Alliance Request

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by Aura_

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

My advice would be to do as much advertising as you can. There are no downsides if you are not annoying about it, and it has the potential to move your team further up other teams' picklists. Our team always advertises ourselves to teams that are higher ranked than us that we would like to be on an alliance with, even if we know we are going to be captains.

Advertising yourself can be a bit awkward at first, but it gets much easier with experience. Here is generally how I approach this process:
First, know what you are trying to get out of advertising yourself. Are you trying to be a first pick? A second pick? A third pick (at champs)? Is the team with whom you are speaking a 1-3 seed and likely captain? A lower seeded likely captain? A lower seeded likely first pick? The way to sell yourself is different for each of these combinations.

When you go to speak with them, start by asking to speak with someone on their scouting team (lead scout is best, but not always readily available). Smaller teams sometimes don't have scouts, in which case you should try to talk with their drive team. If you just talk with some random person in their pit, you are wasting your time. Be polite and respect their time. I have found that teams are generally pretty receptive to talking, but if they are busy or do not wish to speak with you, move on and do not pester them. When you find someone to talk with, make sure to keep their time in mind. If you are talking with a scout in the stands, don't talk during a match, let them work.

Once you find someone to talk with, start by complimenting their team. They have clearly done well or you wouldn't be talking with them. Mention at least one specific things you like about their robot/strategy (I wish we would've thought of..., it was really cool last match when you..., your ... is super slick) but don't spend too much time on this, keep it short and sweet.

Next, and this is really important, you need to tell them things that they might not know just from watching matches. Bring them to the practice field to show them your scaler, and climb 4 times in a row for them. Bring them to your pit and show them the defensive blocker you are building. Tell them that you will be debuting your scoring auto in the upcoming match, so they should keep an eye out for that.

When you have finished with this, ask them if they have any questions for you, and answer them truthfully. I won't speak for others, but I value honesty a lot. If you tell me that your team scores 5 boulders basically every match, and our data says you only scored 3 in your best match, you are likely to go down a notch on our pick list.

After that, ask them what they would like to see out of your team in the upcoming matches, and demonstrate that ability if you have the opportunity. However, make sure you clearly communicate with your partners what you will be doing every match.

One more thing, it is okay to mention that you seeded low, but don't whine to them about your poor schedule and the crappy partners you have been getting, they don't want to hear it, even if it is true. Own up to your own performance. Recognize the failures and limitations of your robot and explain them.

Finally, here are some common situations and key features to sell yourself on in those situations.
1. Selling yourself to a 7 or 8 alliance captain. Tell them truthfully how you did in your best match, and explain exactly what went wrong, and how you have mitigated your issues in your poor matches. Remind them they will be up against the number 1 or 2 seeds, and that they really need someone who has the potential to do really well (you), even if you have been inconsistent previously.
2. Selling yourself to a higher seeded team as a second pick. Emphasize your consistency, higher seeded teams want reliable partners. Show them your defensive blocker that you are building, and stress that your drivers know how to play good defense without getting penalized. Also, stress your ability to score in auto and the endgame.
3. Selling a special/unique ability about your team. Find high-seeded teams that do not also have this ability, and explain how important this ability will be in playoffs. Common examples this year often include crossing A defenses, crossing C defenses solo, climbing, and crossing many defenses in auto.

[Ben Martin]

Sometimes the best advertising you can do is making sure the other drive teams or decision-making POC know that your team is easy to work with, executes the pre-planned match strategy, and is friendly.

There are many teams that get picked late often when they may or may not have good robots because the drive teams know that they will play nicely together. We typically don't pick based on friends, but we will give an edge to teams that will listen and work with the strategies we propose.

[minutebot]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

My advice would be to do as much advertising as you can. There are no downsides if you are not annoying about it, and it has the potential to move your team further up other teams' picklists. Our team always advertises ourselves to teams that are higher ranked than us that we would like to be on an alliance with, even if we know we are going to be captains.

Advertising yourself can be a bit awkward at first, but it gets much easier with experience. Here is generally how I approach this process:
First, know what you are trying to get out of advertising yourself. Are you trying to be a first pick? A second pick? A third pick (at champs)? Is the team with whom you are speaking a 1-3 seed and likely captain? A lower seeded likely captain? A lower seeded likely first pick? The way to sell yourself is different for each of these combinations.

When you go to speak with them, start by asking to speak with someone on their scouting team (lead scout is best, but not always readily available). Smaller teams sometimes don't have scouts, in which case you should try to talk with their drive team. If you just talk with some random person in their pit, you are wasting your time. Be polite and respect their time. I have found that teams are generally pretty receptive to talking, but if they are busy or do not wish to speak with you, move on and do not pester them. When you find someone to talk with, make sure to keep their time in mind. If you are talking with a scout in the stands, don't talk during a match, let them work.

Once you find someone to talk with, start by complimenting their team. They have clearly done well or you wouldn't be talking with them. Mention at least one specific things you like about their robot/strategy (I wish we would've thought of..., it was really cool last match when you..., your ... is super slick) but don't spend too much time on this, keep it short and sweet.

Next, and this is really important, you need to tell them things that they might not know just from watching matches. Bring them to the practice field to show them your scaler, and climb 4 times in a row for them. Bring them to your pit and show them the defensive blocker you are building. Tell them that you will be debuting your scoring auto in the upcoming match, so they should keep an eye out for that.

When you have finished with this, ask them if they have any questions for you, and answer them truthfully. I won't speak for others, but I value honesty a lot. If you tell me that your team scores 5 boulders basically every match, and our data says you only scored 3 in your best match, you are likely to go down a notch on our pick list.

After that, ask them what they would like to see out of your team in the upcoming matches, and demonstrate that ability if you have the opportunity. However, make sure you clearly communicate with your partners what you will be doing every match.

One more thing, it is okay to mention that you seeded low, but don't whine to them about your poor schedule and the crappy partners you have been getting, they don't want to hear it, even if it is true. Own up to your own performance. Recognize the failures and limitations of your robot and explain them.

Finally, here are some common situations and key features to sell yourself on in those situations.
1. Selling yourself to a 7 or 8 alliance captain. Tell them truthfully how you did in your best match, and explain exactly what went wrong, and how you have mitigated your issues in your poor matches. Remind them they will be up against the number 1 or 2 seeds, and that they really need someone who has the potential to do really well (you), even if you have been inconsistent previously.
2. Selling yourself to a higher seeded team as a second pick. Emphasize your consistency, higher seeded teams want reliable partners. Show them your defensive blocker that you are building, and stress that your drivers know how to play good defense without getting penalized. Also, stress your ability to score in auto and the endgame.
3. Selling a special/unique ability about your team. Find high-seeded teams that do not also have this ability, and explain how important this ability will be in playoffs. Common examples this year often include crossing A defenses, crossing C defenses solo, climbing, and crossing many defenses in auto.

I agree with you on all points. There is a lot to be said for data and scouting but advertising your team is crucial to be on an ideal alliance. Here are some basic steps for advertising your team.

1.) Initial contact, greeting, and asking to speak with the alliance selector
2.) Flattery, their team is good and there are reasons you want to be with them. Talk about everything they can do well. You should be using scouting data for your claims.
3.) Complement, how do you complement their team, what do you offer to bring the most potential to their alliance. Why should they pick you? What scouting data do you have to show them of your performance? (optional) Do you have video of a recent match in which you did something special like climb? (optional)
4.) Analysis, show off your alliance picking analysis and playoff game analysis to see how things will pan out and what critical ability you will offer. At our 10K regional we knew they weren't many robots who could get in enough balls for their alliance to capture in playoffs so even though we were a low goal shooter we stressed the importance of that capture and how a low goal shooter putting in 4-5 low goals consistently is worth more than high goal shooters who can only score 2 consistently. We didn't always score 4-5 low goals but we focused on matches where we didn't have to be concerned about breaching and showed alliance captains our potential which averages of scouting data might not show. We advertised as a 1st pick.
5.) Overall playoffs strategy, at 10K we saw that the 1st seed alliance had a pretty clear shot to the win (but Highland's alliance was awesome in giving them a run for their money!), however there would be at least 2 wild cards dropped by that alliance. When we went around advertising ourselves we made it clear that our goal was to make it to the finals, pick up those wild cards, and qualify for the Championships. We would try to win if possible, but making it to the finals was our primary, realistic objective. We would achieve this by assuring our alliance the capture and scoring lots of points, using the second pick of our alliance captain to deny the other team the capture because most high goal shooters aren't able to score many boulders under defense (great job 5996!)

We (4th seed) were selected by the Firebears (3rd seed) along with 5996 and we made it to the finals, and our whole alliance is going to Saint Louis! There is a lot to be said for strategy in the alliance selection and advertising your team because quals performance doesn't always reflect the extent of your team's abilities! There's a lot of strategy involved in how you advertise to certain teams as Caleb has pointed out but there's more than I would like to cover in this post. I just wanted to give a framework for the basic advertising plan.

That being said, don't just advertise to every team. That is annoying. Advertise to teams who you want to be on an alliance with and that you have something to offer to that you believe they would like. We didn't advertise to 2052 even though they are one of our favorite teams and are so amazing (congratulations on Chairman's!) because their best options were clearly 525, 5434, or 2502.