Hi All,
As a Rookie team coach I trying to employ the spirit with my team of continuous improvement and focus our energy on what is in our control. Our team's first competition found us in Livonia MI where we are very proud of our following "on field" achievements.
* End the qualification rounds ranked 12th
* We handed a powerhouse one of their 2 losses.
* Won 2 events we were predicted to lose by a landslide (one was with a dead alliance partner 30 seconds into the game)
* NEVER caused a foul
* Developed a scouting system that provided us assessments before every match
* Driver/operator confidence and ability impressed some veteran teams.
Our strengths are :
*A very solid catching robot. The human player could throw an inaccurate and/or violate pass to us and we caught it reliably. We never lost a ball when being hit by others.
* We could easily pass to another robot on the ground in a controlled manner.
* We can score the low goal with ease. (We didn't do it very often due to our role as of an inbonder)
* Defensive ability of our drivers were some of the reasons why we gave some powerhouses a loss.
* NEVER caused a foul point in any of our rounds (w/ eltorros on front)
* 100% Uptime. This was not always the case for our alliance partners
* We had a goalie blocker, but never used it. Reason: Our drivers were extremely efficient at inbouding/passing and very effective at "getting in the face" of other robots to limit shooting opportunities from the field
Possible Strength: The team is fairly confident they can catch a truss ball, but can't find the opportunity to prove it on the field.
* There is room for more aggressive driving from us from a defensive perspective.
Our weaknesses are:
* We can't throw. (over truss or at high goal).
* Auton CURRENTLY only achieves 5 pts. Auton "ability" at next event will be 11 pts instead of 5.
* We had some slop in our eltorros (will be fixed before the next event)
* Our auton strategy was to only go for the 5 pts and NOT take a ball unless we had an alliance member that wanted to clear it during auton. Reasoning ...If we still had a ball after auton is over, we would spend precious time trying to getting 1 pt, where we could be using that time to go inbound a ball and start getting 10 assist points. We list this as a weakness because we found some teams didn't understand those balls on the field from auton limit our alliances ability to START getting assist points. This could be viewed by some scouts as a "weak" strategy. In our opinion...1 pt was not worth the time it took to get it after auton, but it also hurt our low goal statistics.
This strategy actually worked very well for us and helped our team be a very solid contributor to help win games that were very close. We estimated we were the difference in atleast 3 games.
We ended the elim rounds ranked 12 (and was in the top 10 for most of the day). Our team was relatively surprised that we were not picked. In the spirit of continuous improvement we are asking our-self "What could we have done better to rank higher on scouting sheets". (given our current capabilities of not being a "thrower")
Here is what we concluded :
1.) Most of the scouting approaches used by teams are very heavily weighted for scoring goals, and light on assisting as well as an efficient catcher/inbounder.
2.) A strong defensive robot that can also pass and catch is not necessarily something teams look for in their scouting reports. ** This is a key point that I need some feedback around.
3.) Being a solid and cooperative team member is not something that is scouted for...but being an uncooperative alliance member will surely get your scratched from somebody list. (We did that with our team, and I am sure this is common practice).
4.) Eliminating the "slop" in our el-torros MUST be fixed before next event.
Our thoughts on how we can improve for the next competition:
1a.) In auton always take a ball and put it in the low goal.
1b) Another auton strategy would be around when we compete against a powerhouse that plans on shooting multiple high goals: Place our robot in the goalie zone directly infront of them. Put the goalie post up and stop them from scoring the straight shot. (A very different approach...but would work to our strength and stop the other team from scoring 20-40 pts in auton). Our fear is ...This would not show up on scouting reports as a strength as we didn't score any auton point.
2.) Always score atleast 1 low goal per game. (
even if we fill the role as an inbounder). Clean up auton balls would be another easy way to do this.
3.) Consider visiting the top 8 seeded teams and promoting our robot's ability and why we may be a good partner for them.
4.) Take some videos of us catching the ball thrown over the truss on the practice field. (Use this to prove we can do it)
5.) The last one is ...get to the top 8 and pick 2 decent high shooters. Something our team now has confidence in achieving.
Please comment on our conclusions and if we are missing something.
P.S. I am not looking to start a thread on the trials and tribulations of scouting and being scouted. I am really just looking for some guidance around the conclusions for a rookie team's perspective. Help me understand the gap in our conclusion.