Pre-Match Strategy Sessions

[AndyB]

This not only holds true for Pre-Match Strategy Sessions, but for any pit-scouting at all. Overstating capabilities just to get into the final rounds will do nothing but wreck an alliance and get two other teams mad at you. Be truthful.

[115inventorsam]

Originally Posted by AndyB

This not only holds true for Pre-Match Strategy Sessions, but for any pit-scouting at all. Overstating capabilities just to get into the final rounds will do nothing but wreck an alliance and get two other teams mad at you. Be truthful.

That is very true, and unfortunately we sort of fell victim to that at one regional in the final rounds(I guess my signature can tell you which one), and our award winning scouting team couldn't do anything about it.(we were picked in the second round)

But we weren't mad, I was disappointed, but no hard feelings, it was still really fun just to make it into eliminations, and those eliminations matches weren't bad at all, we just got out-ringed by a better alliance.

[Tim Arnold]

Totally agreed. If you aren't quite truthful to pit-scouters... not such a big deal. And stand scouters can learn pretty quick when you are lying. But in the hectic time between matches, its just hurting yourself to overstate your capabilities.

For example, our autonomous never got lucky while we were there (it was brand new code not run at regionals), and we would straight up say that its pretty much blind (just a single ultrasound - our camera smoked out) and we were 0:5 or whatever the current stat was. But we would still try to work out, if possible, a way to run it since dumb luck might be with us.

You can still try to do the things you feel your bot is good at, but just be truthful. Most alliances are willing to work things out to keep all parties happy, but they can only do such if you are honest.

[Ben Martin]

As a stand scouter and sheet runner, I'm often the one to inform our drive team about the teams in the next match. I usually give them my impression of how the match will go before they even talk to the other teams. Good strategy is essential to winning a match, and if that requires that one team sacrifice its tube scoring/lifting option for defense, then that may be what that team should do. All teams want to have a high rank in the standings, and each team may have to make some sacrifices to obtain a higher rank. Please state honestly what your team can do/has done and cooperate with other teams in strategy. The best-case scenario is not usually what typically happens.

[team 1094]

i say that to have a Successful scout data you need to plan ahead(from personal experence) have pleny of scout sheets, make sure your team of scouts is just focus on scouting,don't go by what other teams say they can do go buy what your data tells you. if you know who your allance partners are head of time talk to them and tell them your planed tackics.

[Donut]

This is a problem every year, and it always bugs me. Probably the best data I heard from a team this year was at the Championships where they told us that they had just had to install new transmissions for every part of their robot, and weren't even sure if they were going to move that match. We planned our match accordingly, and almost pulled out a win. Had they claimed they could use their arm well and "thought" (I hate that word) they could get 3 tubes up, we might have gone to play defense as we weren't scoring well at that point, and would have gotten annihilated in the match.

The bigger problem I encountered was not teams outright claiming they could score 5 tubes when they couldn't, but saying "we've been scoring 1, but without defense we could get 4-5". This is alot harder to disprove with scouting data as you don't know if they actually were defended or not in the matches they scored 1 (or maybe you do, depends what scouting data you take).

Going to the pre-match scouting sessions, please make sure that the roles you play are ones you can do too. For example, it may be that your robot scores alot less under defense, but it doesn't make any sense to try to have one of your partners block for you if all 3 robots are omni-drive geared for 15fps (this is an exaggeration, but you get the idea).