Quote:
Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird
So do you think theory crafting or the process of looking for game breaking tricks is separate from scouting?
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While technically separate processes, scouting/scouting analysis and rules analysis rely on similar skill sets (e.g. knowing how to identify key factors of the game before competition, knowing how certain strategies will likely play against each other given robots of X ability, knowing what qualities of X robot type make or break performance, being able to realistically evaluate your limits (that one especially), etc.). That’s why game analysis and scouting often get paired together within discussions and within teams; the skills that a team uses for one will often be applied for the other. While you could say great scouting is “irrelevant” if you find and realize something truly and absolutely gamebreakinig, the GDC and your competition will try their best to keep you from ever getting there (hence why the few examples are remembered so well).
In the extremely likely event that you can’t totally break the game, even if you have a top tier robot, you are taking on an insane amount of risk by not scouting to your full potential, especially considering how easily various factors not based purely on your ability can murder your end performance (poor schedule, your robot’s name simply not being “out there”, alliance picks going in a crazy direction, etc.); good scouting will enable you to mitigate these risk factors.
That level of risk is way more real than you would think; in 2014 we got hit hard by all of these factors one way or another. The effects would’ve been way worse had we not been scouting hardcore (and 2014 absolutely
demanded hardcore scouting), and, in hindsight, there are several ways we could have applied our knowledge to make those factors have hardly any end effect. The main point is that the payoff of great scouting can easily become very high in comparison to the (relatively low) effort cost. That’s why in a competition as intense as FRC, it’s virtually essential for teams who want that extra edge.