How do you scout Defense?

[Chris is me]

As helpful as qualitative data is, you will not make good defensive picks using anything but your smartest minds watching the field and figuring out what people are doing.

If you're looking for "who pushes the best" or "how long a pin they have" or whatnot, you're not looking for people who play smart defense. Sometimes the smartest defensive move is not to move, something many drivers don't seem to fathom. Blocking a goal or herding a ball is often better than trying to push or pin. (See QF1 and QF2 at WPI for a direct comparison of these methods )

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

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If you're looking for "who pushes the best" or "how long a pin they have" or whatnot, you're not looking for people who play smart defense. Sometimes the smartest defensive move is not to move, something many drivers don't seem to fathom.

This implies that pushing defense around is not smart defense. After watching 171 in Wisconsin and 2041 in Minnesota, pushing defense is certianly effective. Obviously, this is not the only way to play defense, but it is the way that requires certian traits of the robots. Anyone can sit infront of the goal or herd a ball, but not everyone can push and pin. The alliance partners can tell a robot with 8 traction wheels to sit in front of the goal and not move, but cannot tell a robot with a mechanum drive to push other robots around.

I think this just underscores the point that you cannot pick teams just based off one thing. You don't just pick a team based on the fact they have scored the most goals nor do you pick a team just because they can push anyone. There are many many factors that need to be weighed.

[Nuttle89]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

As helpful as qualitative data is, you will not make good defensive picks using anything but your smartest minds watching the field and figuring out what people are doing.

If you're looking for "who pushes the best" or "how long a pin they have" or whatnot, you're not looking for people who play smart defense. Sometimes the smartest defensive move is not to move, something many drivers don't seem to fathom. Blocking a goal or herding a ball is often better than trying to push or pin. (See QF1 and QF2 at WPI for a direct comparison of these methods )

I would like to second this; in particular, I cite a qualification match my team was in at DC. We are a defensively designmed machine, and as such we typically played in the third zone. With DC as a week one regional, we experienced the infamous losses of connection and thus frequently lost all control of our machine at random during a match. During the particular match I'm thinking of, we lost comm about 20 seconds into the match, but had managed to wedge the balls against the wall and park right in front of the goal, allowing us to sit there providing airtight defence. I specifically remember this match as being hilarious afterwards, as our teammate complimented our driving, despite the fact that we were unable to move for the majority of the match.

[Lil' Lavery]

A sharp eye, a strong idea of what you're looking for, and a little bit of luck. Most importantly, reasonable expectations of what they should be doing within your strategy.

No offense to any teams, but most "defensive" teams are a dime a dozen. There will be a couple of standouts in terms of defense, but they'll be easy to pick out. The next group of teams will be almost identical in terms of what they're going to be able to give you on the field, and I highly suggest that you pick based on reliability and robustness (which is pretty hard to scout effectively).

The damning factor in picking many teams is identifying how they play against the higher caliber of competition in the elimination rounds. I've seen many picks, including some of my own, end up being the downfall of an alliance because they can't hang in against better opponents. They may have chewed up the weaker foes in the qualification rounds, but they simply can't keep up with the faster, more agile, more reliable, and/or better driven teams in the eliminations. If you notice that a team on your pick list struggled (in whatever given role) against an elite team in a match or two, it should send up a warning flag.

[Sumathi]

It depends on the type of robot you use, and your game strategy. For example we play offense so we work around that. Anyways things to scout for would be speed, sturdienss, manuverability, how they move balls across the field, the drivers themselves, what the robot was built for, also add on qualities that your drives feel are necessary in a defender.

[NullEntity]

Funny, I came here to post the exact same thread.

What we will be implementing for Atlanta is a scale of 1 to 3 on how defensive they are. Last year, we tried counting pins and everything (they were more applicable then), but of course it was extremely tedious.