Does CD affect alliance selections?

[fredliu168]

I prefer to refer to this as marketting, because I'm weak at psychology.

CD allows teams to showcase their robot and their teams. When regionals or divisions come around, the teams well known on CD will probably be the first to get scouted. During alliance selections, the representative, if given a scouting sheet with no statistics, is more likely to go with a team he or she knows.

Therefore yes, I do think it affects alliance selections, great point.

[thefro526]

I've done the alliance pickings for my team this year and I will say that some of my decisions are influenced by the people on the teams. Like in NJ we picked 708 because the guys on their team were rally cool and would do whatever we needed them too. I've never been in a situation, up until now, where I've actually known people from CD and competed with their team. I know at the Championship this may come into play where a team who I know from CD and another team will be ranked similarly in terms of statistics. If I know people on one team and no one on the other I would be more likely to pick the team who I know because in theory we would work better together but the opposite is also true. If I know you from CD and you're jerky or whatever (very few people like that on here) and I would find it hard to work with you then I would pick the team who I don't know.

[galewind]

I see Chief Delphi as the "Wikipedia" of bot info -- it's a great place to get some surface knowledge, but you need to dig deeper to get the real nitty-gritty. Thankfully, couple CD with The Blue Alliance and SOAP108, and you've got a great opportunity to back up the talk with some actual research. Watch teams compete, check out their stats -- who they were with and against, etc.

What it all boils down to, however, is that all that info should only be used in an initial glance -- you have to see how the teams stack up against the teams currently at the event, and I don't mean by rankings. There are always a few teams that slip under the radar that perform exceptionally well but don't pull out the best records because they were consistently against powerhouses.

[Wayne C.]

CD is a rumor mill. A few facts, lots of opinions and lots of regional bias. Better to gather your own information by efficient scouting and think for yourself. You will be much more satisfied with the outcome.

WC

[Nawaid Ladak]

i go to another website like chiefdelphi (same vBulletin forum setup)and they call the affects caused by their forums the SD effect so i thought i should name this the SD affect.

i remember we did this once in 2005, we picked 343 at the Florida regional, just because we had fun with them the year before at the palmetto regional.

fyi: that website is www.SlickDeals.net ... now you guys know where the SD came from.