Galileo 2012 - Share your scouting data !

[diviney]

Defense --- Yes,

That is a tough one. We tried to scout defense, but it is a lot more subjective. How do you know for sure that a defender blocked a shot vs. it would have missed anyway? I don't know if our "system" was lacking here, or our scouts. We had 6 scouts at all times (one for each robot). We ran in roughly 2 hour shifts. Scouting is not the most glamorous job, and it is tough for them to remain fully engaged. Scoring baskets on offense is pretty easy but when it comes to judging defense I think our scouts / system fell down.

We have weighting factors for each category, and maybe we did not weight defense as high as we should have. I have a feeling it's more a problem of the scouts not paying close attention and kind of "ignoring" defense because it required them to make judgement calls...

Anyone else have some thoughts on how to effectively gauge defense?

[IKE]

2377 had a lot more points associated with 1538 than we did (and apparently team 25 as well). They were really good, but we figured they would be bubble second round (which agrees with the 25 data) as opposed to an early first round looking at the 2377 data.

Our system is paper based. I will see if I can get it into some sort of sharable format.

[diviney]

Originally Posted by IKE

2377 had a lot more points associated with 1538 than we did (and apparently team 25 as well). They were really good, but we figured they would be bubble second round (which agrees with the 25 data) as opposed to an early first round looking at the 2377 data.

Our system is paper based. I will see if I can get it into some sort of sharable format.

Note: Our data shows 1538 with 16 "balance points" (a single balance worth 1, and a double balance worth 2). That is more than any other team in the division. We applied a weighting factor of 4 to this which boosted them up some. Even without this however, they were very good.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by diviney

Defense --- Yes, ...

Anyone else have some thoughts on how to effectively gauge defense?

It is water over the dam by this point, but I think the more important gauge for defense is balls collected in the backcourt, rather than shots spoiled. The offense can't shoot balls they don't have.

Watch a few of 16's elimination matches and see if you agree. Another good team to watch was 4334 on Archimedes.

[Gary Dillard]

See my post #11 in this thread for a brief discussion on how SPAM used its scouting method (the paper discussed in the thread) to make its decisions. I'll see if I can get them to post their completed spreadsheet to compare their data with 2377's data.
It's important to note again that your team's win-loss record and ranking have no bearing on detailed scouting; if you are performing then you will get recognized. Equally as important in marketing yourself is to be able to explain problems you have had and what you have done to correct them throughout the competition. The fact that 16 had run OK after they changed out a radio was a really big deal to us.
One other thing that came up in our discussions was robot construction; to get through division and championship elimination matches your robot is going to take a beating. Some teams got moved down on the list because of observations that their robot wiring and construction looked shoddy and we were concerned that they wouldn't last the battle. Not such a big deal at regionals but a huge deal when you're looking to go all the way.