Re: Picking alliances
 

When lots of teams are picking their alliance partners they will look at what they want. Some teams look at rank also, some don't. We didn't really have a scout team so at the last minute we just looked at who we had seen play before and we wanted a awesome offense, and a second defense/offense bot. I can tell you that we did not look at the ranks. The ranks that our alliance partners had were 28 and 48. To us, ranks did not matter (actually we didn't even look at them until after), we wanted teams that complimented our abilities. We are a purely defense/ramp bot. We won the regional.

Another thing to think about is a good team image. Before eliminations, we did not know that we would even get in, let alone pick for ourselves. We wanted to have an image that stuck out in people's minds. I think that our Awkward Turtles stuck out in peoples minds.

Re: Picking alliances
 

I love the responses I'm getting, kudos to the CD community out there, but I still have one huge dillema with "selling" our own team:
the draft system is built the way it is for a reason, if my team tries to "sell" our team to another team that might've picked a better robot, we are simply screwing that alliance over. Maybe from my perspective, our robot was great, and in our "selling" process, it also sounds great, but is it a fact? I don't want to sway a team from possibly picking a more worthy candidate. If we were to enter eliminations, and my team performs worse than a robot that was not picked (but might've been the original decision of a alliance captain), i would feel horrible if this was a result of our "schomoozing" up to the alliance captain. I believed in the system, in that if you have a good robot worthy of eliminations, it would be picked. Maybe the one or 2 teams had bad scouting, and we fell through, but there were potentially, 16 team captains (for the second pick) up there with their lists, it is hard for me to believe that our robot's performance fell through the cracks for all 16 teams. We are not used car salesmen, and I still feel like the performance of a robot is best judged from a unbiased point of view, void of inputs from the teams that are being chosen. In addition, i felt like the SHARC team's booklet on the teams at the CO regional spoiled the chances for a good team ranked low to be picked. The booklet did not include actual performance of each team, and only the specs. specs can look good on paper, and when a team did not have good scouting, they simply relied on the booklet. It was obvious that the 8th alliance captain at CO just flipped through that book for his selections, maybe he had notes written in there, but it was clear that he had no clear choices (as he let the 7th alliance captain make their 2nd round pick before him). While I believe this kind of booklet was produced in goodwill by team SHARC, and I welcome their efforts to ease scouting, I believe it is each team's responsibility to still scout, and base their opinion each robot on their own data.

Re: Picking alliances
 

"I love the responses I'm getting, kudos to the CD community out there, but I still have one huge dillema with "selling" our own team:
the draft system is built the way it is for a reason, if my team tries to "sell" our team to another team that might've picked a better robot, we are simply screwing that alliance over."

You are not "screwing that alliance over." I think most teams look for partners who compliment their own robots. When teams try to sell themselves to us, we try to be honest with them. You can tell a team with two wheel drive and casters in the front that you are looking for a robot with a little more power. You can tell a robot without an arm that you are looking for a hanging robot. The key is to tell the selling robot NICELY!

Keep on selling yourself but don't be disappointed if you are not selected. Think of the fun you had at the regional. When we do not get selected, we go sit near a team we know and cheer with them. It never hurts to start selling a year early!

Ken

Re: Picking alliances
 

I agree. It is a team’s responsibility to have a good scouting system if they are a good team and is going to pick. And yes, good teams have their own systems that show them which robot best compliment their own robot. We had a lifter so we were not looking for lifters, no matter now good they are. So many people tried to sell themselves to us at PNW it got a little awkward. And I just try to tell them that we have a scouting system that will make them stand out if their robot fits us. Out scouting team takes the data of every match and makes comments about each robot so that we have complete statistics and feature for every single robot in the regional (It really doesn’t take much. All you need is 6 students to take data and a couple to enter and organize the data. You do need a complete spreadsheet ahead of time though.). We then factor the areas that compliment us such as ring scoring and ability to climb and rank them in our own list. That list is completely independent of the matches rank. I know what you mean about bias in selection and I believe that our system minimizes bias opinions.

Re: Picking alliances
 

The scouting booklet made by SHARC couldn't possibly have included the robot's performances, it was distributed on Friday morning to aide in every team's scouting. It wasn't a ranking booklet.

Informing teams of your performance, not what you THINK you can do but what you actually HAVE DONE, during the competition isn't going to unfairly sway an alliance's opinion.
Used car salesmen are supposed to sell you a car full of defects by exaggerating the few good points of the car and hiding every defect. This isn't what you're doing when you go to other teams to inform them of your robot. You are accurately informing the teams of your capabilities.

Re: Picking alliances
 

And here's another issue:
If a team's scouting is not good enough to notice a good robot, do you really want to be selected by them? Chances are, that their other pick would not be carefully chosen either. As a matter of fact, if they choose you, then you may lose the chance to be placed on a better alliance (assuming this is round 2 of selections).

On the flip side, what i think the "selling" process sold be, is giving the top 12 teams a datasheet, of objective performance of ur robot at the regional. for example, for rack and roll, u may include total number of tubes scored, with the team numbers of those you've climbed onto, and those that have climbed onto you. This way, teams with limited resources and without a complete scouting database have a chance to take a look at your robot.

I guess its a lesson at arrogance for me this year, I simply assumed our team would get picked, and made no effort to inform the alliance captains of our performance. Completely relying on the system doesn't quite work out all the time. Too bad it's my last year. :(

Re: Picking alliances
 

My best advice is to ignore the rankings and to make your own independent ranking system. We ranked teams this year based on average number of tubes scored per match and quality of ramps. Friday night me and another mentor were up to midnight at the Holiday Inn (BMR) making decisions on alliance selection...even though we were about 17 and didnt expect to be picking. However, we moved up on Saturday and then moved up to 7th seed during alliance selection. We ended up turning down the number 5 seed in order to select our own alliance. It actually payed off because we made it to the finals.

Should you sell your team? I think so. Selling your team can be the key to being selected, even though you may be a lesser known team.

Re: Picking alliances
 

We didn't really sell as much as I would of hoped, so we didn't get picked unfortunatly. We would of made the top 8 if it wasn't for a few technicalities that lost us the game (SPOILERS!!!), the second day of seeding matches. We were one of the good, consistant, high scorers, but we had very little time to practice before ship, and the field team was a little shakey at the Philly Regional. If we had some more practice with the rack, we could of done some improvements beforehand instead of the practice day, which eventually led to missing more practice matches, etc.

All a learning experience, the best we can do now is prepare even more for next year. Hopefully we'll be attending the NJ regional as well as Philly and Nats, so we'll be an even stronger team than before - and maybe even become a finalist somewhere.