My thoughts after scouting all day Friday:
1. Shooting is
extremely difficult outside of autonomous. Autonomous is vital this year for the very fact that it's the only time your robot is not covered. After autonomous, the other bots are all over you if you're any good, and since a gentle knock is enough to make you miss every shot, a full push will keep you from ever scoring in manual.
As a side-note, anyone without an autonomous would be very wise to write one that just moves forward, because, as proven by my team (166), knocking a team that shoots well in autonomous can win games by stopping a 20-30 point swing (and often changes the winner of the autonomous bonus).
2. Any robot with a scoring autonomous is probably worth picking (with a few, very obvious exceptions). Any pusher that dumps its load in autonomous is strong, possibly picking, and any shooter that can score consistently well in autonomous is almost definitely picking. Additionally, if a team can score in autonomous, then it's a safe bet that they can score decently enough in manual (though shooters will have difficulty doing so unless your opponents actually leave them unblocked). If you're picking teams THEN FOR GOD'S SAKE, PICK THESE TEAMS BEFORE THEY'RE ALL GONE.
3. Autonomous is big. REALLY BIG. So big, that this is my third blurb points out just how big it is. These 10 seconds tend to sway the entire game.
4. The scores are LOW in this game. I expect them to be much higher on Saturday during the elimination rounds, but during the qualifying rounds, scores were generally no higher than 30-40, and anything above 50 almost always won the game. This means that getting all three robots up the ramp is indeed very valuable, though let it be known that the ramp is
VERY defend-able and the ramp bonus rarely swings games unless all three robots climb it for the full 25 points.
5. Despite the fact that scores are low, penalties rarely swing games. All the relevant ones are 5 points, and unless team incurs a lot of them (by doing something silly like not having a backbot for a while), then they usually don't change the outcome of the game. Last year, penalties were swinging games left and right because they weren't particularly hard to incur (especially that 30-point one for knocking a robot in the loading zone). THIS YEAR IS DIFFERENT.
6. Push bots are good if they work, though many push bots have difficulty unloading balls and (believe it or not) accurately. The ones that work well though are consistently (something shooters have trouble with) scoring 10-20 points (which is very sizable in many matches). In the absence of an accurate shooter in autonomous, they can win autonomous easily (with an autonomous mode so easy to code that even the bad ones have it) for the 10-point bonus.
7. Balls are everywhere, because human players that don't have to load bots up try to score in the corner goals as fast as they can (and sometimes score 5 or more points if they're lucky). Balls are literally everywhere, so if you have an efficient gatherer, you're in luck, and if you manually load your bot, you're at a disadvantage.
8. Pushing power is important but not as much as one would expect. Since you only need to knock shooters off target, you don't need to have the world's strongest robot. It sure helps, but you can easily get away with just being strong in general.
9. Your 10 ball starting balls are important. Use them well. No matter how efficiently you can load your bot, you'll probably never collect more than 5-10 (and that's really stretching it) balls regardless of which way you load.
10. Small play mistakes often become big, game-changing mistakes. 'nuff said.
11. Most shooting autonomous modes simply move forward and shoot. No fancy sensors or cameras needed. There is a real problem with consistency and the fact that lining the robot up poorly (and that doesn't take much) can make you score 2/10 instead of 8/10, but in general, these simple autonomous modes have the effect of giving the opponent a nearly insurmountable disadvantage score-wise.
That pretty much covers it all. My team, team 166 compiled a database of our scouting information (with many rounds recorded from both Thursday and Friday) and we've been making it available over the sundial network. The address to access it will be given out in the pits ASAP tomorrow morning (probably via two team members walking around telling teams about it, as we did today). Our database includes balls shot and scored, result of the game, and other useful info on every team (except ourselves, who we didn't really see any reason to scout), so hopefully, it will help. As a side-note/advertisement to teams attending the Granite State Regional in contention for the top 8, don't overlook my team, team 166 because of our 3-4 win loss record (and resultantly lower than desirable rank); we've won 3 of our last 4, we're strong on defense, and have a proven defensive autonomous mode
