Tips for Team Promotion to Scouts

[Adam Freeman]

I don't know how other teams scout at a competition, but my team uses premarily performance on the field and a teams ability to fit into our intended strategy to select our alliance partners for the eliminations. Some times there are other intangibles at play, but those are mostly for tie breakers between two even teams.

Our scouts track every ball scored and every Coopertition and Alliance balance. We also, scout teams robots in the pit to determine wheel orientation, drive train type, build quality, etc...

We use that information to determine who the best scorers, both hybrid and teleop, and the best balancers. From there we make our list of the top 24 teams for the first pick and also a list of teams that fit our balancing strategy. During alliance selection we check off teams as they are selected and evaluate both lists to determine which available robots fit what we plan to do.

Without scouting the competition you were at, I can't say why you weren't picked for the tournament. But, one thing that is very unique in this game is teams specifically selecting teams to leave open the possibility of a triple balance.

In our first two events, this has been our #1 priority during alliance selection. At the Northville district this weekend, there was a group of about 10 robots that performed pretty well on the field, but had a "long" wheel base configuration that would not have fit with our strategy and first selection. If these teams had built a wide robot, they would have been in the tournament.

I'm not trying to say long robots cannot triple balance...it just more difficult and a risk we were not willing to take.

This years game is pretty unique that you can't just pick the next best team that is available. It makes alliance selection very interesting...sometimes confusing and other times frustrating.