Quote:
Originally Posted by LeadU2Fun
Good to see 4146 got picked for the tournament. They had QP of 46 and OPR of 12!
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And it was entirely due to scouting that they were selected by 498 and 2486. Up until this year I've been heavily involved in 498's scouting, my Dad took over this year now that I am out of state but we talked at length about how scouting was handled this year and the picks made at this year's regional. 2486 was seen as the 3rd best robot in our scouting (after 610 and 842) so they were a no brainer when available. 4146 was relatively high in scoring despite having a horrible QP and the decision was made to go after an alliance that could score heavily in the hybrid period, which is what 4146 did particularly well. Getting 36 hybrid points in the first elimination match convinces me it was a good choice.
To detail how our scouting was developed, I think 2005 was the first time the team made serious attempts at scouting (our first time as an alliance captain was 2004) and we used a similar setup to what many teams use now with computer based scouting. 6 scouts each cover one robot in a match, the data gets merged together (back then by wifi since it was allowed still), and the results are used to plan upcoming match strategy during qualifications. A preliminary pick list is made Friday night and Saturday the list is altered by sudden changes in performance. This worked well for us that year, but in the following years I found this setup wasn't feasible when our team got smaller.
The past couple of years we've had 15 or less students on the team with few interested in scouting, so we changed to needing only 2 scouts at a time. Each scout covers an entire alliance and notes what scores happen by a robot, along with any other quick interesting comments ("dead", "good defense", etc.). Last year was just a quick sheet made in excel, this year I believe we modified SPAM's scouting system to fit our 2 scout method. We always use paper since we don't have enough laptops to go around, and you don't need to recharge paper
. Whoever was in charge of the scouting usually did most of one alliance for the matches, the other alliance was done by whoever we could convince to sit down and write for a few matches (parents not excluded!). We haven't done pit scouting in years, if you're a team we're interested in we'll take a look Saturday morning to see how your robot looks and see then if there are any features that change our likelihood of picking you.
If you're having trouble getting enough students to scout on your team, I would encourage you to go to a simpler format like we've done, or work with other teams to get enough interested bodies for 6 man scouting. For standing out all I can say is perform your best on the field, and maybe let teams on Saturday morning know you've fixed issues you've had or that you're doing better than your QP shows. If you're noticeably good or bad promotion really doesn't matter, but if you're "on the bubble" it may help you out a little to teams with good scouting. For teams without any scouting data I can't quite say what influence it would have.
I'll PM you the contact info for my Dad on 498 if you'd like a copy of our scouting info from this year to see where you fell in the ratings (I don't have a copy of them myself).
And if it's any consolation things like this do happen everywhere, as has been mentioned. My team this year (167) finished 12th at Milwaukee and somewhere in the 16-20 range for most OPR categories but was not picked in eliminations. We lucked out in that we were called in as a backup after QF1-1, but prior to that I was thinking "maybe we should have promoted ourselves more" after seeing some picks that didn't make much sense with what we had scouted.