Scouting on Thursday?
 

Hello people... anyway, I'm 840's main scout, and I'm wondering whether coming to our regional (SVR, by the way) would be useful. I think that it could provide a good "head start" on basic robot functionality and appearance, but some others on my team say the robots usually change so much it's not worth it. What do you think?

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

The more you can see the better off you will be

WC

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

The purpose of scouting is to gather data about other robots and analyze it to death, then pick a strategy to win/partner for eliminations.

That said, you want as much data as possible. Thursday is often used to pit scout; match scouting is primarily done on Friday and Saturday, but can be started on Thursday.

It's worth it to go.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

It is absolutely worth it getting started with a system of orginazation, and taking notes on how well designed each robot is. Decorative stuff will probably change the most, if anything, which would only affect any photos you take.

Thursday is practace, and that is no exception to scouting, it is your day to get organized and get going.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Thursday scouting, for us, involves doing the pit scouting, taking pictures of the robots, and doing the prelim match scouting. My prelim match scouting consists of a running narrative of each team that puts a robot out on the floor for the prelims. Who can shoot, who seems fast, who tends to flip over, etc... On Friday morning, for the first qualifying match, I like to have some idea of who we are aligned with, and who we are facing. Even if the robots do change, it least you have a good start. It is better than walking into those first couple of matches totally blind!

Best regards,

Steve

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Scouting on Thursday isn't always important as far as collecting data, Thursdays rarely show a teams power and most teams don't make it out.

HOWEVER, as said above it is necessary to get the kinks out of the system, so you know what will happen on Friday.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

You can also find out which teams are having problems for scouting purposes and also to help them out. Practice day would be a good time to do some pit scouting as well.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

As wierd as this may sound, the best team to scout on Thursday may just be your own. Imagine that you were on another team; what would you think of your robot? What pros/cons can you see in strategy or design? What types of robots do they work best with? etc.

Also, Thursday is the best time to see any potential problems in your design or strategy and be able to possible alter them before the actual competition begins.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

You bring up a good point. ALWAYS scout yourself. This can help you figure out if your scouting program is accurate.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

And, in the case of match scouting, help you make an accurate strategy choice. Realistically, every team thinks their robot performed better than it did. It's not like there is anything particularly wrong with that (as long as it is not an exaggerated effect), but it makes for a tough time planning strategy. If you have numbers/info on everyone in a match, including yourself, you can make very good strategy decisions. If you only have info on 83% of the teams in your match, then you are unnecessarily handicapping yourself. The only team you play with every match is your own* - it's best to know what you really can do, not what you think you can do.


*unless you are stuck in 2007 with that awful match randomizing algorithm.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

I'm basically emphasizing what everybody said above. Yes, coming to the regional on Thursday is worth it. Very worth it. The best thing to do on practice day is pit scouting, especially at the end of the day when teams have figured out for themselves what their strengths and weaknesses are. Match scouting is not absolutely important but it does give you a good chance to practice your system and iron the kinks out.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Thanks for the help everyone... our team hasn't made the decision yet, but I definitely have some of the best help avaliable to help bolster my position :)

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

yeah like the others said, scout yourself the most on thursday. being a scout you can have a vantage point over the whole match, the best thing to do is if you have a video camera, have it running. that way the drivers can be watching what they did worng or didnt do, but most importantly what they did right. i have found by being a scout for a number of different racing events (everything from go karting of hydoplane racing) that positives help the driver(s) more than negatives. they feed off the stuff. the more that you can show ur team doing right, the better....

just a thought...

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

And remember, teams are getting their match lists for Friday and Saturday on Thursday afternoon this year, not Friday morning.

So the more of a head start you have, the better.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Thursday scouting at the NJ regional this year was extremely useful. We scouted every single team that practiced that day. The night before we were having doubts as to its usefulness because of no shows but it turned out to be very useful because of the filler line. My final alliance picks for our team were mainly based on scouting the Thursday matches.

I disagree that pit scouting is more important on Thursday because nothing beats seeing a robot in action on any day.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Well, while that's true (about the robot-in-action-any-day part) PIT scouting is more important on Thursday. It isn't necessarily in action. MATCH scouting on Thursday is not really very indicative of what a team can do. Major tweaks and changes take place before the first match on Friday.

Now that's not to say you shouldn't do match scouting on Thursday, I just agree that pit should be the focus.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

I have to say...I'm very glad that 2590 scouted during practice day b/c we were undefeated that day. If they had seem us only during qualifiers, we may not have been first pick.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

How many people do you need for pit scouting. My team was okay with 2 people pit scouting and then me scouting out our opponents and allies in the pits before our qualifiers with them. What exactly does pit scouting consist of for you guys. All ive seen of other people pit scouting is sending their newbies with multiple choice test for one of our members in the pits. Those newbies did not know what they were talking about nor did they care. They were not interested at all.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

612 records all of practice day and then has a film analysis session on thursday night

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Doesn't this take a lot of time though?

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Ours consists of a very detailed rundown of the capabilities and mechanical design of a team's robot. We don't ask the "how many laps can you run" kind of questions that, at that point, the team can't really answer. Our match scouting's purpose is to tell us the answers to that kind of question. Our pit scouting sheets last year and this year are so detailed and specific that there are only maybe three people on our team that are familiar enough with everything on it to use it correctly (by use it correctly, I mean capable of explaining items on it to the teams being scouted in case they use different terminology), so the random freshman idea does not work. What we get from this specificity is a very, very detailed look at what a robot can do, and what it can't. Match scouting then fills in what it actually does. Together, the two give a very nice, relatively complete, picture of a team's performance.

Last year, we used our pit scouting to suggest methods that our alliance mates could use to defend against a team. For example, if an opposing team has a 6WD with a centre wheel lowered 1/4", you can probably spin them relatively easily with a well place shove to the corner. This is just a side effect of their design, which can only be changed by the addition of stuff like brakes (handily enough, whether a robot has brakes or not is also on the sheet).

As for what other teams do... I have seen and answered questions from the scouts that had no clue what they were doing. To be honest, I don't know why the teams that send out such scouting teams do it. They are getting worse than no info, they are getting unreliable info. I have also answered questions from a lot of scouts that ask something like "On a scale from 1 to 10, how fast is your robot?" Well, that is a completely useless question. Whats a '1' and whats a '10'? Is Tumbleweed a 10, and .5 ft/s a 1? Unless there is a really good scout asking those questions with actual numbers for each number in the scale, that data is effectively useless; nobody has standardized a scale from 1 to 10 of robot speed. Avoid questions like these 1->10 scales, and bad scouts like the plague.

To answer the numbers question, we have used a few teams of two and they got the job done. Last year we had four people, including me, who were able to use the scouting sheet effectively. I was busy programming, so we effectively had only three. We paired them up with another team member, which helps alleviate boredom, and sent them out to scout. We started late in the day, and finished our scouting early the next morning. (I believe we were down to two teams of scouts for a while, because one of the 'qualified scouts' was the safety captain). It really depends on you regional size. We really only got our scouting system in place at Palmetto last year (we had other things on our mind leading up to our first regional), and that was 48ish teams. With a larger regional it takes more people. I would like to have 5 teams of people going around at VCU this year (64 teams to scout), but our Thursday group (we do staggered arrival times, with the non-robot people arriving Thursday night) is probably too small to manage that.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Well we get in the hotel at around 7-8 PM so we have plenty of time, the matches are only 2 mins long, its the time in between that takes a while. We will be watching every practice match and taking notes.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Your system sounds very complicated to analyze but it does sound like it provides excellent and very detailed match strategies such as in your example. I am having trouble with that though. How useful is that if there is such a fine line between good defense and a penalty. That is how I have been perceiving the rules and what the judges have been saying at least. I also cannot have a system this complicated because not only am i not that knowledgeable about the specific design aspects of the robots themselves but most of the people who are, are working on our robot.

My scouting system is all written comments by generally knowledgeable people with some stats that they should report on. This is the same for match scouting. None of that 1-10 crap. Instead we watch match video later and talk with the person who commented on any robot.

My team also does staggered arrival times and our Thursday numbers are also not too great. I put the most emphasis on match scouting because i feel 2 people is enough for the pit scouting with pictures and comments.

Heh yeah. I have yet to start organizing data and watching videos before 2 am. It has been a slight problem. Not that bad though. My information still did well though. I blame the Wii and just the fun of hanging out with team members.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

well on thursdays you can actually get a big feel for what the spread of robots is ( by that i mean how many of each type of robot are there shooters arms and rabbits for example) then you can see who finished their robot on time and who is still building up to that moment that you interview them. Also you can ask for their weight and if they are weighing in at 119.5 then you know they removed something, and if it was there to begin with it might have been important so they might have a flaw there.

Thursday is also a good day to get a feel for how trustworthy a team is and to get to know them a little better

i mean if on the interview they say they can do it all and in a match on Friday the can barely score three laps and no hurdles then you know not to trust their word on saturday when they say to give them the inside track because they are gonna do a full lap in hybrid and know a ball down

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

wrong, for the first time ever my team was underweight at the first weigh in at 119.7 fully functional no cheesing.

From a pit setup/pit crew standpoint, scouting in the pits on thursday can get really annoying. Its kind of ridiculous how teams expect you to stop exactly what your doing and answer some random questions that will in all likeliness barely help them, when you could be continuing the important work you were doing. just my opinion friday or later thursday would be fine but leave teams alone who look busy pretty please

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

I agree with you about about it being not quite as valuable this year. I have thought about going to a more simplified sheet in light of the nature of this game. Determining hurdling rate and driver skill is probably more important, but that comes from match scouting. However, I figured that I'd rather have too much info and not use it than too little and need it. But, if you can't make use of the data gathered by our style of pit scouting, then gathering that data is a waste of valuable time.


I agree with that too, if you have limited manpower, you should put it towards match scouting. Pit scouting can't really tell you how a robot actually performs - match scouting does.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Is this a huge problem? Lying? I thought some teams may be optimistic but do people actually lie?

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

There is no way to tell the difference.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

I'd hate to admit it, but I think some may exaggerate their abilities that they say while pit scouting. However, I can understand why: It's basically the first impression they make on another team, and if the team that is scouting is a top contender, then they will try to impress them.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

pit scout thursday morning. match scout thursday afternoon. match scout friday morning. by friday afternoon between what you've collected, and the rankings, you should have all the info you could ever need.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

The worst though is when a team tells me they can do something for a match and I and my team expect them to but then they dont and our match is put in to danger. That really sucks and i dont know why a team would do that.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Scouting in general is very difficult with a large group of scouts. We try and take the subjectivity out of the scouting so we can get good data. As far as pit scouting is concerned this is important Thursday and possibly Friday. Keep the number of people doing the scouting small for consistency of data.

The standing is very subjective and depends on your alliance partners and their ability to play nice with you to achieve the end result. We have placed little weight on the placement as good teams have and will end up low in the ranking due to the luck of the draw and the "Murphy" factor. In our scouting report we do not include the final score or if the team won or lost. We base our scouting on raw performance.

Regards to not telling the truth. Some teams may exaggerate what their robot can do and this is to be expected especially if they are talking to a highly ranked team. This is why scouting the matches is so very important even through Saturday. In St Louis we scouted till just before the alliances were picked for the elimination round (and we were in 22 place at that time) and relayed any changes to the team rep getting ready to go on the field.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

I'm sure 57 is happy 1114 didn't end their scouting on Friday afternoon at GLR last year. 57 had a miserable time of it during Friday matches. They came out Saturday morning like a new team, and were picked into the top alliance.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

It is almost impossible to win a FIRST event WITHOUT scouting on Thursday.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

I agree with Rick. You have to get a head start on your scouting on Thursday. If you don't scout on Thursday, you will have no idea what your partners and opponents can do in your first few matches on Friday. You can ask them then, but you'll be behind from the start. Scout early and often.

Re: Scouting on Thursday?
 

Thank you, all of you, for your suggestions; using some of your points I was able to convince our top mentor that it was worth it to send me over on Thursday :)