2012 Picklist Formation and Strategy

[EdwardP]

Originally Posted by Austin2046

(note: our robot is a widebot) For alliance selections, I plan to give our representative 2 lists. First a list of the best 30 teams in the opinion of our scouting team, ranked in order from number 1 to number 30. The rankings of these teams however will generally favor wide bots over long bots, meaning a longbot may score higher than a wide bot by a some margin yet the wide orientation is enough to put them above the longbot on our picklist. Our representative will use this list to pick our first robot. The second list will be a list of the 30 best wide robots in order from 1 to 30. If our first pick is a widebot we use the first list again for our second pick. If our first pick is long we use the second list. (this is of course assuming there's enough widebots in the division.)

Please, don't do what the bolded section says...

Drafting straight off of a list can be a huge mistake. When forming an alliance, there are usually distinct traits you will want from each of your alliance partners. You want to draft to play a strategy. There will be roles that you want your alliance partners to fit into. Figure out what roles you can fit into. Determine what other teams can fit into other roles you want and will play effectively with you.

(Of course there are often times situations were you want to just take the best team available, but many others where you need each team to play a part in your strategy, rather than just being good. This is especially true when all of the teams you have to draft from have clear weaknesses, that you need to be able to cover up in your strategy.)

Based on your first pick, then you will need to reevaluate what traits your alliance has, and what other roles your alliance needs filled, in order to select a your third alliance partner.

So, if part of your strategy is to triple balance, and you only have one wide, then select a wide (if that is what you feel is important to complete your alliance).

But in a more general sense, (as a very simple example) say you draft an offensive robot first (Team A), and decide that you now have enough good scorers that there wont be enough balls to score, so drafting a third scorer doesn't make sense. Then there is a scorer (Team B) that you ranked above a robot (Team C), that plays better defense than B. In this situation you would want to draft C. Had you not been able to get A, you would want B, but now your alliance no longer needs B, so you should draft C, but drafting straight off of a list you would have ranked B higher than C.

Another reason to not draft directly from a list is that it allows you to take input from your alliance partner on who to select with the second pick. It is important that all 3 alliance partners are comfortable working together.

I would suggest that you have your teams representative be as well versed in the teams, so that they can make an educated selection. Give them a pick list, but don't make it strict. Get your representative to be knowledgeable about the plan, how it works, and what teams need to be able to do to be a part of it. Also, enable them with as much information as possible. This way your representative can also help your alliance captain make a better second selection, if you are not an alliance captain.