Scouting a teams consistency

[SoccerNerd36]

Would making a scouting sheet that would incorporate a team's consistency be worth our time? (In other words, a sheet that would ask questions such as, "Does their driver perform well in each game" and others of the sort)

[SURVIVORfan44]

Sometimes it would work and sometimes not. Some teams have about two or three different drivers. Last year, there were different human players as well. This year, I don't know if the human player will play an important part in this year's game.

[Hershey]

To answer this question, I need to know what you are making this sheet for.

[SoccerNerd36]

Originally Posted by Hershey

To answer this question, I need to know what you are making this sheet for.

We would make this sheet to make sure that alliance members that we want consistantly perform well each game

[Jeff Rodriguez]

We (RAGE) plan on having two types of scouting sheets, one for the pits and one for the matches. Team members will be watching the matches and filling out the sheets for each team.
The match scouting sheet includes information about the team's autonomous mode, strategy and any thing they did or didn't do well during the match.
If a team has 3 or 4 match scouting sheets filled out, you should have a good idea of how consistent they are. Also, the members filling out the sheets will have a good sense of what robots perform consistently.

So, in short, YES keep track of how consistent a team is.

[nparikh]

I would most definitely recommend that you make a scouting sheet which incorporates a team's reliability. It's extremely important in that you want to know this information come time for alliance pickings and just regular matches. In my opinion, its always better to have more information than less. Having more can make your life easier in the long run when you wish you had it but don't .

[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by SoccerNerd36

We would make this sheet to make sure that alliance members that we want consistantly perform well each game

Read through this thread.. there's some good info there, and may answer some of your questions. One of the main reasons for scouting is to track performances of other teams. You should include whatever is important to you to track, and from that you can get insight on the consistency of other teams. Scouting sheets take all kinds of formats, as to how you record the data you want.
You may want to track all teams on Friday, but then narrow it down to teams you're really interested in for Saturday scouting. Should you be in a "picking alliance" position going into finals, this can help you rank your preferences, as well as see what their consistency has been, what their strategies have been, etc...

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=33132

[Nick Mac]

yes. i would definitely consider looking into a teams consistency. That way in the playoffs you can filter through these sheets and see teams that are sleepers. It will definitely help you out in the long run.

[Lil' Lavery]

Yes, consistancy is a very important thing, but you need to keep in mind, especially if your the type who just records the numbers or stats, that the alliance they are facing and the alliance partners have a large effect on the ability of a robot to perform. If a team goes 7-3 through its first 10 matches, youd think they were probably consistant, but if in 5 of their 7 wins they were paired with a team in the top 10, you might need to reconsider.
So basically, not just the consistancy of the team, but also who they were paired with through-out the matches is important. And because of the random alliances, it will probably be very hard to measure consistancy.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

As said above, the consistency can change.

In order to make a scouting sheet you need to decide on your priorities. Reliability can be balanced in by rating factors of a team's performance every time they step up to the match. Even rating as such on a simple 1-10 system would help you get a feel for their performance in each category.

Remember that while a team may not have the resources to create a spectacular autonomous mode, they may just be what you would need to balance out your alliance.

Most importantly, keep your scouting team working together. If they can't get each others feedback, your scouting is (with polite restraint) absolutely shot.

[DarkJedi613]

I don't think you need to add it to your scouting sheets - you'll be able to tell from comparing the scouting sheets of the same team during different matches.

To be consistent you have to remember that the same person may not always be scouting the same team or the team they're facing or allied with could change performance.

[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by DarkJedi613

I don't think you need to add it to your scouting sheets - you'll be able to tell from comparing the scouting sheets of the same team during different matches.

To be consistent you have to remember that the same person may not always be scouting the same team or the team they're facing or allied with could change performance.

This is why I would suggest putting who they paired with each match, but maybe more importantly a brief summary of what they did during the match. It can help minimize the inconsistency of scout opinions. This paired with a ranking system (I like 1-5 because there is less room to be "average", it narrows the range to be more useful) can tell you all kinds of things. So, if speed and capping tetras are important, put that on the scouting sheet and make sure your scouts rank and describe what the robot did for those specific items. (i.e. "they drove very slow the whole match" or "they did not cap a tetra, but tried 5 times" or "they capped 6 at one time") ...

anything that gives a brief "play by play" can help you get a feel for consistency and strategy, without it being too inconsistent between different scouts opinions. You could also set it up so that certain scouts always scout the same robots. The possibilities are almost endless of what you can do with scouting sheets, but I personally think this works well.

[Alex Salomonsky]

When I'm scouting, I like to get as much information about a team and the robot, so I ask many questions, some are related to consistency, every year I have a good sheet about teams (but my team doesnt do well enough for us to use it). It might valuable to know how long the driver has driven the bot, or driving in a competition such as FIRST.

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by AmyPrib

This paired with a ranking system (I like 1-5 because there is less room to be "average", it narrows the range to be more useful) can tell you all kinds of things.

This year we decided to make it "idiot proof". There is no ranking its all boolean; i.e. - they can cap one tetra, two tetra, three tetra, etc. or like "they pushed every robot" or "they could push some robots"

[Edit: Everything we came up with is in this thread (in our own forum - not CD) http://www.team358.org/v-web/bulleti...topic.php?t=13]

[Bunburyt312]

Our strategy app which is run on either a desktop or a pocketpc will automatically filter any sort extremes by averaging the robots data from each one of their mathces so that a fairly decent report of the teams talent/success/luck can be acquired. Check our thread in this section.

our app will be available for download @5pm 3/2/05 http://heatwave.cat.pinellas.k12.fl.us/