Quote:
Originally Posted by Sperkowsky
Your general argument this whole time has been based around scouts needing seats which I understand. However, this is all thrown out the window come eliminations as scouting is over.
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Scouting continues in elims spearheaded by the top scouts. However, scouting shifts from data recording to strategy recording and robot analysis.
There are matches all the time where a higher-seeded alliance lost sets because they chose not to adapt their strategy to the playstyle of the opposing alliance, or a weaker alliance was able to exploit a hole in a strong alliance's strategy and clutch out a match.
Real example: In 2014 at Ruckus, 610,1241 and 378, the third-seeded alliance were able to defeat the first-seeded alliance of 1126,1114 and 3951 by exploiting a hole in their offensive strategy.
The first-seeded alliance's strategy was to do a standard cycle of 1126 inbound+truss -> HP to 3951 -> 1114 finish, but our alliance realized that by parking 3951 in the opponent's loading area, 1126 was unable to make their truss shot effectively, winning us the match and the event in the end.
On topic: From my own observations at Canadian events,a few teams all arrive at the venue ~60-90 minutes before the doors open in order to secure great seats for the team and for scouting. Among the first few teams that arrive, there is very little rushing because teams tend to discuss what seats they want, make compromises and everyone ends up reasonably satisfied. This was what happened at GTRE, and a little bit of this happened at Waterloo.
In terms of protecting seats, we're as guilty as anyone other team that fields a large group (45 students, we usually put bags on seats etc), but we've tried to change our "seat culture" recently to offer and encourage non-team members to sit in our stands. In fact, I made a few friends that I still keep in touch with today at CMP because they asked to sit in our stands and we obliged.
I think that we still have room to improve in terms of seat-saving, but as it stands, I'm pretty satisfied and happy with how stands and seat-saving is managed at Canadian FRC events.