My Scouting Sheet...CRITIQUE IT NOW!!!

[Lokhagos]

Great scouting sheet, and thanks for letting us use it.

[MagiChau]

Pass everything through to an IRC bot :3

[WarpSpeed10]

I see you have them writing down the approximate time it takes a robot to get a tube and score. Does this mean each scouter will have a stop watch with them? You may want to consider an alternative method of quantifying the effectiveness of the robot as multiple stopwatches can end up being fairly expensive, and they always seem to have a tendency to mysteriously disappear.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Patrickwhite

So bring along a wireless router and have a host computer connected to it.

Originally Posted by zbanks

You could have a laptop serve the PHP pages & DB over an ad-hoc network.

You guys should review section 4.4.1 of the administrative manual.

[XaulZan11]

What if a team plays a little offense and a little defense?

What if a team does the 'fetcher' strategy and bring tubes for their partner to score?

[ZeroGAdam]

Now from a scout leader's point of view, on a sheet where you can scout multiple teams like instead of one match per sheet , lets say you have 4 matches per sheet, do you have your scouts only scout a specific team for that sheet or do you roll along with the schedule and only scout teams in a certain position on the field all day?

[zant1234]

I see you have them writing down the approximate time it takes a robot to get a tube and score. Does this mean each scouter will have a stop watch with them? You may want to consider an alternative method of quantifying the effectiveness of the robot as multiple stopwatches can end up being fairly expensive, and they always seem to have a tendency to mysteriously disappear.

I never considered using stopwatches, I was just going to tell my team to estimate a time but that isn't a bad idea and I'm not too worried about the stopwatches because our physics teacher found a whole box of them this year so I think we would be good on that front.

Now from a scout leader's point of view, on a sheet where you can scout multiple teams like instead of one match per sheet , lets say you have 4 matches per sheet, do you have your scouts only scout a specific team for that sheet or do you roll along with the schedule and only scout teams in a certain position on the field all day?

The plan is to scout one team per sheet and re-scout if we have to and scout every team's first match, so optimally we would only be scouting for about a half-hour.

[jblay]

Originally Posted by zant1234

The plan is to scout one team per sheet and re-scout if we have to and scout every team's first match, so optimally we would only be scouting for about a half-hour.

Do you mean if a team has a bad match you will just toss their sheet? A lot of teams, especially in week 1 and 2 regionals rise up day 2 and prove that they deserve to play in the eliminations. You should never just stop scouting a team.

[SteveGPage]

Originally Posted by zant1234

The plan is to scout one team per sheet and re-scout if we have to and scout every team's first match, so optimally we would only be scouting for about a half-hour.

I think you will find that there is a large difference between what a team does during their first match and their last match. The first couple of matches, teams are still working out the bugs. I have been burned in Alliance selection by not taking this into consideration enough. I had one team that on Friday could barely score. I took them off my list of teams to consider for Saturday's elimination round. Obviously they fixed something, because on Saturday they were unbeatable. They ended up being the 3 pick on the 8th seeded team, and they won the regional. I scout EVERY match and look for those kind of trends now.

Steve

[Chris is me]

If you scout only the first match, you are not getting any data at all.

The point of scouting several matches is to average out the effects of anomalies (different strategy, good opponents, etc) on robots.

You should scout every match on Friday at the very least. Saturday can be done qualitatively.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Looks like a good start, here's a few suggestions on what I always try to do for my scouting sheets (I always use a paper system, it's cheap and easy), and some tips on scouting in general -

1) Three hole punch all of your scouting sheets prior to arriving at the competition and keep them all in a binder in numerical order. Have a person or a few people in charge of the binder and have them be in charge of handing the scouting pages to the rest of your team members in-between matches.

2) Give one team / one robot to one person on your team to watch for the upcoming match. You should have six people scouting and only watching that specific team & robot to record their match performance. Rotate your scouters out to give them a break - scouting is a tedious job, but it is also vitally important to your team. Make your entire team aware of how important scouting is prior to the competition and how their observations will relate directly to your team's on the field strategy.

3) Use one sheet of paper per team for the entire qualification rounds (all of Friday and half of Saturday) It's much easier to manage one page per team vs. more than one page per team. This means you will probably have to lose the field diagram on your scouting sheet. I will be honest, I've never used a field diagram - which position the team starts in during autonomous and what it does on the field can be described in other, more compact ways. Use both sides of the paper as well.

4) Have your strategist or runner gather up the appropriate team's scouting sheets far in advance to your own team's match. The strategist should converse with your team's upcoming alliance partners to develop your strategy. Use the scouting data to your advantage; if your opponents have a weakness, make the alliance well aware of it prior to the match. At the end of your strategy session, every team on your alliance should know what their role is in the upcoming match.

5) Bring clipboards. Bring lots of pens. Don't expect anyone else to remember to bring these items, because they will all forget.

6) Depending upon your qualification position at the end of Saturday, use your scouting data to your advantage. Often times the third draft pick is just as important, if not more important, than your second draft pick. An overlooked third draft pick steal can win you a regional.

PM me if you have any questions. Scouting is a lot of work, but if you do it right your drive team will thank you after every match.

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

If you scout only the first match, you are not getting any data at all.

The point of scouting several matches is to average out the effects of anomalies (different strategy, good opponents, etc) on robots.

You should scout every match on Friday at the very least. Saturday can be done qualitatively.

I like the sheet. You made it very easy to communicate the most essential information.

We tend to scout the heaviest Friday after-lunch, realizing that many teams improve rapidly in their first few matches. This sheet will work well for that. Friday night we compile the information (usually by hand) into a pick-list and then look at Saturday morning rounds to verify that our list is accurate. Teams do slide up and down a little Saturday morning, but usually not very much.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

1) Three hole punch all of your scouting sheets prior to arriving at the competition and keep them all in a binder in numerical order. Have a person or a few people in charge of the binder and have them be in charge of handing the scouting pages to the rest of your team members in-between matches.

We used to do this, but found the job of removing and putting sheets back into the binder is a full time job and a really really un-fun job. We've coined a negative and innaprotiate name for this job....

Instead, we give each scout a stack of notecards with all the questions printed on them. After each match, they pass them to the scout with the laptop, who enters some of the data and then to another scout, who drops them into the proper slot of an accordian folder, which takes 30 seconds. It does require a little more effort when looking at the data, as you have to flip through some notecards instead of just looking at a sheet, but it allows us for each scout to scout the match (and not worry about fileing papers the entire time), and no one is stuck with an awful job.

[Enigma's puzzle]

Oh man, critiquing the team.

But anyways, I would assume you would draw the tubes they dropped where as a good way to tell if they are making the effort to make logos or not. That seems like a good way to measure a teams drive team poise and strategy thought process. and I feel like you combine the ubertube rack and regular rack that you drew on the paper to save room and maybe make enough room for a second scouting section for a second match on the same sheet.

The human player section could be combined to make for a smaller section, for example:

Human play mistakes? Penalties? describe.

I feel like you guys could scout each team once each day and get away with it, or morning and late afternoon of friday, as we know we don't always have enough dedicated quality scouters on the team. Go Enigma

[zant1234]

We tend to scout the heaviest Friday after-lunch, realizing that many teams improve rapidly in their first few matches. This sheet will work well for that. Friday night we compile the information (usually by hand) into a pick-list and then look at Saturday morning rounds to verify that our list is accurate. Teams do slide up and down a little Saturday morning, but usually not very much.

I really like this startegy thanks guys.

as we know we don't always have enough dedicated quality scouters on the team. Go Enigma

That is going to change this year Matt.