Best Ways To Scout

[katd30]

I am on a 2nd year team. Last year we tried to have a scouting system but it utterly failed. Too many sheets of paper, not enough students, no one wanted to be distracted from a match... etc.

So, this year I was hoping to get some help from other teams who have been more successful in scouting. Only a few students will be there on the first day of competition due to school field trip approval things. Because of this only I, and maybe one or two other teammates, will be able to scout so I need an effective, low personnel method.

[Fred Sayre]

Well, good luck to you and your team!

Scouting is very hard to do thoroughly (and quantitatively) without a good team of 6+ people. We plan on having 1 person on each robot keeping track of actions on the field, with 1 additional person taking notes on human players. This is done on paper sheets that get turned into someone entering the data into a database for analysis and informing our field team of upcoming matches and also for ranking if we make it into the top 8. Scouts get tired and need breaks of course, and usually we have to throw out the scouting data for matches that we play in (scouts are very distracted watching our machine!).

What I have done in years where we don't have a full team of scouts is cutting the process down to keep track of only teams you are playing with or against at that event. This usually means 0-3 robots per match which is much more manageable. If you are looking for alliance partners during eliminations, this is a bit harder and we would usually just have 1 person taking notes and ranking teams.

Another thought is to seek out another team at your event doing full scouting. Many teams (including ours) are more than willing to share their quantitative data with you. You can even offer to help sit in and scout with them.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by katd30

I am on a 2nd year team. Last year we tried to have a scouting system but it utterly failed. Too many sheets of paper, not enough students, no one wanted to be distracted from a match... etc.

So, this year I was hoping to get some help from other teams who have been more successful in scouting. Only a few students will be there on the first day of competition due to school field trip approval things. Because of this only I, and maybe one or two other teammates, will be able to scout so I need an effective, low personnel method.

In this thread you'll find an excellent scouting excel workbook. It should help you.

[katd30]

Wow. Thank you so much! Thanks for the tip on asking other teams and the excel workbook will help so much. I hate trying to work with excel, probably cause I'm a perfectionist and I can never get the columns to the right size.

[Fred Sayre]

Do you use access? I have an access db and an excel sheet for print outs if you want them.

[katd30]

Nope. I have actually never really even heard of access before... Is it like excel?

[GGCO]

My team hasn't had a good scouting system in a while, but this year it was alright. What we did at the Traverse City district event was divide the team into 3 groups, each led by a veteran member. There were 6 people to a group. One group would scout for an hour, the other would have pit duty, and the other would have free time. It worked pretty well. Problem was with the team leaders (myself included) didn't get the data to the drivers. That is going to change at our next event, GVSU.

[Kersten]

I see your team is going to VCU so if you want i would be glad to share my scouting notes with you

[Jared Russell]

My tips:

1. Unless you have a small army of scouts (our team does, but most do not), trying to count the balls scored by and on each robot individually is going to take way, way too much time and effort. There is no substitute for watching matches, but don't get too caught up in the ball-by-ball details.

2. Asking teams about their robot is a quick way to get the basics, but it also leads to a lot of misinformation. Nobody is going to look you in the eye and say that "we suck" (nor should they!). Limit your questions to basics like, what kind of drive? How experienced are your drivers? How do you load and score? Autonomous modes? Asking them to rate their abilities or give you figures like "how many balls do you score in a match" is not terribly likely to give you useful information. Any misinformation here is just as likely to be purposeful as not; scouting in the pits at a week 1 regional you will find many teams who honestly don't know how their machine is going to work.

2. Oftentimes it is the third partner who will determine the success or failure of your alliance in the elimination rounds. Most events will have a handful of elite machines and then a logjam of decent to good machines. You will quickly discover who can score in droves, but it is important to avoid the natural tendency to focus your attention solely on these teams. Sorting through the middle of the pack is the most difficult - and oftentimes most important - job a scout will have. Case in point: our selection of 2543 at San Diego this year, and our selection of 84 at Philly the past two years. All three picks led to regional wins as our third partner effectively shut down the opposition's best scorer.

3. Oftentimes you can get "sleeper" picks who did not perform up to their abilities during qualifications, but who remedied their problems by the time eliminations come around. Maybe there was some mechanical issue that wasn't fixed until Saturday morning. Or maybe all that was separating the robot from being a great scorer was a simple change. At San Diego, 1572 started the event with a shooter, and ended with a power dumper. Their record was not great, but by the end you could tell that they were one of the best bots there. Asking around in the pits is the only good way to figure out what issues people have had, and how they have been addressed.

4. Too often people stop scouting way, way too early. On practice day there are tons of scouts in the crowds, yet on Saturday morning they are often somewhere else. Don't let what a team does on the practice field (likely with less than 6 robots on it at once) sway your judgment too heavily, and likewise just because selections are about to begin doesn't mean you can pack up.

5. In this era of 3000+ team numbers, I find that keeping teams straight is a challenge in its own right. Pictures are your friend. Remember team names, colors, chants, etc. All the scouting in the world won't help unless you keep track of it!

6. Ask your drive team for thoughts. Some teams have fantastic machines, but are impossible to work with. Others have modest robots but are true team players. In the playoffs, you will get farther with 3 decent robots and one TEAM than with 3 amazing robots playing separately (at least this year - this isn't always the case).

Good luck!

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Jared341

My tips:
2. Asking teams about their robot is a quick way to get the basics, but it also leads to a lot of misinformation. Nobody is going to look you in the eye and say that "we suck" (nor should they!). Limit your questions to basics like, what kind of drive? How experienced are your drivers? How do you load and score? Autonomous modes? Asking them to rate their abilities or give you figures like "how many balls do you score in a match" is not terribly likely to give you useful information. Any misinformation here is just as likely to be purposeful as not; scouting in the pits at a week 1 regional you will find many teams who honestly don't know how their machine is going to work.

I really got to disagree with the message sent by this one. If the scout is good, they can get everything they need to know from the people directly. There is no need for the stands.

To be a good scout: Take everything told to you with a grain of salt. Sometimes there is misinformation. However, it is often easy to tell when someone is lying about their bot. Also, ask the right people. Sometimes the best source for information is the team captain. Other times it is the freshmen that is sitting off to the side. A team captain is going to know everything good that is happening with their team. A freshmen might just joke about how their robot went crazy in autonomous. Also, I find that you get the best answers when you are going to play a match with a team. They want their alliance partners to know of their short-comings. Namely because you can compensate. And at a later time, when they are your opponent, you can use this information.

And yes, I have seen teams give away their weaknesses upfront.(not always intentionally) Sometimes, they say this is why our robot is awesome. And then you know, this is what I need to be careful about.

A note: I focus on scouting for actual matches. If you happen to make it to the top ranks, you can always pick an elite team first round and let them use their vast resources to pick the third partner. Like said above, the third pick is usually the one that matters most.

Apology to any offended freshmen. Not trying to say anything by using the term. Just that it is a stereotype that could be readily used. I'm sure that as often as not, the kid goofing off that doesn't know what's happening is an upperclassmen.

[katd30]

Thank you so much everyone! This will all really help. Kersten, I would be very grateful if you would share notes with us at VCU. Once again thank you so much!

[Molten]

I forgot something. Make sure to have fun while scouting. It makes it easier and it is a general misconception that scouts don't have as much fun.I like to prove them wrong.

Good luck at the event. Tell us how the scouting went if you like, I'm sure I'm not the only one that is curious.

[Nibbles]

On the contrary, the only thing to know is how do we score more points then the opposing alliance. The most important number to know is how many points does that team score on average. For selecting a team during eliminations, this is really the only thing you need to know, the only thing on the field that has a real limiting economic factor would be empty cells (at a certain point getting better with empty cells won't score you additional points as well as originally, a sort of declining marginal utility).
For strategy during matches, all you need to know is weaknesses. Is there any special way you need to use to pin a team? I plan on keeping a small binder for this purpose this year.

The smaller and more efficient the better. I plan to again use only one other person to help get all the necessary data, and zero pit scouting (at least during matches), those team members are better utilized cheering for your team in the stands or fixing robots in the pits.

[Kersten]

haha Will do then, I shouldnt be too hard to find with my bright blue rocket sauce shirt =P

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Molten

I really got to disagree with the message sent by this one. If the scout is good, they can get everything they need to know from the people directly. There is no need for the stands.

While you're certainly entitled to your opinion and to do it your way, I don't think you could find a single team with a Championship banner who'd agree with you. Probably couldn't even find a team who's captained a regional alliance to gold either.

Teams often won't and don't lie to you, they'll tell you what they expect their robot to do. But that's often not what actually happens. I know many teams who have gone into events with very very high expectations for their bots, both from themselves and others, who ended up seeding very poorly and missing eliminations entirely.
Perfect example, 103 in 2007 on Galileo. 103 won New Jersey and made the semis in Philly. They had a great machine. But it didn't play well and missed the eliminations completely. If you just had talked to them in the pits, they'd tell you, honestly, what they expected from their robot, which had high capabilities.

When in the pits, you don't get to see things like driver skill and tendencies, coaching skill and tendencies, human player skill and tendencies, or how they react to specific other teams maneuvers. The average scout in the stands might not notice a lot of this stuff either (only the really good do), but you have no chance in the pits.

There is no substitute for field scouting, period. Not every team will have the resources to do it at the ultimate level, but you still need it. You think the robot was the only reason 1114 was so good last year?
Consider this. 1114 showed up at 5:15 in the morning last year so they could get the best seats in the division to aid scouting.

Bottom line. Nothing replaces stand scouting. Pit scouting is still important, but you can't accurately create a good pick list or proper strategy without stand scouting.