Quote:
Originally Posted by robochick1319
Throughout the build season, we talk about what we think are important qualities to have in an alliance partner and (maybe more importantly) what are we scared of seeing in an opponent. I encourage my scouters to watch robots initially to place them into categories: fuel dumper, fuel shooter, gear gatherer, climber, or a hybrid combo of multiple areas. Then when we know what categories the teams fit in, watch to see how well they compare to others in that group.
I also try to tap into their competitive nature by saying, if team A is GREAT how can you still beat them? What do they do not so well? Or what can we or an alliance partner do to disrupt what they do so well? This is where those notes come into play. I like to have a mentor or two sitting with the students to point out things like, "Did you see how they pick up from there? Would that be helpful for our partner to do? What if we don't get them though?"
If you encourage your students to constantly think about eliminations and assume they are going to be picking, it helps them focus on taking the notes you need Friday night. Then on Friday night we decide what kind of partner we need. For example, in 2015 we decided we had to have a team who could pick up totes from the floor since we used the chute. So that really narrowed our selection of teams.
Assume you're going to be an alliance captain from the beginning. That's the best way to stay motivated. And even if you aren't a captain, you may still get picked for your scouting info. That has actually happened more than you would think.
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I agree with this, there are certain criteria that you know of prior to the event that you would like to fill with an alliance partner. These criteria have a tendency to evolve as the event progresses, but everyone seems to be on the same page natively. I have several students I place a lot of trust in to try and keep everything running smoothly. They are the ones that define how something should be scored, they are often sitting next to a less experienced member of the team guiding them. Another useful tool is to use a 3 or 4 match 'floating average' to examine a team over their most recent matches, if what your team is looking for in an alliance partner changes over an event it will often be expressed as an 'uptick or downtick' in qualitative data for a particular robot category (i.e your team all of a sudden sees they need a gear-scorer robot instead of fuel-scorer after an amazing match #41 in qualifications, all of a sudden gear placing robots are more valuable to your team, and ranked higher midway through the event because of this "need for a gear placer robot bias"). You just need to know what you need in an alliance partner. A lot of this comes down to analysis, it's not actually the data itself.
As robochick said, it is helpful if you assume you are going to be in some sort of picking position, it defiantly helps if you have a team history of being in that position; it's a different mindset. When we do our scouting meetings we often can guess quite closely how the first round will go, this is not based entirely on data, observation on the field and in the pit plays a big role. The real challenge with scouting is how the second round goes. We often have may sublists to fill the niches of that particular game. These lists are often derived from the
qualitative rankings of driver skill, overall shooter performance, tube placement, mini-bot line-up time, etc. and then
adjusted based on a key quantitative stat for the particular category. (
WARNING: this often results in many lists on the whiteboard which can become overwhelming for students/mentors, be sure to not overstimulate the senses
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jarren Harkema
Additionally, having qualitative data requires scouters to be 100% invested in the match. How do you encourage scouters to think critically during a match, making notes of important points, and tossing out what's not important.
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I would like to think that our team functions just like that: a team. Everyone is invested in someway or another and is addicted to success. Sure, there is some variance in how excited team-members are about the game, but as long as mortal is high and the scouting shifts are not too long everything seems to work out. Everyone wants to watch the match so as long as it is engaging there isn't much of a problem.