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[JosephC]

Good scouting always trumps rank. On Newton in 2012, 68 picked 330 (24th seed) and 639 (89th seed), to form an alliance that could triple balance in less than 5 seconds and went on to be Division Finalists.

[AdamHeard]

Here you go;
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...8&postcount=67

[Pat Fairbank]

Rank does not correlate well at all to desirability for picking, this year, due to the different alliance dynamic required by Aerial Assault. In past years, teams' contributions on an alliance have largely been additive; for example, if your robot scores 20 frisbees per match on average, and you pick a team that typically scores 10, you could count on scoring somewhere around 30 in eliminations.

Not so this year -- you pick robots that fill out a third of the particular cycle type you want to run in eliminations. Rank wasn't a factor at all this year in 254's scouting process. I only discovered 973 was ranked 43rd when I was idly looking at the standings while waiting for alliance selections to start, and I only found out 2135 was ranked 41st when I saw this thread.

Much more important are the ability to not commit fouls, pleasantness of working with your team if we have a qualification match together, and ability to quickly intake and release a ball.

[Jibsy]

This once again shows how important it is to keep updating the picklist through Saturday morning.

This reminds me of Waterloo last year.
We were having robot problems right through the first day of quals and were sitting right near the bottom of the rankings. Finally on Saturday morning we got all of our kinks ironed out and suddenly were running 4+ cycles, with upwards of 90% accuracy, with a 10pt hang at the end.

610 (second alliance captain) picked us as their 3rd partner. Given our overall stats, that's about where we expected to go; however, with our Saturday morning performance, we were a steal.

We ended up losing in the finals to the 1114 and 2056 alliance, but it wasn't the usual blowout that Waterloo is used to seeing. If I recall correctly (might have just been one of them), 610 and 1310 were both having issues with their full court shooters.

610 has an incredible scouting/strategy team. The attention to detail that goes into their scouting is crazy. Fantastic team to be on an alliance with!