Oh, boy, scouting will be difficult this year!

[bduddy]

Does anyone else think so? I mean, with the old system of "one scout per team", it would be nearly impossible, I think-scouts will definitely need to keep an eagle eye on each human player, as I can imagine that their "batting average" will be a big factor in alliance selection; but at the same time, robots must be tracked for evasive manuevers, cell delivering (and those similarly-colored empty cells will be hard to track!), pinning, actual scoring, and any other strategies teams may think of. Plus, as soon as the game is over, scouts will have to count that 3D stack of balls as quickly as possible before field reset people start emptying it out... I'm almost glad now that I'm not my old team's scouting manager now!

Or are there any ways that it could be made easier? Perhaps one person could watch several human players, but that starts to become a whole lot of scouts... any other ideas?

[Akash Rastogi]

I really was just thinking this.

I plan to have freshmen slaves again. Oh and sophomores.

Ask teams what they did in 02 and in 06 and I'm sure you will find something useful.

[dtengineering]

One scout per team is more than enough to scout every team in every match.

So long as they share their data. Each team can make their own conclusions on what the data mean....

Jason

[GillSt.Bernards]

Send them around witha a laptop to make quick notes. That way they will be able to cover more teams quicker. It will be more difficult at the bigger competitions then the smaller ones due to more teams

[Dan2081]

I don't think scouting will be all too important..
Since the human players are a very large part of scoring, obviously the teams with bigger, strogner kids like myself will be better

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Dan2081

I don't think scouting will be all too important..
Since the human players are a very large part of scoring, obviously the teams with bigger, strogner kids like myself will be better

A bigger stronger kid with no hand eye coordination won't do you much good.

but Obviously through your logic, I guess your team could dominate mine then, correct? Or if I have a giant on my team I guess you wouldn't stand a chance....

Keep those types of opinions to yourself please. This game has to do with skill, being bigger is not a skill. A kid half your size could shoot better than you and win over you.

edit: btw i highly doubt you need to be strong to throw an orbit ball...

[GillSt.Bernards]

Get some of the baseball, softball, and basketball players to join the team. To play those sports you need to have good aim

[JDeCola]

Originally Posted by GillSt.Bernards

Get some of the baseball, softball, and basketball players to join the team. To play those sports you need to have good aim

throwing an orbit ball is a lot harder than throwing a basketball or baseball, they would need a lot of practice, something we are all scrambling to get rightnow as far as the human player in the game

[SammyKay]

Originally Posted by JDeCola

throwing an orbit ball is a lot harder than throwing a basketball or baseball, they would need a lot of practice, something we are all scrambling to get rightnow as far as the human player in the game

It actually isn't as hard as you think it is. Once we got our orbit ball, a few of us went out into the hallway at our workshop and threw it to each other while we kept on moving to kinda mock a moving robot.

[Chris Fultz]

I think many of the more successful teams elevate the importance of the scouting team and the scouting data.

Good knowledge of your partners and your opposing alliance can make a huge difference in a match. In many ways, the more experienced team members are better at getting this data than the new members (aka "the freshmen"), and can use the scouting time to learn and teach newer members about the different designs and strategies on the field.

Painful, yes.
Sometimes boring, yes.

But, Incredibly important, yes.

[kirtar]

I don't know about that this year. Depending on what your data fields are, there will probably be a good degree of inaccuracy. If a robot scores balls in autonomous, how many did it score? Were 7 loaded, or only 6 (are you feeling lucky?). Of course, scouting is not all about data but also about the team's opinion on how well another team competes. Most likely I'll have simple data collection done by newer members but analysis and observation (in terms of just taking notes) done by more experienced members.

Also, the data that we collected at Boilermaker last year pretty much wasn't used to determine our picks (although this could partially be because it wasn't compiled well).

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

I think many of the more successful teams elevate the importance of the scouting team and the scouting data.

Good knowledge of your partners and your opposing alliance can make a huge difference in a match. In many ways, the more experienced team members are better at getting this data than the new members (aka "the freshmen"), and can use the scouting time to learn and teach newer members about the different designs and strategies on the field.

Painful, yes.
Sometimes boring, yes.

But, Incredibly important, yes.

Agreed. When I ask myself "Who has the best scouts in the world?" and "Who is the best team in the world?" it is the same answer.

-John

[Abra Cadabra IV]

You're going to have to have pretty good aim to get an orbit ball in a randomly-moving, relatively fast, not very large target with no backboard. I don't think human players will be doing the majority of scoring this year.

[1t5h1e1o]

Originally Posted by Abra Cadabra IV

You're going to have to have pretty good aim to get an orbit ball in a randomly-moving, relatively fast, not very large target with no backboard. I don't think human players will be doing the majority of scoring this year.

I agree. For every second of the match, there will be a relatively constant possibility of one of your alliance's payload specialists scoring one moon rock on an opposing robot's trailer due to the fact that each robot on the field will always been in range of an opposing payload specialist.

However, it is much more likely for a robot to score many points quickly, as they can get very close to the trailer and feed/dump/shoot several moon rocks much faster than the payload specialist can. IMO

[JAZAD1]

Teams that do scout know the importance of what those people do. I believe that the team that don't scout for what ever the reason is are missing out in the fun and the amount of resources gained from scouting no matter how time or energy consuming they may be.