Alliance Request

[Aura_]

Has anyone successfully found a method for getting out of the no man's zone??

[AllenGregoryIV]

One piece of advise that hasn't been given yet, is to build relationships with teams long before they are ever in position to pick you. It's probably the least important reason to build relationships with other teams but having friends on the teams doing the picking just means they already know you and what your team is capable of. Go to off-season events, do group demonstrations, have team socials, etc.

[jajabinx124]

I'm going to touch a bit more on advertising, our team has an excellent example of it.

At the 2014 Lake Superior regional that 2052 competed in, our team was going to get picked by the 2nd ranked team 3018. After they said they would pick us obviously we started to talk about what our alliance's second pick should be in the pits, then Team 3692 approached us and told us they had a bot that could load excellently from the HP and that our bot could pick up the ball right from their holder. We went to their pit to analyze their bot and decided we would pick them for their useful capabilities compared to other potential 2nd picks we were looking at. We ended up picking them and winning the regional.. and we absolutely would not have won it without them. If they hadn't advertised to us, it would of been highly unlikely we would of picked them.

But these cases to me are usually pretty rare, but to summarize my message do advertise if needed, but don't go overboard as I previously said.

[Arhowk]

Something worth noting is that our team recently ended first place in qualifications (similar result week 2) and such we had a ton of teams come up to us and say stuff like "our last Match was a small issue we got resolved" and random crap like that to get us to pick them. We literally threw all of that information in the garbage. Don't bother.

Since I'm a CSA my personal preference is teams that are really nice, gracious, and respectful (and fun) towards me but in the end we know what we want and we have collected enough data to know how your robot will satisfy our requirements (until we break our chain on the encoder in the first match and miscalibrate it going into the second, making a nearly unstoppable alliance get beaten by a rather rude and ungracious 8th seed alliance. Ugh)

Just be good, be nice, and don't break.

Also don't ever get stuck In a defense. That's a huge no-no.

[Aura_]

So i am getting mixed messages here am I suppose to do a little advertising or none at all?

[VacioArconte]

A small anecdote that shows how you could sell yourself:

We were high in the rankings at Utah and a team came to us to talk about their bot. They told us how they fixed some issues Friday night and if we could please watch their matches. While we didn't end up picking them, we did watch for them and I thought it was a very good way to sell themselves.

That being said, if you haven't changed anything, their scouting team probably has already made judgments on you and your lobbying probably won't have much of an impact.

Good luck!

[TDav540]

Originally Posted by Hallry

This. Just remember, at the Central Valley Regional in 2014, 1st seed 254 picked 973 and 2135, who were ranked 43rd and 41st, for their alliance, and won the regional. There were only 45 teams there.

This is still a good point because of the event size, but 254 was the most dominant robot in 2014. We can't ignore that factor.

[FrankJ]

Your best ambassadors is your drive team. Especially if you are looking to be the 2nd pick. They need to demonstrate they know the rules, don't collect fouls, understand strategy of playing the game, and are team players.

[EricH]

A little bit of advertising can put you on the radar. Asking if you're on the list will get you knocked down.

What have you demonstrated on the field? Actual, live, match data. Ask your scouts. (If your scouts aren't scouting your own team, you're making a mistake. This isn't the place to go into WHY, but the short version is that it's a great tool for calibrating your scouting system as well as where you are.)

Then, what you can do is to talk to teams that you think your skill set can complement. Just say, "hey, this is what we have shown, we think we'd be an asset to you guys because of this" and leave it at that. Will some teams ignore that? Sure. But a smart team will check that against their own data (be wary of that check if your scouts inflate your data!), and if they come looking for you, TALK. (Don't get me started on what happens if you ignore a higher seed that wants to talk to you. Just, don't.)

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Aura_

So i am getting mixed messages here am I suppose to do a little advertising or none at all?

I think a tentative consensus is advertise a little if you KNOW you have a particular feature that's going to match particularly well with a higher alliance that might not be picked up in scouting.

[GreyingJay]

The hope is that the high seeding, picking teams have good scouting. They will be looking at each robot individually, regardless of whether you won or lost, and whether you were stuck with crappy partners or whether you were the crappy partner and were carried by better partners. Good scouting will see through all of that.

Our scouting this year recorded things like: what/how many defenses did you cross? How many low goals did you shoot? How many high goals? Did they go in? How long did it take to line up and shoot? Did you challenge the tower? Scale?

Note that this has nothing to do with your actual match score or win/loss, nor the performance of your alliance partners.

Then in our scouting meeting we categorized and ranked robots into several lists:
- really good offense bots (fast, consistent shooters, preferably high goal, can cycle 4-8 boulders on their own)
- really good breaching bots (fast, can get a breach RP by themselves, can go through most defenses without difficulty)
- really good defense bots (strong, fast, driver knows how to defend)

We were a pretty good breacher so when we made 5th and 6th alliance captain at our two regionals, generally we were looking for good scoring bots to complement us. We were also hoping that we might be picked as the breaching specialist by a higher seeding team, but that didn't work out - there are a lot of good breachers!

I can tell you that our drive team had things to say about which teams they really enjoyed working with, and which teams were more frustrating. This definitely influenced our pick lists. So play your hardest, but be honest, flexible, communicate with your alliance partners, and show GP at all times. A good team that's fun to work with may be more desirable than a better team that's rude and stubborn.

Here's a tip: scout your own robot. Be prepared to swallow your pride if the numbers you're seeing aren't what you hoped for. You will not win friends if you are trying to sell how great you are at shooting, but when I pull up my scouting data I see that you average 2.3 low goals per match.

Advertise only if there's something new that you think the scouts wouldn't have noted. On Saturday morning at GTRC we discovered we could open the portcullis with our mechanism. We had never touched it during quals. We told the teams that seeded higher than us, in case it was a selection factor, but kept the discovery quiet to everyone else in case opposing teams would think they could thwart us with it.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

One piece of advise that hasn't been given yet, is to build relationships with teams long before they are ever in position to pick you. It's probably the least important reason to build relationships with other teams but having friends on the teams doing the picking just means they already know you and what your team is capable of. Go to off-season events, do group demonstrations, have team socials, etc.

This.

Picture it, Peachtree Regional 2011. 2815 is there with none of our college students (one professor popped an exam on all of them), a pretty slim crew, and a robot that was crated without much in the way of hard driving. It shows on the field Friday, when we die or break something in all but one match. I was the coach (by default, basically) and it was pretty embarrassing coming off of two solid robot years. But we keep working through the different issues, and I share the hard-luck story with a few friends on 2415 and 1771 (the latter of which we were partners with on Friday--their minibot won us a match where we broke).

We got to Saturday morning and a match with clear #1 seed 2415, where they ask if we can play defense. We hadn't had a chance to really work our arm because we kept dying, but we had a three-year driver that knew his stuff. "Suuuure!" We get one clean match off, get the win...and then break in our last match. I'm billed as the resident optimist of any team, but even I knew we had no business being in the playoff rounds. No amount of hard-sell marketing was going to change that.

Yet for reasons I still don't fully understand five years after the fact, 2415 and their first selection 1771 believed me when I said it was a new issue each time, liked working with us behind the glass, and believed our driving and defense was more desirable than the other 24 teams that were available for them to choose even if we had a glass jaw. Six matches later, we're going to St. Louis.

Shoot straight, be positive, and sometimes you'll see your faith rewarded.

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by RonAyyyyyyyy

If you perform above average and are consistent, you will almost always get picked, regardless of how many matches you won or lost

Honestly, I see this as a dangerous mindset, and me having that mindset was probably one of the reasons my team wasn't picked at DCMP in 2015 (that and just not melding well with any of the alliances as their 3rd robot).

I think that advertising yourself can become important when small or new teams are in the top 8 - teams that can't/don't/won't have scouting info. but generally it's just awkward for all parties involved (since they've either already put you in a pick order, or in a do not pick list). It can be worth asking high ranked teams what they're looking for in a 3rd robot, and then show off that capability in one of your matches.

[nighterfighter]

Originally Posted by Billfred

snip

I was the team representative during alliance selection that year...I still remember hearing you yell "WOOOOO!", even over all the noise, when we picked you. And we still tell our new members stories of piling random objects (hammers I believe) into your robot to buff up your weight, to play defense. One of our other mentors still has the cockasaurus rex t-shirt!

On topic:

Depending on where you are seeded and how you have performed, you should know if you are going to be a 1st pick or a 2nd pick. If you are going to be a 2nd pick, you will most likely be playing defense or some other utility role. (This year it might be breaching, or maybe you can specialize in doing a solo drawbridge/sally port). Use that to your advantage. Gently remind teams that you can cross that defense by yourself, and can grab a ball, cross the defense, then drop the ball off for your alliance partner to score in the high goal. Or mention how you can add a goal-blocking mechanism to your robot if needed.

[Andrew Chauvin]

Last year at the Pacific Northwest Championships, our team was ranked in the 40's, and so our team just did a frame per second analysis of our can grabber, which turned out to be the second fastest one there. We went around and showed it off to all of the top teams, and then we were picked up by the three seed as a second pick and we won the event. My advice is to come up with a selling point that could work, be it a strategy, a component, or even a long shot idea and try and talk to the picking teams the day of. The worst that could happen is you don't change anything.