Scouting is important!

[ComBBAT_Albrot]

Hey all,
I just returned from the KSC Southeast regional, which is where I saw something very disturbing. A great deal of teams I see don't scout. Our team makes sure that we always have scouts watching a match. I've been scouting for three years now, and I've seen how useful it can be. Occasionally, you'll notice a team's weakness or hidden strength and use it for your own benefit later.

But my real point is that at KSC, I saw a lot of good robots get left on the sidelines while other teams, regardless of whether or not they complemented the team picking them, got invited into alliances. A great deal of teams simply look at the rankings, but they can't always be trusted. For instance, after a particularly bad streak of luck, we (ComBBAT) were ranked 36th out of 47. Right below us was the Turabo Hurricanes, team 866. Problem is, though, the Hurricanes didn't even have a robot at the competition (there was a shipping error). How does a team with NO robot rank higher than 10 other robots?

The rankings don't take a robot's strengths or weaknesses into consideration, nor do they account for unprofessional enemies intentionally bailing out of their zones to remove our points (this happened to us twice,) but they do reward the luck of the draw (pairing with teams that can move is a privilege we enjoyed less frequently than we would have liked.)

I'm not naysaying any team at KSC, or at any competition, for that matter. All I'm saying is that the rankings cannot be trusted, ESPECIALLY not when picking alliances.

Take, for example, what I thought were the standout robots at KSC: Teams 180, 267, 312, 343, 61, and 86. None of them were in the top 8. 180 and 343 ended up with 186 and won the whole enchilada. The rankings may give a general idea what's going on, but they do lie.

In conclusion, it benefits everybody if a team puts emphasis on scouting other teams. Not only will it benefit a team you pick, but if you scout for robots that work well with you, you'll have that much better a chance of going all the way.