Importance of Scouting for ALL TEAMS

[iblis432]

I would just like to remind everyone the importance of scouting. Our team usually does very poorly, and usually doesn't move on to elimination rounds. This year hit us by surprise and threw us into eliminations. As the captain and representative of the team, I stood in line and asked a fellow team mate to fetch me the scout data and what teams we would want. A few minutes later he returned with a two inch thick pile of unsorted papers. Many of the pages were blank with only team numbers on them, some even had pictures drawn over the area where score data was to be recorded. Only a select few had any useful data on them, and when I got with our alliance leader I discovered even that data was incorrect. When I returned to the team and asked about it, the seemingly unanimous response was that it was too difficult to understand the scouting sheets, and/or they didn't really try because they didn't think we would win.

I will admit I use to feel the same way about scouting, but it is clear as day to me now that scouting is an important element that should be utilized by all teams, not just the teams that consistently get chosen year after year.

[Brian Ha]

I couldn't agree more. Our team has the same issue. Mostly what it comes down to is what I've and another mentor has visually seen and know about a teams robot. A team that has good scouting info is much better prepared and well informed. Unfortunately, very many students are unmotivated to scout because they seek no reward and find no passion in it. It is what it is. Sorry to point it cold dead to you.

My suggestion, watch matches yourself and pick out the good, the bad, and the wild cards.

[Phyrxes]

I usually handpick my scouting team from students that are interested in learning strategy. I farm out the picture taking to our media student(s) and usually ask our spirit folks to keep an eye on crazy stuff happening in a match (robot on fire, flipped, serious damage, etc.)

This year I snagged a couple of freshmen who have done VEX for a few years (thank you middle schools!) so they required very little prep time for me handing them a robot information sheet and turning them loose in the pits on Thursday. They were done by 10 AM and as a bonus we had a list of robots they felt would probably need outside intervention to pass inspection.

I can usually get an apathetic student to scout a few matches in the stands by leaning on them but its not a good solution.

My suggestion is look at your underclassmen and try and pull them into the prospect of scouting early, don't make it an "oh hey we are at the venue decision."

An off-season event is perfect for giving them a trial run.

[Bill_B]

Practice scouting by watching this week's tournaments videos. I was happy to see several of our team stay to talk about scouting and strategy at a meeting last week. I would like to avoid the egg-on-the-face look of being unprepared for eliminations. Even if you are not an alliance captain, you may need the scouting information to help play your alliance's Saturday afternoon.

[DCA Fan]

If you don't use a scouting program, you should definitely consider trying one out, or having one student assigned to collate and organize your scouting data.

Also, during alliance selections, follow along and cross off teams as they get picked! It'll save you from a lot of confusion later!

[Grim Tuesday]

You don't want to be 'that guy' who picks the team that isn't at the event (happened today at West MI). What we do is have a team of 6 people watch the robots, and enter them into our database. On Friday night, we all get together (all 20 people who are interested), and make a preliminary picklist, including among other things, a "don't pick" list. We also figure out what our alliance should be made up of (ie, triple balance alliance; picking for hybrid points). After that, on Saturday, we finalize that list, and go around to every robot on it, and make sure that they are fully functional (we've been burned on this before).

However, if you don't have the resources for that, I would suggest watching lots of matches to get a feel of the field, and using Cowscout for the picklist. It should get you a pretty good one, though not perfect if you're trying to create a specialty alliance.

[Nikkocharger]

Yesss! I couldn't agree, in fact I would like to add find someone who has good hand writing and knows how to spell. At the Detroit Competition I was going to be one of the people on the drive team so I decided to go scout with another student. When we finished scouting and went back to our pit I looked at the papers and it was so sloppy that I couldn't get through all of them. What really made my day was, one of my scouting questions were "Is your robot geared for speed or torque ?" and if they said torque this other student (who will not be named) put twerk.

[Diesel Torch]

It's a pretty bad feeling when you are seated 6th and don't have any info except scores... At Kettering we did a lot of center bridge balancing which put us in the rankings. For some reason we had only one person putting together a list of teams to pick. We ended up picking a team with nothing on the robot...

[Brian C]

Yes it IS a tough lesson to learn but it is a good lesson.

Just like in real life, information can be a key element to both your and your team's success.

We mentor 4 teams or varying experience, one is a rookie this year. We've been teaching them how to scout by looking at archived matches from regionals so far this year. We also have the experienced teams do some practice scouting as well.

The students make up their own scouting sheets and refine them throughout the practice time.

The scouting team also sends down match data to the drive team to help them strategize before each qualifying match. The veteran teams we work with have embraced it well. FWIW we've found that explaining to the team how critical scouting is to the overall success has helped them realize that it is a very important contribution.

Oh and the reason we still use paper and pens/pencils is because they NEVER need batteries.

[LondonBoy29]

I am in charge of scouting for our team, and we take it very seriously. We have six people watching each match in order to record exactly what happens, and then this information is entered into a database. Team members are also assigned specific teams to check up on and become friends with. Before each match, I go and talk to the drive team and tell them about our teammates (if in quals) and opponents, and give them advice on game strategy. I think and hope they find it very informative. We also have a very comprehensive pick list, which we debate for long times over. This year, for the first time we worked together with team 558 the Devil Dawgs at our regional and shared scouting information.
I think that scouting is the most important part of a regional, and it is important to come prepared. Practice scouting by watching webcasts and filling out forms before your regional. If any of your teams are in pre-ship streamed events or early regionals, take advantage and watch them. It can be make a good robot even better knowing what is coming and what strategies should be used.

[pfreivald]

Scouting is even more critical than just making good picks (or avoiding embarrassing mistakes) during alliance selection -- it also helps you get there.

Before each match, your drive teams (or at least drive coaches) should be planning what each robot is expected to do -- that includes both alliance partners and opponents. The more you know about your opponents, the better you can plan how to handle them... and the more you know about your allies, the better you can make your plan.

Especially early in qualifications, teams tend to tell you what their robot was designed to do, not what it actually can do. As games pass and the evidence stacks up, teams tend to be more honest -- though you often get the "but it's fixed now... we think" line (which sometimes turns out and sometimes doesn't). Sometimes you'll be surprised when opponents suddenly come out with a new capability (because something was fixed or upgraded or what-have-you between matches). But understanding what each robot is capable of, and how it manages to accomplish those tasks, is very important to making plans before each and every qualification and elimination game.

So for example, if you know from your scouting data that one of your partners (or your own robot) can't score, and that two of your opponents score only from the fender, it makes perfect sense to send the non-scoring robot to the other side to play defense -- even if they can't stop all the scoring, they can likely slow them down, and this might be enough to give your alliance the edge. If your opponents are strong shooters or incapable of scoring altogether, maybe defense is not the best option and they should spend the entire game doing bridge-related tasks or feeding balls to your good scorers or playing counter-defense instead.

[akoscielski3]

This year we appointed someone to scouting and he took it extremely seriously During the six weeks (because he is a programmer) he made a program to help him scout. You would input the team number and click if they shot in the Top, Middle, bottom basket , or missed. Then this would calculate the accuracy of the robot. Then you would say if they balanced, and how many robots balanced with them. All this info was put into a spread sheet and aided in our scouting. We also did pit scouting, but i didn't see how that was done. A picture was taken of every robot so we knew what each robot looked like later. Friday night we spent 2 hours in a hotel meeting room coming up with a list of teams we felt would be the best for First pick (a good shooting robot). Then we made a list for who would be able to lower the bridge and aid in balancing the best, which was our second pick.

Our first pick in Smoky Mountains was 234 (18th seed) which has an amazing shooter (better than ours in my opinion, even though Two team awards say otherwise). Then our second pick was 3259 (16th seed and still wondering how they were still not picked) which has a 10 point autonomous, played good defense, delivered balls to the other side of the field, raised the bridge for us AND stopped the bridge from titre-tottering. Awesome picks that helped us win the Regional.

this video will show you how well the alliance worked

[VKP]

Scouting can be useful for more than just alliance selection. We found last year tahat after a day and a half of good scouting, we had enough data on the knew the ins and outs of all the robots at our competition to give our drive team a quick run through of all the robots on the field for every match, so they knew how to develop their strategy for taking down the opposing alliance. this helped us a LOT in both qualifications and eliminations, and eventually assisted us in earning us the Olympic Regional trophy.

Knowledge is power, so know thy enemy to beat them.

[dsmoker]

As a mentor who has worked with our scouts over the last few years, here's some thoughts.

1. Scouting is important even if you are not in the top 8. As an earlier poster said, accurate data about alliance partners and competitors during the qualifiers can help your drive team strategize. Also, if you are not in the top 8, you can use the data about your own robot to help teams who may be in picking position understand your strengths and how you might be able to help their alliance.

2. Consider teaming up with another team at your event to scout. We did this in the past with team 230 and are scouting this year at both WPI and CT with Apple Pi, team 2067. It was an absolute blast for our kids to work together at WPI, and it helped relieve the burden of scouting, especially for a small team like ours. We completely shared data and worked well together. Plus, it was a great way for students on both teams to meet new people and make new friends.

3. Scouting doesn't have to be fancy to be effective. Lots of teams have computer programs that are very well developed. But you don't have to for scouting to work. We developed a match scouting form and an excel spreadsheet that we can put the data into. The spreadsheet allows us to sort data by different categories so we can quickly see things like who is the best in hybrid mode, at scoring in teleop in the 3 pt. basket, at balancing, etc.

4. We used to have a pit scouting form as well, where students went around to other teams on Thursday and just got a sense of how the other robots worked (eg. drive train, what hoops can you shoot into, can you balance). We didn't do that at WPI this year because we just didn't have enough students at the event on Thursday, and honestly I don't think we missed it. Pit scouting is not terribly useful, IMHO, because teams will tell you their robot is designed to do certain things, but what's really important is whether or not they can do those things on the field. That's what good match scouting will tell you.

[GaryVoshol]

A couple examples:

A rookie team was being bumped up into the #8 seed. As she was waiting, the alliance captain asked me if I knew the number of team {teamname}. Nope, sorry, I didn't. By the time she got on the field and had to make her pick, she'd figured out the number.

An captain currently sitting in the #9 spot asked me if he could decline if he was called up. "Well you could, but then you can't play." He gave a visible sigh of relief when he wasn't bumped up as an alliance captain.


I hope these people aren't embarrassed; that was not my intent at all. I'm sure they now know the importance of scouting.