best finisher at the event?

It obviously depends on other factors (are there other good trussers/finishers, how good are you and the other finisher at trussing), but it very much makes sense to pick Team B in many scenarios.

Lastly, drive team chemistry can be a factor IMO, but usually as more of a tiebreaker than anything else. Even if your teams hate eachother, if pairing up means you're more likely to win the event, its the pick you have to make.

Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

With the power of RADAR GRAPHS!
So during build season one of the jobs I take up is tracking game information. From chief delphi, youtube, whatever gives me info about teams I look at all of them. I look for what teams say they want to emphasize when designing a robot as well as design trends that crop up (sure is el toro this year). This happens all the way up to competition. Just constant sifting through information about who thinks what. As soon as I feel I have a solid grip of the game I then create a Radar graph. The axes of the radar graph are the skills/traits I find are crucial for winning. The radar graphs are great because of how easy it is for make team comps with them and see how those team compositions match up against other teams. You can quickly throw together two team comps that are roughly different and see how they stack up and you aren't limited to looking at your team, it can be used to predict what another alliance captain might aim for in a team.
The aspect I hate is the judgement calls I have when doing the scale on the axes, for example this year if I remember correctly one axes was stacking ability and the other was object manipulation ability. Figuring out how to measure those apples to oranges was an interesting experience.

Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

I like doing a very coarse sort first.
Yes, Maybe, No

If Yes + maybe is less than 23, then you need to revisit the "No" pile and find a few more teams until you have at least 23 (24 including your team).

After that, begin sorting/ranking teams accordingly. This assume that you are not looking for a "special feature" to your third partner. I you need a "special feature", then you will need a seperate list with those teams with that feature listed in rank order.

I also recommend having a few "bubble" teams as on Saturday, you could ahve several drop out, and/or several teams bubble up. This helps you focus your efforts.

I agree with some of the others that you should get input from your drive coach. "We can't work with their attitude" is an unfortunate, but sometimes real issue, and you do not want your alliance to self destruct due to "personalities".

Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

We have a list of "bubble" teams. We call it our watchlist.
Unfortunately at the Tech Valley Regional this past year we ended up with more than half the teams at the regional on our watchlist. Both our finalist alliance partners came from our watchlist.

Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

We first use ordinal ranking of qualitative aspects for our second pick (using the transitive property: A>B, B>C, then A>C) and then use Excel's Solver function (i.e., linear programming) to minimize the squared error for predicted vs actual scores to put weights on the different qualitative indices. This year the qualitative aspects weren't very important (pit scouting was), but they were very important in 2013 & 2014. In this way we are able to construct a single index as a starting point for draft ordering. We then move teams up and down through pair wise comparison. (We saw 118 do that better than we have this year.) We describe this some in our previous 2 scouting system whitepapers. Let me know if you want to read more and we'll add it to this year's white paper.

Reminds me of how we got 1671. We started out on draft night focused on getting a cangrabber and then maybe a team that might put up one stack while we get the cangrabber ready. We left the room planning on using the robot in the cangrabber role that 5027 filled in the later rounds of each playoff and the stacker in a largely support role.

However while we prepared the stacker list we kept making pairwise comparisons, and while 1671 started low on our list based on their stats, we kept asking the question "do we trust this team with stacks on the filed?" And 1671 kept on moving up the list because both teams had seen their performance in Sacramento. They also might have had the best HP loader in our division, if not at Champs. So I believe they they ended up inside the list that included likely alliance captains. This was an example of how our personal knowledge overrode the stats.

Getting 1671 completely changed our strategy despite getting exactly the team we wanted for the cangrabber role. To be honest, having 1671 was just like having another first pick on our alliance. In my own experience they are the most qualified second pick robot ever on a championship alliance. (And we've had 1640 and 862 as second picks and they should have been first picks as well.) If they had played in Newton as they did in Sacramento or gotten their auto routine working, they easily could have been 118's partner out of Newton with a serious shot at the championship on their own (with us the odd team out.)

Re: How do you make your pick lists?
 

That'd be great