The merits of treating robotics tourneys like a game of Fire Emblem

[CJ_Elliott]

525, 2502, 3184... all deez tems iz bad. 1711, 1711, 1711... iz gud allyances

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by EricH

Sounds like you've got your "overall" scout: one who can look over the match and get a general picture of who does what and how well.


The problem is, you still need "individual robot" scouts. While the electrical team who isn't doing anything may be useful while they're there, I suggest taking a less temporary/less subject to the demands of the robot approach and "impressing" (early 1800s British sense) anybody who isn't a) part of the drive team or b) part of the pit crew at the time (which will ideally be as few as possible, but NOT the drive team).

And by "anybody" I mean "anybody". Anybody that is in any way affiliated with the team should be considered fair game for "recruitment"--this includes mentors, students of all ages and grades, parents, siblings that drop by, alumni...

And, ideally, those individual robot scouts will also be taking down some subjective notes.

This is how my team's scouting program survived intact this year

[Chief Hedgehog]

Amusing scouting system - but if your scout team negates teams on practice matches, you are flying blind. There are way too many holes in your proposal.

Maybe there needs to be a more comprehensive scouting session at GoFIRST's Splash training.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

Amusing scouting system - but if your scout team negates teams on practice matches, you are flying blind. There are way too many holes in your proposal.

Maybe there needs to be a more comprehensive scouting session at GoFIRST's Splash training.

I would not scout teams on practice day except for basic pit scouting. No team is up and running 100% on practice day (or very few teams at least).

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

Amusing scouting system - but if your scout team negates teams on practice matches, you are flying blind. There are way too many holes in your proposal.

Maybe there needs to be a more comprehensive scouting session at GoFIRST's Splash training.

There's a session titled "Methods of Scouting and Strategy", by team 2052, according to the schedule: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...htmlview#gid=0

Not sure what that will include, they haven't released the abstracts for the presentations yet...

[jajabinx124]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

There's a session titled "Methods of Scouting and Strategy", by team 2052, according to the schedule: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...htmlview#gid=0

Not sure what that will include, they haven't released the abstracts for the presentations yet...

Abstract of presentation down below.

This presentation will cover the methods of scouting(Match scouting, pit scouting, etc.) and the methods of collecting data(Collecting data quantitatively, qualitatively, or both) while scouting. We’ll talk about our team experiences with electronic scouting and other scouting systems we’ve tested out in the past. We’ll cover the area of strategy, forming a picklist(In general we'll talk about the strategy meeting that takes place before the last day of competition), and alliance selection strategy.

That's just about we are planning to cover. If anyone has anything that they want us to cover on, feel free to PM me, post on this thread, or post on the SRS thread with what you guys want us to cover on.

We really want this presentation to be useful to the SRS audience, so we would love to hear what people want us to cover on or answer any questions on.

[jajabinx124]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

I would not scout teams on practice day except for basic pit scouting. No team is up and running 100% on practice day (or very few teams at least).

Our team never scouts on practice day. Usually the strategist and other experienced scouts take general/mental notes.

[Jon Stratis]

Thanks for posting the abstract (I hope GoFIRST gets them all up soon...)!

I agree that scouting isn't terribly beneficial on practice day, with one exception - it's great practice for your scouters! It gives you a chance to go through your process in a real setting, get the kinks worked out, and then chuck all that data at the end of the day . After all, there's no point in downgrading teams that don't show up during practice day, or upgrading teams that make it there all the time - if a team does well on practice day, they had better keep doing well the rest of the competition to be worth noting!

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Thanks for posting the abstract (I hope GoFIRST gets them all up soon...)!

I agree that scouting isn't terribly beneficial on practice day, with one exception - it's great practice for your scouters! It gives you a chance to go through your process in a real setting, get the kinks worked out, and then chuck all that data at the end of the day . After all, there's no point in downgrading teams that don't show up during practice day, or upgrading teams that make it there all the time - if a team does well on practice day, they had better keep doing well the rest of the competition to be worth noting!

We're working on it! We're in the middle of rolling out a new website, so getting everything we need to get out there is a bit difficult right now.

Here's a partial list of the abstracts.

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

Our team never scouts on practice day. Usually the strategist and other experienced scouts take general/mental notes.

agreed, I do watch what I can of practices... Not only will most teams not have resources for this due to pit scouting going on, teams in practice matches may not accurately reflect how they perform in quals, especially since it's usually the same 10 or 12 bots in practice... I'm kinda beating a dead horse at this point though, considering the other similar responses