A Coach for the Alliance - The Supercoach

[ttldomination]

In the past couple of years, I've often wondered if an alliance wide coach, a person I've deemed as the supercoach, would be a beneficial role. More specifically, the supercoach is the person who would control the alliance as a whole and direct teams with respect to a predetermined strategy.

Considering this year's game, I think the supercoach is more relevant than ever. With robots having quite a few possible positions, tasks, and goals (each of which can change as quickly as a ball changes possession) alliances are going to need to coordinate on an unprecedented level to ensure that each robot is exactly where it's needed.

Two minutes go by fast, so more than likely, the supercoach would be behind all three drive teams either yelling out movements or hurrying over to a coach/team to give them specific instructions.

There are some questions that arise from this:
Where does the supercoach fit into a drive teams?
Well, this year's game only requires two human players (one in the far zone and one delivering balls from the pedestal to the field). The supercoach's team would have to use their human player as their acting-coach.

Is this viable during qualifications?
Perhaps not. In qualifications you have to contend with (a) explaining the concept to other teams, (b) trusting that a good supercoach is picked, (c) trusting that the teams on your alliance are willing to orders from a supercoach, or (d) teams not having a human player capable of coaching. Any combination of these four issues could mean that the alliance isn't a good fit for a supercoach. However, qualifications would be a good test run/proof of concept for supercoaching.

Just a thought,
- Sunny G.

[ghostmachine360]

Agreed that a supercoach would be something beneficial with this year's game. I would say another thing to consider if taking this concept to qualifications would be if the other teams can understand & follow-though expediently and correctly on audibles that the supercoach calls. Also, depending on how you set up these alliances with the supercoach, you may have to change up how plays are relayed from match-to-match. In the case where you are allied with one team 1 match, and then meet them again during quals/elims on the other side of the glass, you have to make sure that the element of surprise is still on your side when play-calling.

[M.O'Reilly]

An alliance would benefit from a "supercoach" only if they were the only coach in the alliance. 1 ball, 1 coach makes a little sense. Theoretically though, a supercoach should exist already: the top seed of the alliance would command or defer to another coach with more experience and/or more scouting data on hand. Any alliance with three coaches with three strategies is doomed.

[gpetilli]

I like the concept. Minor clarification - there are three human player locations - one at the pedestal, and one on either side of the far field to receive ejected balls to inbound. There is no human player available to "super coach"

that said, during qualifiers the teams will need to negotiate which team's coach will act as super coach. During eliminations it is simpler; it would be the highest seeded team's coach as the recognized team captain.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by gpetilli

I like the concept. Minor clarification - there are three human player locations - one at the pedestal, and one on either side of the far field to receive ejected balls to inbound. There is no human player available to "super coach"

Is there anything that says you are required to place human players at each location?

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

Is there anything that says you are required to place human players at each location?

Originally Posted by gpetilli

I like the concept. Minor clarification - there are three human player locations - one at the pedestal, and one on either side of the far field to receive ejected balls to inbound. There is no human player available to "super coach" ...

G8 states that human players can start in the zones or behind the white line. If an alliance is opting to run the supercoach, one of their human player zones would be empty.

- Sunny G.

[gpetilli]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

G8 states that human players can start in the zones or behind the white line. If an alliance is opting to run the supercoach, one of their human player zones would be empty.

- Sunny G.

leaving a HP zone empty could delay putting a ball back in play if the ref has to go back to the drivers station. Rule G9 allows for 1 coach, 2 drivers and 1 human player per team. Why would you allocate a human player to be a supercoach when you have three coaches doing nothing?

[bkahl]

I think you will see a lot of this "supercoach" strategy during Elims at CMP. With the new rule regarding 4 alliances, the fourth alliance can have a representative behind the glass, giving the alliance a fourth coach.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by gpetilli

leaving a HP zone empty could delay putting a ball back in play if the ref has to go back to the drivers station. Rule G9 allows for 1 coach, 2 drivers and 1 human player per team. Why would you allocate a human player to be a supercoach when you have three coaches doing nothing?

Great teams rely on great drive teams, which rely on great coaches. If you are under the opinion that the three coaches are 'doing nothing', then perhaps you do not fully understand the importance of coaches.

The intent is not to necessarily make the human player the supercoach, but rather pull a human player to fill a missing coach position.

As far as "delaying putting a ball back into play," it's a valid concern. I personally don't think that balls will go out of play all too often (maybe once every handful of matches), but if it becomes a common occurrence, the alliance would have to carefully consider how/whether to assign a supercoach.

- Sunny G.

[WaterClaw]

Originally Posted by gpetilli

I like the concept. Minor clarification - there are three human player locations - one at the pedestal, and one on either side of the far field to receive ejected balls to inbound. There is no human player available to "super coach"

that said, during qualifiers the teams will need to negotiate which team's coach will act as super coach. During eliminations it is simpler; it would be the highest seeded team's coach as the recognized team captain.

I think one of the coaches would have to manage all three in coordinating which puts an alarming amount of pressure on the drivers of the team short the coach.

[Caleb Sykes]

It will be interesting to see if any teams use their secondary driver as a "temporary human player". Many robot designs will probably allow for single-driver control when not dealing with the ball. This will leave some secondary drivers inactive for long periods of time. If an alliance really wanted both a "supercoach" and a human player in each of the far zones, it would not be unrealistic for them to use a driver who is not doing anything at the moment to inbound the ball. This would free up the human player in the alliance station to be the supercoach for the whole match.

EDIT: After re-reading the relevant sections of the manual, I think that the "driver becomes temporary human player" is probably just a loophole. Then again, maybe not since G34 addresses only coaches and not drivers. In any case, I am going to make sure that my team's secondary driver has at least a little experience passing the ball to our robot.

[gpetilli]

Originally Posted by inkling16

It will be interesting to see if any teams use their secondary driver as a "temporary human player". Many robot designs will probably allow for single-driver control when not dealing with the ball. This will leave some secondary drivers inactive for long periods of time. If an alliance really wanted both a "supercoach" and a human player in each of the far zones, it would not be unrealistic for them to use a driver who is not doing anything at the moment to inbound the ball. This would free up the human player in the alliance station to be the supercoach for the whole match.

EDIT: After re-reading the relevant sections of the manual, I think that the "driver becomes temporary human player" is probably just a loophole. Then again, maybe not since G34 addresses only coaches and not drivers. In any case, I am going to make sure that my team's secondary driver has at least a little experience passing the ball to our robot.

I have not scoured the rules other than i remember them disallowing the couch from touching the ball, but each team member has a button he wears saying his role. they usually keep them very specialized. The coach is usually the only team member that is allowed to not be a student, which is probably why he/she can not touch the ball.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by gpetilli

I have not scoured the rules other than i remember them disallowing the couch from touching the ball, but each team member has a button he wears saying his role. they usually keep them very specialized. The coach is usually the only team member that is allowed to not be a student, which is probably why he/she can not touch the ball.

As I recall, only the Coach's button is different (usually it has a sticker on it).

Not even when we had the Robo-Coach (if you don't know, don't ask) for Overdrive did we have distinct buttons. I remember because I don't know how many times I saw the Robo-Coach coming to the field wearing the Coach's button.

[Erobot]

There are a few qualities necessary to be a super_coach.

Good Scouting data.(that have an analytic side, graphs)
Preferably A upper ranked robot (but not always)
An awareness of who their allied with and the opponents(EVERY MATCH)
Experience as driver, humanplayer, etc.

Our team is special to have a robotics student design and program a scouting system that tracks all the teams.
This covers robots from being disabled to "do they have an autonomous" every match. All can be analyzed on a computer to note trends of robots for recent matches. Also see the percentage of chance to winning a match.

A Super_coach has to have the data or the numbers to show his alliance members. And, prove the credentials to compose the statement. This is what we have recorded you doing on the field. Scout data is crucial for that reason. This helps clears the emotions, feelings or pride of teams when discussing who takes leadership with your allies.

Its handy for a super_coach to be aware of who their against. They can refer back to their scouting data to see what the teams are effective at and pursue strategies for winning the match. A playbook is very HELPFUL in communicating to allies the task a super_coach wants them to perform. That takes guts and confidence for a person to do but is easy when you have the data to show.

Frank was the ideal super_coach for team 701 last year which in return brought back our first blue banners.
Profile name: BedHead

[Ben Martin]

I first got to experience a little bit of this play style when we played with Jared of 341 at Chestnut Hill last year. We started employing more of it when we were lucky enough to be an alliance captain several times at different off-season events. Strategically, I think it really is the stronger way to go, as it kind of drives everyone to compete toward the same overall strategy and facilitates communication throughout the alliance. In this game, in the majority of cases, I would defer to whoever has the dominant robot to determine the overall strategy, regardless of whether or not they want to pass the "supercoach" role onto one of the other coaches.

In past games, if you want to execute this during qualification rounds, you really risk labeling yourself as a bossy team if the strategy goes sour or you don't give a team a chance to shine, and negative reputations are hard things to overcome in FIRST sometimes. With a game that requires so much interaction, though, it may be expected for strategies like this to be employed, making it less of a risk. We'll watch the week 1 and 2 events to see how everyone is playing this game and adjust accordingly.