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Originally Posted by EricH
Or, it could make you write off a team as useless. If that 90% cheese robot manages to shut you down, particularly if you wrote it off due to your pit scouting, I'd suspect that you'd have a little whey on your face.
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Except if you're doing good scouting, this doesn't happen. It's also why you don't eliminate teams solely based on their pit scouting data.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
I suspect that in most years, weight is a non-factor. If you pick them for eliminations, you will naturally do your best to find enough steel plates--or more useful hardware--to bring them up to the maximum weight minus 0.1 lb.
Let me phrase it this way: I don't give a darn about drivetrain type, number of motors, or weight. Why? Because handled well, they. don't. matter. What matters is how you use what you do have.
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So what if it doesn't matter most years? Weight mattered this year.
It's a given that your performance is based on
how you use your robot, but having
what would be most productive for the alliance is also important. I've seen a rookie team with a 2CIM drivetrain picked by the first seed alliance because their driving was that good. In 2014 we picked 2 partners both with mecanum, who both had some amount of a defensive role. Sounds like a terrible idea, I know, but as the 8th seed alliance captain up against the two top robots at the event, we knew we have to try something daring if we even wanted a chance. We knew both of these teams could use their tall robots and mecanum drives to get in front of the much shorter high-scoring robot we would face. Instead of pushing, they just stayed in front of the opposing shooter. We were surprisingly effective, considering we were the 8th seed alliance on a field that was basically 5 teams deep.
How these teams used their robots was very effective, but the fact that we knew
what they actually had allowed us to better compare them to other robots with similar defensive abilities, who would not have performed as well because of
what they had. Sure, the "how" is vital, but that's picked up in qualitative data reliably. Pit scouting is about the what- the basic criteria. It isn't about deciding who's better, it's about being able to easily sort out robots by their physical features.
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If you have a somewhat lighter 4-CIM 4WD tank, and you drive it effectively, you will do better at your role than a heavy 6-CIM 6WD drop that isn't driven well. This competition (in general) isn't all about the pushing matches--if your 4-CIM hits the corner right when a shot is lined up, they're going to be wasting time realigning while you line up for another shot at them and your partners score 3
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Obviously, our questions vary with the context of the game. Obviously, asking how many motors are on your drivetrain was not relevant to RR, and it was not something we asked this year. However, in 2014 it would have been important when looking for a pusher.
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That being said, I think y'all are forgetting something. At the Champs, it isn't just the second pick that will win you the event. It's the third as well. And then the lineups you use.
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Believe me, I know. 1089 got us our only step can through all of Einstein semis. (also, thanks to 548 for the cheesecake)
Long story short, pit scouting is all about the
what. It's just a simple little criteria that can be used to sort teams by their physical attributes, not by how well they do it. The
how is determined by qualitative and quantitative match data. Pit scouting questions are adapted to the context of the game, for obvious reasons.