Understaffed scouting

[Chowardie]

Originally Posted by New Lightning

Ditto on this! There are some scouting systems out their, can't really name any of them off the top of my head, that are built for any number of users, find the one that works best for you. Also your best bet since you have so little is some electronic form of scouting. There are a couple of threads comparing the scouting apps I bet you find one that works for you.

4473 Delta Prime Robotics, has also had problems recruiting scouts, for there was a lack of interest in the subject. We found that if you make it a competition between the scouts for correctness of scored matches, they would be able to work harder and longer.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by josephus

We have a relatively small team but would like to have an effective scouting group. How might we scout matches effectively with fewer than six people? I'm not worried about pit scouting, as that can be done by one or two people.
--josephus

I agree with EricH. Partner with another team.

This does 2 things
1> gets you the scouting data that you need, and
2> gets you to know (and hopefully become friends with) another team

[WBCSaint]

We too are an understaffed team in regards to just about everything. On our good days we have 10 kids. We are looking at having 2 kids scouting at a time and rotate them. I have attached the scouting sheet I came up with that allows you to scout each side of the field with a single person. I then have a Google form we will dump the data into that will take averages and show summaries for each team.

[GeeTwo]

We plan to do "pit" scouting up front to decide which teams to watch closely. As we've built a landfill-miner, we will be looking most closely at the RC specialists, and somewhat less at the chute loaders. Rather than try to track each point scored (how do you score a stack with six totes from one team and an RC from another)?, we may depend on rankings and OPR from TBA for this data. Our match scouting will focus on reliability and clumsiness issues, and identify teams with effective vs ineffective littering.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by WBCSaint

I have attached the scouting sheet I came up with that allows you to scout each side of the field with a single person.

Nice layout on the form! However, you did not include any reporting of coopertition or littering. These have been responsible for more than half of the points in many of the week 1 matches. At Dallas, 38 teams had Coop + litter > Auto + totes + RCs, only 10 were lower. Admitted that "litter" total includes litter scored in an RC, but in the matches I saw, it was less common than unprocessed or even processed litter.

At Dallas, the mean score for an alliance was:

46.1 total
11.0 auto
 2.5 RC
13.0 Coop
16.1 Litter
 5.3 Totes

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by josephus

We have a relatively small team but would like to have an effective scouting group. How might we scout matches effectively with fewer than six people? I'm not worried about pit scouting, as that can be done by one or two people.
--josephus

Hey you guys are local and are going to be at Mount Vernon next week. Skunkworks will be there (as will we). Skunks have a scouting app, and I know that they are doing a data sharing group with a couple of other teams that do not have the ability to scout on their own


At Auburn I'd suggest talking to NRG or 360, but I'm not so sure about getting outside help there (I dont remember any of those teams sharing scouting data in the past)

Good Luck, and I'll see you next week

[depth_Finder]

Originally Posted by The other Gabe

Hey you guys are local and are going to be at Mount Vernon next week. Skunkworks will be there (as will we). Skunks have a scouting app, and I know that they are doing a data sharing group with a couple of other teams that do not have the ability to scout on their own

Did someone say Skunk Works and scouting app?

I'll spare you the entire description because (I already made a thread for that), but here is the down-low:

• FRCscout.com lets you share data with other teams. So you could spit scouting responsibilities between as many teams as you want at competition if you were organized enough.
• I will personally help you set up whatever you need to learn how to use Tableau (or just wait a week or two for the built-in graphs to be implemented if you don't like doing your own analysis).
• We will be at Mt. Vernon anyway and the data is public so if you REALLY can't figure out to scout, just use our data. My offer to help still applies.

If you PM me, I'll help you out some more.

Oh, and 360 is also using FRCScout.com and their lead scout is totally nice. He could also hook you up.

[Taylor]

We only watch one side of the field (red). With each team playing 12 times, we get 5-7 views of each team which is enough to make an informed opinion - plus we can get by with only 3 scouts.
Here is the sheet we've been using this year. We just log each match - draw the robot path on the right, graph the stacks and times on the left, and make any other notes on the top. It worked pretty well our first event, and we'll be using it with another team at INKOK.

[WBCSaint]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Nice layout on the form! However, you did not include any reporting of coopertition or littering. These have been responsible for more than half of the points in many of the week 1 matches. At Dallas, 38 teams had Coop + litter > Auto + totes + RCs, only 10 were lower. Admitted that "litter" total includes litter scored in an RC, but in the matches I saw, it was less common than unprocessed or even processed litter.

At Dallas, the mean score for an alliance was:

46.1 total
11.0 auto
 2.5 RC
13.0 Coop
16.1 Litter
 5.3 Totes

Both litter throwing and Co-Op stacks will be noted down at the bottom in the comments section along with any observations. Trying to keep it simple and uncluttered for our scouts. Here in the PNW from watching the matches last week the Co-Op stacks did not come into play as often. Our first match isnt for another 2 weeks so we still have time to tweak based on the matches the next two weeks. Definitely good to hear feedback from another region and see how scoring is going there.

[rich2202]

The purpose of scouting is to be able to pick an alliance for Eliminations.

Since Coopertition does not exist in Eliminations, there is no reason to scout it.

As I see it, the ideal alliance is: 2 stacking bots, and 1 utility bot.

One Chute stacking bot, and one Chute or Landfill stacking bot.
You know what your bot can do, so scout for the other two bots.

You also want an alliance team that can do the following in autonomous:
1) Move to the Autonomous zone;
2) Bring along an RC (worth more than totes, and those you want to leave off the field to keep them out of the way).
3) If a team can stack the yellow totes in autonomous, that is a bonus. Don't try for a tote set. Not worth the hassle yellow totes in the way.

For the utility bot
1) Can place the RC high (level 4 to 6)
2) Can move litter out of the way, but ideally to the landfill (each litter into the landfill is a 5 point swing).

Litter:
You want a person that is really good at throwing litter. If you find that person, make a note of which team they are on. Bonus points to that team.

Given the slow pace of the game, it is possible for one person to scout all 6 teams at once. You may not have all the detail, but you can assign a robot to a role, and give it a score for how well it does that role.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by rich2202

The purpose of scouting is to be able to pick an alliance for Eliminations.

Since Coopertition does not exist in Eliminations, there is no reason to scout it.

I don't think that's fair. A team that spends a lot of time on coopertition likely:

1) Understands the game better
2) Scored fewer points in other areas

Ignoring coopertition points will lead you to pass over these teams.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by rich2202

The purpose of scouting is to be able to pick an alliance for Eliminations.

That is certainly a good reason to scout, but there is more that can be done with scouting information than simply making a picklist.

[Boltman]

Originally Posted by rich2202

The purpose of scouting is to be able to pick an alliance for Eliminations.

Since Coopertition does not exist in Eliminations, there is no reason to scout it.

As I see it, the ideal alliance is: 2 stacking bots, and 1 utility bot.

One Chute stacking bot, and one Chute or Landfill stacking bot.
You know what your bot can do, so scout for the other two bots.

You also want an alliance team that can do the following in autonomous:
1) Move to the Autonomous zone;
2) Bring along an RC (worth more than totes, and those you want to leave off the field to keep them out of the way).
3) If a team can stack the yellow totes in autonomous, that is a bonus. Don't try for a tote set. Not worth the hassle yellow totes in the way.

For the utility bot
1) Can place the RC high (level 4 to 6)
2) Can move litter out of the way, but ideally to the landfill (each litter into the landfill is a 5 point swing).

Litter:
You want a person that is really good at throwing litter. If you find that person, make a note of which team they are on. Bonus points to that team.

Given the slow pace of the game, it is possible for one person to scout all 6 teams at once. You may not have all the detail, but you can assign a robot to a role, and give it a score for how well it does that role.

That's short sighted scouting not counting co-op, co-op bots have skillz

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by j93785

what do you mean by scouting apps? Has someone developed an application for scouting matches?

multiple teams have done so. refer to this thread for what I suspect will be a partial list (with recommendations as to which are good)
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ing+the+app s

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by rich2202

The purpose of scouting is to be able to pick an alliance for Eliminations.

Since Coopertition does not exist in Eliminations, there is no reason to scout it.

We scout Co-op in the pits and during matches to look for teams with whom to do it in later matches. We also do it to see which teams are ranked high largely on those points, and not much else (there were one or two of those teams at my last event. they both did have other talents, but chose to do mostly that. it factors in for me somehow). It is, however, something that could be ignored without too much detriment if you were understaffed