Role of Analyst
 

So what are your guys' thoughts of the new human player position? Is he/she like a coach for the entire alliance? Just curious to see what other people think or how you plan to go about it at competitions (what team gets feeders/who gets analyst).

Re: Role of Analyst
 

My personal instinct would be to use the analyst as a communication facilitator/strategy overseer to convey information quickly to each alliance, like a quarterback calling audibles.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

My original thought is that the analyst will help the other human players know what game piece they should give to the robots.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

I'm not very fond of it. Matches require quick thinking and quick action, deliberation and comprimise can turn into time wasters, adding another coach can just worsen these things. I feel like on the field I would rather just utilize the analyst as another set of eyes, tell them to look for certain things and let you know when someones going to go to score a tube or a minibot.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

like running back and forth with messages between alliances? Changing strategy if something happens or adapting to different situations? I think the job will prove very interesting!

Re: Role of Analyst
 

But aren't the human players on the other end of the field?

Re: Role of Analyst
 

The analyst is almost like a secondary coach for the alliance.

A possible role for them is to focus on communication with the feeder in terms of informing them of which piece to feed next, etc.

It's questionable whether feeders/analysts can bring like, signs with them... but there's also hand signals, and of course, FLASHY ROBOT LIGHTS! (if you have the expenses to get fancy!)

...not to mention it'd be a REAL dance party. trololo.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Yeah I guess there will have to be hand signals or something but I can not really think of any other reason for them.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Too many coaches dilute the strategy.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Sometimes. Although, an extra set of eyes doesn't hurt.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Three coaches should be more than enough.
You only get two minutes to do what you gotta do so you need to be decisive and precise. One coach on the alliance should be the one making the final strategy decisions and the other two should be doing their part. Human Players should stick to delivering the good and nothing more.
You get too many people talking and it just becomes noise.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

It's the question of "What do we do with the third Human Player". If you are scoring on the second stage pegs, you will be reducing your vision. Might be nice to have another set of eyes.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Because your way to run an alliance is the best? ;)

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Because a human player on our alliance told his driver to go get in the red zone where we playing defense in the finals of our regional. They flipped over and got us a red card and cost us a match.
Human players should not be making decisions. Coaches should be making decisions.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

What's so sacred about the coaching position? If an analyst or human player is trained effectively and ready to make decisions, let them make decisions. Sounds to me it was just a case of that human player not being prepared properly to make that call, not an indictment of all human players' decision making abilities.