Thoughts on "being scouted" from a Rookie team (please comment)

[Citrus Dad]

I'm not sure what the other teams missed. I haven't looked at your robot, but look at 766 on our Sacramento alliance in the finals match and compare your robot to how they operated. We were thrilled that 766 was still available--but note that they were the 24th pick and 7 other alliances had passed them over. That 4161 was still available for us at Inland Empire also surprised us. (And we thought more highly of our next available pick than most of the other 2nd picks and they didn't make it onto an alliance.) Sometimes its hard to figure out what alliance captains are thinking--and often they simply aren't prepared.

Good luck this time.

[Danny Diaz]

Your discussion kinda reminds me of our scouting session in Arkansas. Arkansas had about 39 teams, and about 16-17 of them were what we'd call "tier 1" or "tier 2" robots - robots that could do everything, or almost everything, at least in a vacuum. So then we looked for "tier 3" robots - robots that maybe couldn't do everything, but robots that could do ONE THING INCREDIBLY WELL. There were some bots who could "always" score in the lower goal, but often times they seemed to drive around in patterns that showed they had no real purpose in life. We take match footage of each competition round (at 10fps, and playback at 40fps so we get a fast-forward effect) so we can look after-the-fact for robots that really "stand out" on things we initially weren't looking for during competition. There was one robot that stood out - team 2999. They had some crazy wire mesh above their robot to possibly hold a ball for autonomous, but otherwise they were just a chassis-bot. But what they did with that chassis was spectacular. In every round they played, they played with defensive purpose - disrupting assists, being an effective blocker to always seem to be between an opposing robot and the ball they want to grab, and always being that "gnat" that you keep swatting but keeps coming back right into your face. If there are no Tier 1 and Tier 2 robots available, THAT is the kind of robot you can't afford to not pick. Unfortunately someone else picked them ahead of us, but THAT is what we really look for.

-Danny

[KrazyCarl92]

Catching is an attribute that most higher level strategies would only value in the hands of the finishing robot. If a robot can catch the ball and have the ability to either put it in the high goal or the low goal from multiple positions on the field, then it's valuable. Catching, then orchestrating a pass in a more open field area, closer to the opposing alliances requires 2 rather complicated coordination maneuvers on the alliance: the truss-catch, and the presumably defended mid-field pass.

Superior would be simplifying the first pass to an inbound corner pass, then doing a truss-catch, or simply trussing directly from the inbounding robot to a HP then pursuing a defended mid-field pass. It seems like your robot best fits into the former strategy as an inbounder.

Also keep in mind that for your goalie autonomous set up prior to the match, the other team doesn't finalize the placement of their robot until after yours. It may be necessary to have a goalie autonomous that moves in the goalie zone (but stays in the goalie zone!).