How does your team scout?

[reversed_rocker]

you might want to check out the FIRST Scouting Alliance (FSA) that way you can have access to anyone's match data from previous events as well as nicely defined scouting sheets, oogles of statistics, strategy matching, and it even attempts to give you a win percentage based on the competing strategies and stats of the robots attempting those strategies.

https://sites.google.com/site/1stscoutingalliance/home

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by reversed_rocker

you might want to check out the FIRST Scouting Alliance (FSA) that way you can have access to anyone's match data from previous events as well as nicely defined scouting sheets, oogles of statistics, strategy matching, and it even attempts to give you a win percentage based on the competing strategies and stats of the robots attempting those strategies.

https://sites.google.com/site/1stscoutingalliance/home

I've seen this site linked a couple of times, but I can't seem to find anything for this year. Am I just looking at the wrong places?

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

I've seen this site linked a couple of times, but I can't seem to find anything for this year. Am I just looking at the wrong places?

I'm pretty sure that Danny (the founder) has just been slow on the update. If you have questions, I suggest emailing him. I'm 99% sure that you can find his contact information on the site.

[Xaviermw191]

My view is that your scouting data, list and rankings, has to be adaptable for the representative for alliance selections, you cannot simply hand the rep. a list of just team numbers in order of which you want to pick. If you do this, then the coach cannot properly help choose an alliance that works together and covers each others weaknesses.

I know at FLR this year (yesterday haha), my team (191) was the third alliance captain and I choose 229 with our first pick. Now 229 had been absolutely stellar at hanging tubes, easily top 5 in the qualification rounds, but were unable to successfully deploy a mini-bot during qualification rounds. We knew that with our 2nd. pick we had to pick a team with a successful mini-bot. Now if I had been up there with just a list of teams ranked, by that 14th pick, I would have been largely clueless as to which teams had had a successful mini-bot, especially because there were only around 15 teams to do a mini-bot successfully, and most of them would have been scooped up by the time we were to pick. However, my scout had given me a descriptor of each of the top teams and from that, I was able to identify 3173 as a successful mini-bot team that would compliment our alliance.

Going into alliance selections, we were unsure of what was going to happen, whether we were going to be chosen, who would be picked before us, etc. Once the scenario came about and had us picking 229, it greatly benefited us with the ability to find our next pick not only as a good robot, but additionally as a robot that complimented our alliance.

When scouting for alliance selection, it is key to be able to not just give the representative a ranking, but to also give the representative the information they need to make an alliance that fully complements each others abilities.

[stundt1]

nice job at the flr 191 too bad some of your alliances robots didn't work the last match.

[Xaviermw191]

nice job at the flr 191 too bad some of your alliances robots didn't work the last match.

Thanks, it definitely wasnt just them who broke, in fact 229 had to basically do all the top row hanging themself that last match. One of our robot's elevator motors smoked out so we wern't able to raise the elevator up, so we could only get to the bottom row that match.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Xaviermw191

Thanks, it definitely wasnt just them who broke, in fact 229 had to basically do all the top row hanging themself that last match. One of our robot's elevator motors smoked out so we wern't able to raise the elevator up, so we could only get to the bottom row that match.

Gotta love the Banebots (or not).

[AcesJames]

On 176, we do the following -

We have 1 student per robot, and 1 student per HP, in the years that they have a hand in scoring.

On Friday, 12 students fill out sheets for 6 robots and 6 HPs, each match.
Friday night, the scouts organize the sheets by team. We usually have about 7 sheets per team, 1 for each round they were in.
We look at the top 24 teams in rank on the FIRST site, and we disregard ourselves.
We re-rank the teams based on how good they are, according to our scouters.
We then have a list of 24 top teams, in order from best to worst.
We then try to run through mock alliance picks, and form alliances from the 24 teams we've selected.
We then finally look at where our team sits between that, and whether or not it's likely we'll be picking.
If we find it's likely we'll be picking, we look for robots around us according to our rank list, and then form an alliance.
We create a list of a few possible first picks, and a few possible second picks.
The robots we choose are custom-fit to the strategy we have established, and they are listed best to worst in order of how well they play/compliment us.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by AcesJames

We look at the top 24 teams in rank on the FIRST site, and we disregard ourselves.

Do you not look at teams ranked lower than 24?

[AcesJames]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

Do you not look at teams ranked lower than 24?

We look past the top 24 if we see that we cannot create a solid list of 24 just by reordering. If we find that a team ranked higher than 24 does not deserve to be there, we push them down to a "free fall" list, and if there are enough of the fallers in the top 24, we start pulling teams up who weren't initially in the top 24.

So, sometimes the original 24 makes a good list when it is simply reordered for us, but as you brought up, sometimes we search deeper than that. 24 is just a general starting cutoff for us.

[stundt1]

Originally Posted by AcesJames

On 176, we do the following -

We have 1 student per robot, and 1 student per HP, in the years that they have a hand in scoring.

.

you scout the human players? Havent heard of that do they make a big impact on alliance selections?

[Josh Fritsch]

I think a lot of teams underestimate the importance of scouting. We have been using the following method for a few years and it has worked out very well.

We have 6 scouts in the stands at all times, one for each robot position of each match (RED 1, RED 2, RED 3, etc...), each with an easy to fill out, intutitive scouting sheet. Each student on the team is on scouting rotations throughout the day so they do not get bored. Data slowly becomes worse the longer you have students scout we have found.

We also have 1 scouting student leader, in the stands the entire day. This person takes the sheets that each of the scounts complete after each match and inputs all of the data into a single home made database. This eliminates the need for multiple computers/electrical/battery etc.

We are then able to have a print-out summary of each of our alliance partners/opponents prior to each match for strategy discussion. Also, this makes sorting through data on Friday night much easier.

[stundt1]

Also does your team have a data entry database or some program to enter information and make your alliance picks be easier?

[stundt1]

anyone?

[stundt1]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Gotta love the Banebots (or not).

I was rooting for your alliance to get to the finals and be the first to beat 2056 217 and 1533 didnt happen