Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

After watching SVR and watching the alliance selection, I can't believe how bad some of the alliance selection has been. The fact that 691 wasn't picked at all is mind boggling to me. Maybe its just me, but alliance selection seems horribly unorganized and is costing some teams banners.

On another note I am excited to see if the 2nd alliance can beat the poofs. I think they have a significant chance of pulling it off!

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

No. It is usually #1 picks #2, #3 pick #4 (or another in the top 8), then the rest pick their own alliances. There is usually no, or just one decline. I have never seen teams so unprepared for selection before, either.

Or atleast, thats how it works in my experience.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

A huge wild card is the declinations you see this year. I think many of them are well founded as the FIRST ranking is horribly broken for this year. Many people say #s can't be used for alliance selection, but I'm starting to think #s like OPR and ETC(EMC and ERC) are critical to good alliance selection. Scouting doesn't seem to cut it this year.

I think captains need to realize the sum of the parts do no equal the whole, and you need to look at great teams as separate parts (autonomous, robots, and minibots) Try to find value in one or 2 or these areas, not all 3. And try to find a robot who's skills compliment yours. Top 1 or 2 robots score, and the top 2 minibots score. Balancing this through your alliance will produce the highest scoring teams. All-in-one packages don't cut it for picks.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I completely agree. It seemed like every team minus a few was ill-prepared for selecting their own alliance. Even that one team declining the offer to be an alliance captain. I understand that the team might think that they are not worthy of being an alliance captain, but now that I think about it, it was a very GP thing to do. At least they get to compete for at least two more matches.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I don't consider OPR a good measure of robot quality. It is unable to rate defensive robots, and almost all winning alliances have a good defender behind them.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I agree with this. However defense is the exception. You need scouting to find a good defender, not a good offensive team. Where OPR bundles the robot and minibot, separating the 2 creates interesting insights.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

When providing local training workshops, this area could be addressed and better understood. It can be very overwhelming to be out on the field having to make selections and not fully understanding the process or being poorly prepared. Many teams have made their scouting information/processes available but teams have to know those are out there and they have to learn the process. Nothing should be assumed in teams, communities, or regions when trying to help the teams become competitive.

Jane

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Wait, what? A team turned down being an alliance captain? How is that possible?

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Yep, when they were asked for their selection, they said "we decline being an alliance captain."
The RD who was doing it immediately said "we are going to take a little break." and went to talk to the ref.
They ended up staying a captain.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Yes. The 7th alliance captain, when it was their turn to pick, said that he declined the offer to be the 7th alliance captain. The emcee and the refs talked about it for a little while, but then he changed his mind so there was not a hassle. :confused:

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I think if you decline to be an alliance captain, you cannot be picked later. It a grey area, but I'm assuming they chose to play rather than sacrifice their spot.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

This could absolutely be the case. But I thought that was just for when you are selected to join an alliance. It could very well be for both cases though.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

While texting mentors of 1323, their reasoning is that 604 has a functional minibot, whereas 691 does not.

I was surprised 691 wasn't picked as well.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

This is when you enter the grey area, what's worth more: a semi functional minibot or a good robot. There is no answer, and at the end of the day you have to roll the dice. Unfortunately for them the selection didn't pan out.

If you can't get a proven minibot, I would go for a proven robot. 691 is gorgeous and powerful. A well deserving 3rd pick. but then again it comes down to autonomous and minibots(which 691 lacked both)

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I heard from a ref at a different event that I called when I saw this that they would probably have classified this as a decline, and thus they would not be eligible to play at all. So, as pointed out, they probably chose to play over get nothing.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Yeah this is what I suspected watching the webcast...

I think the philosophy behind the rule, is to not allow stacked teams. It's already a huge problem this year. Allow teams to rig selection and it becomes a bigger problem.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

From what I've heard, it's the selection-rigging that was the bigger issue back when there were unlimited declines.

For the record, the toughest selection for a single team probably happened back in 1999/2000, somewhere around there. Mind you, this is back before we all got this whole selection thing fully figured out. This is at the Nationals (and yes, I do mean Nationals, not Championship) at Epcot. One team somewhere in the middle of the order called on 5 or 6 or more different potential partners before getting an acceptance, or something like that (memory is kind of funny when stuff is that long ago). Picked already, declined, declined due to needing to catch a plane, picked already, declined, that sort of thing, until someone finally accepted. Not a place I'd want to be...

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Interesting, there are no actual scouting guides out there, just programs/sites to use. Noone actually teaches rookies how to scout...

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I don't think there is anything wrong with alliance selection this year, FIRST just doesn't rank teams well. I don't even look at the data FIRST provides. When I'm up there making picks I go solely off what my scouters give me.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

i was out there as a team captain at SVR and watching it i was surprised at how ill prepared some of the alliances were. i have a small team, less than 15 people and we still have a relativly decent scouting program and would easily have been more organized than some of the alliance captains out there.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

If you can find a recording from SVR, you'll see what we're talking about. Teams picking weak teams for their first pick, trying to opt out of captainship, and the list goes on...

Lower ranked captains were in a good position to create strong alliances, but failed to do so. Good teams are rarely left for the 1st and 2nd alliances, however at SVR, good teams, were widely available.

One reason, people focused on minibots. Well at SVR it was autonomous that won the finals not minibots.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I so wish I could have been there, MTR would have crushed alliance selections; the competitions we have been at have been pretty good for selections. When I said nothing is wrong I probably exaggerated a bit, because I have noticed a few lower teams getting picked at regionals/districts , but they were raked low on our data. As far as how high those teams ranked according to FIRST I have no idea what it was.

Also does anyone have video from SVR? I would like to take a look at it.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

A big problem with FIRST's ranking is it favors consistent minibots. If you get first place in most Q matches you will win most Q matches. However come the finals, its a very different story, and sometimes very hard to predict. At SVR the field was starved for tubes, so ubertubes accounted for huge portion of the tube score. 254's alliance did not have the fastest minibots, but put up 2 or 3 ubertubes vs 1868 who had the best minibot, but their alliance only put up 1 ubertube. The match was over before the drivers touched the controls.

The game that ends up being played on Einstein is going to be crazy interesting.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I cannot comment for FRC but I think alliance selection can get disappointing in FTC. Despite different competitions I do see some trends in both competitions in this subject of matter.

In the NorCal FTC tournament, a few outstanding teams did not get chosen for alliance selection and a few bad teams were chosen instead. Part of this is due to the randomness of competition. Even for teams considered the best, things don't always go as expected.

I think the tube starvation situation is one that contributes to the randomness, so it requires high levels of strategy.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

While I'll agree that minibots were overemphasized during the alliance selection, I would not say that it was ubertubes that won the finals for 254's alliance. If I remember correctly, during that last match 1323's alliance was 1 tube away from completing a logo on top, and one team had dropped or failed to place that very tube several times. I would argue that being able to place tubes reliably in general, uber tube or normal, was what decided that match.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

254, 1868, and 1538 all used the same minibots.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I appreciate the all the nice things said about my team's performance at SVR. I am glad we weren't the only team who thought we were good. We were surprised we didn't get chosen, sort of.

We knew our minibot wasn't the best, it was a pathetic 3.5 second climb, but we did successfully deploy it several times during qualifications, winning us at least one round. However the refs were very inconsistent with how they judged us so they sometimes counted our mini-bot but they disabled our tower twice, both times they were wrong and we were able to cite the rules and prove how it could physically not have been above the line, costing us one or two wins.

We could have also won another of our matches if we had completed our second logo (we had the triangle in possession) rather than going for minibot, which failed do to a hardware failure, basically our minibot got stuck on our hostbot.

We had actually been working on our autonomous using dead reckoning and line sensors. But were slowed down when we discovered that our encoders on our wheels were different counts per rotation, which explained our turning on the practice field while testing. We also had been rather hesitant after our first practice round at LA where a bug in the code caused us to start smoking during autonomous as we roasted a motor.

Our team was sort of depressed when we weren't chosen, as this is our last regional and this was a large portion of our team, including myself, are graduating. But we can always do better during the offseason competitions and next year when we will be using our swerve drive ;) (which is made just we didn't have time to implement into the robot), that way we won't be able to be defended anymore. But overall we are proud of our robot, we had good driving, a decent minibot, and a good scoring robot. We learned a lot this year, and we will improve our performance next year. In the end we did our best, learned a lot, and had fun. With that said winning really doesn't matter too much to us.

We were surprised by the lack of scouting/preparation of the alliance captains at SVR. Even though we knew after friday that we would not be an alliance captain, we still had a team of 6 students in the stands scouting for us, when we brought only 12-15 to the tournament. My team believes that the lack of adequate scouting and preparation of alliance captains is why so many good teams were not chosen for eliminations. I noticed that a some of the lower seeded alliances picked the next person down on the list rather than a team that would have been better for their alliance.

Again thanks for the compliments about our robot's performance.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I have so far been to five events this year and one thing that is consistent are teams in position to pick who are obviously unprepared to make a pick and are just overwhelmed by the moment and a shallow pool of teams to pick from.
This year's game is very challenging with all of the tasks that have to be done and the potential for crushing penalties it magnifies the potential for stupidity and there are many teams eagerly embracing it.
At every regional I have been at there were several teams in the elims who had no business playing on Saturday afternoon. Next week we will see MUCH better quality of matches in Michigan and Philadelphia and see this games true potential of how things will be in St. Louis (for the most part).

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2370
Here is a thread I started a year or so ago about scouting methods. One thing it does not cover in great details is "The Pick List". I will post up a template that we use. Every team Friday should make a list of at the very minimum 1-23 (24 if you include yourself). Teams that you would be interested in having as a partner. With detailed scouting, this usually still requires an hour of debate mostly trying to flesh out the slots for 12-24. This is the most difficult area as this area typically has the smallest differentiators between teams.
On our team, we also include a bubble section of around 4 teams, and a DNP section (Do Not Pick). DNPs usually result from gathering an abundance of general penalties, DQ potential penalties, and/or often not functioning or broken. Here in Michigan, this list is usually quite long at the first event, and much smaller at the second as teams get their controls sorted out, and most teams learn the rule better.
Saturday morning, we do a walk through on the bubble teams to see how they are doing, and discuss any issues we may have noticed on Friday. If there are specific behaviours we would like to see from a team (tube herding or defense), we will talk to them about their schedule and ask them to exhibit this behaviour in a match of their choosing. Some will agree to this, some will turn us down. We then refine the list right up until the end. Make a duplicate, and send it out. The duplicate is then used to discuss selections with you partner. Typically off to the side.

********************
Even knowing all this things, we are still often caught of guard for the alliance selection process.

Part of the selection issue is that with the WLT system, ranking tend to fluctuate a lot right up until the very end. This makes it very difficult to discuss strategies with potential alliance partners. Also, because team captains are called to the field immediately after the last match, there is very little time to adjust lists relative to rankings.
I would love for teams to be given a 10-15 minute break after the first round to discuss next round picks with their scouting teams and new partners. Yes this would add some time into the alliance selection process, but it would be so beneficial to the overall competition. As the captains out of the field are frequently members of the competition team, they haven't seen enough matches to make informed arguments with their other partner.
********************
As a thought of discussion:
What if there was the "Wheel of Fortune" picking rule where you loose your turn if you pick a team that is already in an alliance? Would this reduce the ill-prepared, or would it just be adding injury to embarrassment?
********************
Another thought. If you notice that a young team is doing well enough that they could be in the position to be an alliance captain, go up and remind them of the importance of making a pick list. If you are "mentoring" another team, make sure they do this.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

That's because there is no real single way to scout. Many teams do it different ways. Some teams go strictly off the Scoreboard and ranking. Others take other things into account. Some do both. Some teams run a server with a dedicated scouting team in the stands. We've done this with great success since 2008.

There isn't a right or wrong way to scout. It really comes down to what factors are important to your team.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Well the worst I heard was someone told me a team was picking down the list on the screen and was turn down by every team and eventually ended up picking themselves. Right then and there someone probably should have stepped in to help them.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

There is a wrong way: Not scouting at all, like the team who just picked down the rankings.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Worst form of scouting ever:

"Anyone want to get picked make some noise!"
This actually happened at Buckeye in 2008.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

That actually just happened at SVR, leading to this discussion. We have had some misplaced teams and head-scratching picks at Philly but noting that bad. Most of the questionable picks are made with quickly, so there must have been some thought process behind them.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I was the team representative for team 1868 for alliance selection, and we pushed very strongly to select 691 since we had worked well with them in our qualification matches. We had covered this choice with 1323 beforehand and agreed they were the best choice.

However, when I was on the field the representative from 1323 bypased our list (which had 691 on the top) and instead went with what one of their mentors was shouting at her from the first row of seats-604.

However, I think this was a minor concern compared to the number of declines in selection. The rankings at SVR were so strange and jumped around so much that there were teams who did not expect to be anywhere near picking position shoved in, and I think this was directly related to the amount of confusion.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

One thing that makes alliance selections particularly difficult this year is the need to assemble an alliance which can effectively play every aspect of the game. Most teams, even if they're unprepared, understand that they're looking for robots which "do it all". Typically those teams will either decline a pick from the types of teams who are unprepared to make the selection, or there aren't any left by the time they get to make their pick.

I believe this is also the reason for the large number of declines. Teams who "shouldn't" be in the top 8, or should but are unprepared, are picking teams who they perceive as "Good" without giving full consideration to whether the teams complement each other. A team with great tube scoring but no minibot and no ubertube that ends up top 8 will probably be declined by a team who also doesn't have a minibot, because they know it will put them at a disadvantage.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

They picked us

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Callie, talking things over with 1323, they told me that they were concerned about the reliability of their own minibot, so they wanted to choose someone with a fast, reliable minibot. 604 fit this bill, 691 did not.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

my sympathies.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I have to admit, being on that field saying "Team 2159 graciously declines the position of alliance captain" was probably one of the most hilarious moments of my life. Firstly, I'm not even the team captain of the RoboPirates-- I'm simply the driver that was called to be the representative of our team at the last second simply because our own captain was not feeling too well about the whole moment.

As a small, 6 member team in the finals, we were simply overwhelmed by what the judges said. Did we scout before we were called up to be an alliance captain? Yes, and no. We were solely a strong, defensive team, and we looked for teams that would balance our alliance. We had not been able to finish the other features of our robot, so we were forced to lean on our strongest feature: our two speed transmission. Team 691 and team 3256 would have been my top choices IF I would have remembered their team names. However, our mentor told us to simply decline being an alliance captain so that we would not have to worry about picking teams.

Why did plan on declining the position of alliance captain? Well, a couple of years ago, our team was an alliance captain at the Davis regional. We declined the position then, BUT the judges still allowed us to be picked. In fact, we were picked by the Fembots, team 692. I was stunned when they told us that we would not be able to compete if we declined, so I was forced to turn to my handy-dandy SVR Flier that I picked up at the last second before running on the field.

You'd be surprised at all of the people that came up to me after the alliance decisions and asked what was up. After telling them this whole story, they understood completely. Do I regret picking team 100 and team 766 for our alliance? Nope. They're all great people who I had a lot of fun with. In fact, I want to thank our good friends at team 100 for getting me out of that mess. Sure, winning is awesome, but to us, FRC is about having fun, making new friends, and spreading the values that FIRST teaches us all-- most importantly gracious professionalism. Let's keep it that way.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I was out for alliance selections for team 675 and were picked by team 2456 as the 2nd team for alliance 8.

Now they could have picked any number of amazing teams, but 2456 picked us along with 2035 because they knew we were going against 254, 1538, and 751. They also picked us because our teams are friends and to go out playing alongside your friends sounds like a blast. Now correct me, but that is what I think FIRST is about. HAVING FUN!. I feel like I speak for all three teams when I say, we played the game having fun.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

Heaven forbid an unprepared alliance captain picks any old team then proceeds to have fun in the elims. :rolleyes:

Winning is great. After all, it is a competition at its core. But let's try not to put too much of an emphasis on it to the point where we're bad-mouthing a team's picking methods (or lack thereof). Next year, hopefully with the help of this community, they'll know of the different ways to scout, and its importance.

Some teams may never care. I think we'd probably just pull the old "eeny meeny miney mo" trick, or the really fun "shout if you want us to pick you!" tactic if we were ever captains. Sometimes, the lack of students (or lack of those interested in scouting) can be the reason they don't scout, either. When you've got 3 students working on the 'bot and two who drive, they're probably not going to put aside much time (if any at all) to go gather data.

Just keep in mind that no two teams are the same.

EDIT: Didn't see you post, Kevin, but it's ironic that you mentioned having fun. Took me some time to type this out. :p

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I've seen and heard of teams doing this and it rubs me the wrong way. I would be pretty upset to work 6 weeks and give it my all during the competition only to be passed up by a team because they wanted to pick their friends. I just don't think it is fair to the other teams if you choose not to play competitively and to the best of your ability. If this was a Michigan event where you gets points for getting selected, I would be extremely upset. But, at the end of the day, its the teams right to play however they want.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

That makes sense. I remember that they had trouble deploying their minibot in one of their matches on Saturday morning. I do wish they had conveyed that to me in our meeting so that we could have incorporated it more heavily into our pick list.

Honestly I don't think it would have made that much of a difference either way, which is why I didn't push the issue at the time. 604 and 691 are both experienced, well-developed teams who have done well this year. I for one was extremely happy with how finals turned out, given how 254 performed in finals at San Diego and in the semis and quarters at SVR.

I mostly wanted to reassure the OP that we and 1323 were aware of 691's capabilities and that they were not overlooked. The specifics of our selection are a much smaller issue than those faced by some of the teams who were present for selection. I felt unprepared to be there given the uncertainty of the rankings and the strength of the #1 alliance, and I had spent the last two days running a full-scale online scouting program as well as working with the scouts from 254. I can't imagine what it might have been like to go into that selection if you hadn't been expecting and trying to prepare for it all weekend.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I will just say the friends picking thing is a very real experience. Imagine going to college, applying for a job, and finding out you didn't get it because the person you were competing with for the job had an in at the company. Then its not 6 weeks but often 6 years.

In the real world perceived value and connections are almost as valuable as real value in a business deal. In a strange (and unfortunate corollary) the similar thing happens in FIRST, especially for second picks.


I will say after running the numbers 604 and 691, look to be equivalent. As most people know I usually go by the #s and only the #s, and this is a perfect example where emotionally I was connected to a robot and would have preferred them. In one match I saw 691 put on quite a show, and really liked it. However after your reflections I think that you made an appropriate call.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

604 was clearly a better choice for the #2 alliance.

No alliance was going to beat 254 by playing a strictly offensive strategy, and 691 was nowhere near as capable of playing defense as 604.

The highly defensive strategy that 1323 had their alliance play was their best shot at winning, and it worked quite well for them. If their alliance had been more reliable in automode and deploying minibots, they mgiht have won it.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

i think the lack of preparation for alliance selection is shocking. i was on the field picking alliances for both NJ and DC regionals for 1089, and with my scouting list, i was able to pick two alliances that upset much higher teams (NJ we were ranked 6 and made it to the finals, DC we were 7th and upset the 2 seed). at both regionals i had people looking at my list and hastily writing down whoever was at the top of my list. now these werent top-tier teams, or even teams who knew they had a good shot at being picked. when i picked my first alliance partner at both NJ And DC, both of them either had a list written, or were very knowledgeable about who they wanted to pick next and why. our team always has about 25 teams on our list, and most of the time i walk off the field with about half scratched off as being picked. at dc especially, i was very surprised with some of the selections that were made. robots that probably should not have been competing that late were being picked, and when i looked up at the board, there were plenty of teams left that i had on my list. if you have a small team, i get that you may not have the manpower to scout properly. you should at least be well-informed about which teams are ranked where, and why.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

It did seem that teams were particularly unprepared at SVR this year. The 5th and 7th highest teams on our pick list were able to be chosen by the #5 alliance. We were able to get our #1 most desirable third partner with the 24th pick of the draft.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

THIS is one more reason why teams should network. Why mentors and students should work together across teams. This year, while helping 3450, I needed help from people who had more resources from me. I went to 2337 and 68 and told them that I needed help. 68 did a bit of machining for 3450. 2337 did a lot of machining for 3450 as well as donating 2 mentors for nearly 2 weeks after Kettering helping 3450 to fix problems. They even gave 3450 a minibot.

Furthermore 703 offered to do any machining we needed that they could do, we just needed to ask.

3450 had access to many more resources because of our network of friends.

Yes, teams picking teams based solely on the fact that they are "friends" sucks. But teams picking teams based on the fact that they are nearly as good as another team and have worked well with them in the past is completely understandable to me.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

My team worked extremely hard this build season and we did compete to the best of our ability, but we also did it while having fun. that's all that matters to us. In all honesty it is insulting to hear you say this. both 2035 and 675 worked incredibly hard this build season, and you should not judge how a team does because their robot has a few glitches.

We did chose to play competitivley, however there is not much one can do when going against 254 and 1538.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I was more referring to the idea in general as I've seen/heard it happen several times. I have no idea what your robot or 2035 even looks like. I was only going by what you said in your originial post. I am in no way judging your robot, only questioning the idea of just picking your friends in alliance selections.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

I did want to throw a little defense for 2141 being unprepared. Their driver approached me while our team was on the field and let me know that they wanted to pick 1868. I told him that I'd go tell our scout team that and send someone to let his scouts know where we stood as soon as we could. He responded with, "Oh ... I am our scout team ... and driver ... and lead designer."

When we found out that 1323 was going to pick us, I let him know right away and he gave me a pretty lost look. I felt really bad for the kid. With the size of his team, he just didn't have any scouting support. I pointed him in the direction of 971 and wished him the best of luck, but we can see that it did not work out terribly well when it came to actually picking.

The alliance called our time out and gathered all the drive teams and lead scouts together right before the finals to get a little breather. The looks on their faces was pretty good when I said, "We can't throw a single tube if we want to win." After some discussion it -almost- worked out for us. 1868 getting the minibot up the pole first in both finals matches was a pretty rewarding moment for the girls with all the work they put on completely redesigning the deployment.

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

At Virginia, due to captian picking in the first round of picks, team 539 became the 8th alliance captain. Being surprised by this fact, as were us due to thier robot (let's just say it wasn't the best at the regional), they went up to pick without any real information. They ended up picking us, 1418, we then instructed them to pick 1086 whom were ranked low, however when working, which at the time, our connections with their team informed us they were, were one of the best robots there. Afterwards, we found that they picked us largley because we were one of the only teams they knew about due to us being next to their pit and helping them with their bumpers, but when asked why they picked us they were unsure.
While picking us wasn't a bad choice (we we were ranked 18th or 19th, had auton, minibot and could put at least one logo up, usually to go on to score 1 or two extra tubes), it shows that if you are above 16th ranked, you should be ready to pick a team.
Ultimatley, the Blue Cheese didn't quite work and had to sub out (for 1793 who was also unprepared even though they were the next highest rank but was able to field thier robot in the end), and 539's robot also didn't work, leaving us to be chumped by defense, only allowing us to put up 2 tubes and deploy a minibot.
Please be prepared for picking and subbing (especially when you are next in line for back-up bots)

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

The problem is, not every team is on ChiefDelphi, or connected to many well-organized teams (if any at all). Sometimes it happens, and unless every rookie kit comes with a sheet of paper telling you that "you have to scout and here's how you do it", it will always happen.

If all of you are just so hurt over how dreadfully awful those bad teams pick their crappy alliances (that was sarcasm), why don't you make an effort to inform every team about the importance of scouting, and the ways they should/shouldn't go about doing so? Not just teams on CD, but teams who aren't. While you're at it, let them know how great of a resource this forum is...

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

An example of what David is talking about is the 2011 Dallas Regional thread. Look at that thread in comparison to some of the other regional threads and the Michigan State Championship thread. You'll see a major difference in participation in the threads. To me, it shows that the rookie teams are not active on CD. The ones that do find their way to CD and learn to delve into its resources, will learn to celebrate their competitions and their achievements as a community. The ones that don't have a community of support, will develop more slowly in all areas. In some robotics communities and areas, it is hard for the teams to understand that networking together and creating workshops and training opportunities, benefit them as individual teams and as a community. They are slow to grasp the potential impact of working together. Not every area has this problem but some areas definitely contend with this attitude.

Jane

Re: Is alliance selection usually this bad?
 

The BadgerBots (1306) hands out a packet of information on the importance of scouting and how alliance selection works. I don't know if there is any causation, but this year at Wisconsin I don't believe there were any alliance captains that didn't know how it worked or seemed confused.

I think one of the bigger issues with teams not scouting is that they simply lack the manpower (enough scouts at the event and enough time to plan a system out before hand). I know we have offered to and have scouting with other teams at events and it seems to be benifical for both groups, especially a smaller team who now has access to a great scouting database.