GLAD SOMEONE SAID IT, giving accurate stats about your bot is vital. Even though this is MY first year at regionals I've already discovered just how important it is to give CORRECT stats (as opposed to 'good' stats) to your alliance. Even if your bot has flaws, giving CORRECT stats can help your alliance work around them. I also think that scouting is a benefit because then you can see for yourself what another bot can do.


-Shane
team 86

I ran into this at our scrimmage. One team we were allied with claimed that they could grab two goals every time and hold onto them, and told us rather bluntly that we weren't needed and should just stick in the home zone. Well, the match started, and their grabber failed to engage on either goal, and we were unprepared to rush in. This kind of shocked us, as they were a well respected team, but I also taught us that no matter what the other team says, we should always have a contigency plan in case they have overestimated their own abilities (as it is so easy to do in the heat of competition). I'm sure everyone (including ourselves) is guilty of bragging at some point, not just the teams newer than three years, so just remember what my math teacher said about word problems: "Observation is the key to preparation."

Good point. What I realized when I went scouting at VCU was that teams especially overestimated their capabilities for ball scoring and speed. For most (although not all teams) it was difficult to pick up all the balls lying so close to the field border and they spent more time on it than they should have done. Virtually all of the teams I scouted also overestimated their speed by 100% or more (meanng that they were half as fast or less than they thought they were). Furthermore, a real match is no ideal testing situation where your robot can do everything that it is designed to do without being interrupted by other robots. Even though a mechnism might work perfectly, it could be difficult for the driver and/or opereator to engange it if there is some kind of disturbance from the outside (a goal is not aligned perfectly or moves, etc.).
These are of course just my own and very objective impressions and they might not be idential with other people's experiences.