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.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

One thought is that the Analyst is on the same side of the field with the rest of the alliance, whereas the Feeders are on the opposite end. The analyst could thus provide communication between drivers and feeders. Without communication, the feeders will have to just guess which type of tube to feed, etc.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

I just think they needed something for the 3rd human player to do so they gave them a special title. In nearly all cases, I would put the 'best/brightest/most experienced' human players on the job of distributing the game pieces on the field. Having a human player that is smart enough to know when and which peice to through out will be critical.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Well, the feeders CAN see what shapes are up on their pegs, and make a conclusion with that.

I think it will be more important for the 2 human players to communicate what each other is putting out!

Re: Role of Analyst
 

I think the sad truth about this position is that the person will often be ignored by the other teams on the alliance unless an understanding is reached before the match begins.

Ex: A rookie team's human player has the position. They're going to have a hard time telling the big powerhouse team to do something different from what they already are. The truth of it is that the older veteran team probably knows best, and is already doing it. What does the Analyst do then?

Your alliance should have your entire game stratigy worked out before the match anyways. You should never be figuring out what to do while your suppost to be doing it.

However, as long as teams cooperate and come to an understanding before the match, I think the role has some promise (and importance).

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Yea. Your alliance will want to discuss the use of hand signs to signal what kind of tube the feeders need to pass out.

Maybe like, holding a fist up in the air is a Circle. Holding a flat hand upward would be a square and two hands up making a triangle would be a triangle.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Extra coach no, but a set of eyes to help keep track of the pegs (especially the opposing alliances) will be very valuable.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Keep in mind there may be OTHER ways for you to communicate what tube you want from an HP. Say, some kind of indicator on your robot. White light = white tube?

Re: Role of Analyst
 

We are giving great consideration to this method to comunicate exactly what tube we would like.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

I remember that, always wondered about the reasoning there. 610 was an amazing robot, I always thought your alliance should have won FLR.

Anyways, the issue with your argument, is that you consider the analyst another human player. Which they are not. They are a new position, with new responsibilities imbued. We will just have to wait and see how they play out. If they end up being detrimental to the team, just have them sit in the corner for the duration of the match, or don't listen to what they say.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

I think, that the Analyst might be MOST helpful with assisting the drivers as far as the placing order of the game pieces is to form the logo sequence(since it's mirrored).

That way, the coach can still keep their eyes on the field action.

This is actually ALSO beneficial where rookie members and coaches alike can all learn from eachother, so they get a training session.

(That's not to say there wasn't coach learning BEFORE the analyst position)

Just saying that coach training is now two for one with whoever is the analyst.

I like the twist of the human players needing to be able to not only just play the role of feeding, but also the coach component. Makes things a little more... crazy.

Re: Role of Analyst
 

Although our team is strongly considering different colored lights to tell the HP what color game piece we would like, I could definitely see the Analysts role being to look at how our alliance's pegs are shaking out, and then from there delegate to each HP through hand signals what game piece they are responsible for feeding to the robots. This could be made more complicated if say team X can work with circles and squares, but not triangles for whatever reason and then team Y is much better at triangles, but not quite as good at squares or circles...the HPs, the analyst, and the driver team of each robot would need to be on the same page for all of that! That's a heck of a lot of pre-match planning and in-game nonverbal communication. And I thought robot com was what we were primarily worried about:eek:

Re: Role of Analyst
 

personally i see it just as an excuse to give each team 4 on the field and and it also acts as a fancy title.