Quote:
Originally Posted by Alpha Beta
4. As you eluded in your article, be prepared to be a captain. There are surprises in the top 8 every year. If a team is absolutely too small to scout then here are a couple of ways to get some data...
a. Set up a camera to record a full field view of the matches and then review at least the most recent 2 matches for each robot Friday night. It can make for a long evening, but some people really enjoy that kind of film study.
b. Tour every pit before the end of Friday and get to know what is available to you on the pick-list.
c. At least come to the tournament with a pre-list where you predict how good each team will do. At the World Championship that is fairly easy considering how much data is available to you.
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I'm not a scouting expert, but I think people tend to overcomplicate scouting with incredible amounts of data.
At a robotics tournament, the main difficulty with scouting is because there's way too much data on everyone's robot, and it's hard to process all of that data.
In my opinion, robots that I've seen fall into three categories (especially at FRC regional tournaments):
- Definitely want on our alliance
- Maybe...
- No way!
There's a LOT of "Maybe" and "No ways". Usually your first pick is pretty obvious, but the main problem is -- for your second pick, you run out of "Definitely want on our alliance", and how do you pick between the "Maybe..." or the "No way!"s that are left?
By then I just wouldn't really care, because it's very difficult to determine a better team from a heap full of "Maybes". Using a simpler vs. more complex scouting method is unlikely to influence the overall success of your team -- luck is more influential at that point.
Which makes me think: it's really bad game design to make a game rely on sheer luck. If good teams cannot consistently win over worse teams in the competition, it's a broken competition.
Even though poker's core game is luck-based, there's still a lot of strategy around a poker tournament -- where better players can consistently win over lesser players.
FIRST has a lot of goals with the competition -- and evaluating the most "talented team" at playing the game is the point. Inspiring students to learn more about science and technology is -- and they do a great job at it.