Curie 2009!

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by BandChick

Scouters - what do you look for when you scout?

Anyone have any reasons why 2nd round picks seemed pretty bad this year?

I know many people have asked us what went into our picks on Curie as they seemed kind of random but they worked out really well for us.

First off I knew that we would be playing the Poofs and Buzz which meant that we'd need to out score and out drive them to win. Knowing this I set my sights on two offensive robots because I knew when push came to shove we could Shut Down the Poofs, or any other scoring threat.

Our First pick was 245, who I knew was doing so-so over the weekend but would play into the strategy I had devised perfectly. The AdamBots had a high capacity open toped robot that could be human loaded and was perfect for dumping on a pinned robot. I knew that during most of our matches we'd be trying to pin one of the opposing alliances offensive robots so 245 would always have their target. Also, the AdamBots would draw more defense than anyone else because everyone saw their robot when it was full.

For Our Second Pick, I chose 341. I had seen them play in Philly in Week 4 and saw that they were an invisible robot. Due to the nature of their game play they never drew much attention but still had the ability to put up huge numbers during a match. They had the tendency to pick away at an opponent 3 or 4 balls at a time rather than going for a big dump. This meant that for most of our matches they'd be free to drive around the field and score. Also, they were human loaded which helped a lot.

If you watch any of our Quarter-Final Matches you'll see exactly why I picked either of these two teams.

As for the rest of the second round picks, it seems like the higher alliances made weaker second picks. Maybe they were so comfortable with their own offensive abilities that they could pick a solely defensive robot? I know that was many peoples idea during regionals but, when you're in a field as deep as the Championship go offensive or go home. It's that simple.

[ShaunT]

Originally Posted by thefro526

As for the rest of the second round picks, it seems like the higher alliances made weaker second picks. Maybe they were so comfortable with their own offensive abilities that they could pick a solely defensive robot? I know that was many peoples idea during regionals but, when you're in a field as deep as the Championship go offensive or go home. It's that simple.

That was actually our opinion, at least partially. When we picked 247 we picked them primarily for their defensive abilities; their ability to score was just another plus. We felt so confident doing this because somehow 68 slipped all the way to us at 7th seed. When you pick defensively, you have to determine if the the pick will be able to stop more points on average than the next best offensive pick would score on average, and that's what we expected 247 to do.

You have to remember that you can only expect to have 60 moon rocks to work with, and if you plan on letting human players shoot at all you can reduce that to about 50. Our strategy included us preloading everything at the close fueling station in auton and having T3 load up at the far one. There would not have really been that much to make another scoring robot that beneficial; possibly a top loader for outpost loading, but another floor loader would only be able to pick up misses.