Best Ways To Scout

[EricH]

Originally Posted by n_ambrogi013

they also provide feedback about how drivers on other teams are to interatct with, which is critical--if an alliance can't function as a team, the abilities of the individual machines can sometimes be negated. so if you can tear your drive team away from the machine for a few minutes, have your scouts talk to them.

Definitely, the personality of the team that you're considering will have an impact. I'll explain later.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

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.
[...]
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.

I'll speak for 330's 2005 team on this one--we couldn't have done it without stand scouting.

A little story from 2005 that illustrates both points: Around noonish on Saturday in the Newton division, 330 was finishing up their pick list. There were 2 teams that the scouts rated about equally, and both were lower than 2nd seed. At one pit, the picker and helpers waited... and nobody really paid attention to them. The other team had almost the opposite reaction. Guess which one got picked?

Now, it's picking time, second round. 330 and their first pick have one more team to choose. There was a solid team there, not flashy, just solid, that the scouts (stand scouts, mind you) on both teams had noticed. They were still available somehow. They got the call and the three teams went on to win it all.

You see what I mean? Personality says a lot about you as a team. It can make the difference between winning and making an early exit. And the stand scouting can spot things that pit scouting misses. Good pit scouting can catch a lot of things, but good stand scouting tells what really happens.

The 2 absolute worst ways to scout, as counterexamples: Not at all, or by rankings. I'm looking at the L.A. standings as an example. 4 of the 6 best robots there are not in the top 5, and one of those isn't in the top 8. There are also some really good "sleeper" teams that are waking up in the bottom half of the rankings. The good scouts will see that and spot some pretty good "steals" tomorrow. And the teams without good scouting, or with "ranking scouting", are going to get a bit of a trailer-filling.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by EricH

The 2 absolute worst ways to scout, as counterexamples: Not at all, or by rankings....And the teams without good scouting, or with "ranking scouting", are going to get a bit of a trailer-filling.

Agreed. One year, can't remember which, 1766 made it in the top 8. Not saying we weren't good, but we were definitely not one of the best teams there. This was somewhat due to pit scouting and the fact that we had an awesome driver (the bot was ok that year) but mostly it was luck. We ranked highly because we got lucky on alliances. If it wasn't for that, we would have ranked around 20. The opposite happened this year. 1766 had a pretty good bot but had some bad luck with teams for the rankings. Never really much of a chance to stand out and had a losing record. However, this years bot was 10X better then the year we got to choose our alliance.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

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 talked with 40 teams at Cass Tech today (pits only). Of those forty teams over 20 teams to me the could (and most said often did) score between 7 and 20 moonrocks each match (with the robot). There were only a couple I felt were being perfectly honest. One was a rookie team that when i asked them to explain their machine, the guy was very honest. he said, this is what we designed, but honestly we have mostly just been playing defense because most others score better than us.
I am not skilled enough in the art of interegation to get everything from the pits. Arena observation at a minimum and data when it is useful/possible.

[Rich Kressly]

Asking this question is a LOT like asking, "What's the best robot design?"

I think it's more about meeting your team's needs and fitting the parameters and goals under which you operate. Once you have defined what your available resources (human and otherwise) will be at an event, have decided whether your team is best served by a high-tech, low-tech, or combination approach, and you decide whether your scouting effort will be single- or multiple-team, THEN you're ready to sit down and develop the detailed system that works for your team.

Developing/choosing the system BEFORE you consider parameters, goals, etc makes no sense to me because I never want to find out after the fact that it was "too much paper, too few people." Not that any system never needs analysis or improvements after the fact, but asking yourselves the right questions before investing deeply in any system should help a team prevent any huge mismatches that lead to poor outcomes.

.02 for what it's worth.

[Lil' Lavery]

I'm going to have to echo Rich Kressly's statements is that it really depends on your team and your resources. Not every solution is going to provide the info that every team wants nor will every team have the resources to impliment each solution.

I'd suggest having a couple of those people walk around the pits on Thursday and have mini "interviews" with other teams to learn about the capabilities of their robots. As stated, nobody is going to tell you they suck, but you will often learn the "potential" of each bot and its basic capabilities. This data is going to help with pre-match planning on Friday more than alliance selection on Saturday, but it's valuable to have. It takes time and paper to gather (especially with 59 teams at VCU), but if you keep it organized (binder) it's not a terrible task.

On Friday and Saturday, especially Friday, have as many people as you can spare watching matches. While an ideal solution would be 12 people watching, one on each robot and one on each HP, with two more entering data into an access database and pumping it out into an uber excel spreadsheet that calculates everything.... that's not going to happen.
Have some people who are dedicated and observant watch matches and take some notes on the good teams. Have the small group meet discuss good teams with your drivers and coach to help pick out certain teams that are doing well in various aspects of the game. Make sure they don't lose track of human players, defensive abilities, or other features too!

You're blessed with the fact you're at the best regional there is, NASA/VCU. I love the regional, and the teams are fantastic to work with. If possible, try to arrange a way to share scouts and data with some other teams (best if arranged beforehand, teams are going to be less willing when you ask them Friday morning). 1137 has already offered their help in this thread, and I know a number of other teams should be willing. I'd start with two other NC teams, both of whom are successful, 2108 and 435. If they aren't willing, there are a number of other veteran teams who may, such as 122, 1033, 1541, or 388.

[Molten]

I have my own approach to scouting. Time in the stands seems to me to be a bit wasteful if you have limited resources. Most of the time, I don't even get to watch a match other then the one's my team is in.(sometimes not even those). I suggest you going to the teams. Individually ask them questions. How does that work? What is your overall accuracy? They will tell you. If their accuracy isn't great, they will tell you that but they will say 'but we mainly play defense' or something along those lines. Body language tells as much as words when it comes to scouting. If the person doesn't seem confident, maybe they don't really have the best bot.

Just remember, time in the stands can tell you a lot. But if you get the same information from people, then you might learn more and will also gain recognition with that individual team for possible alliances in the future. Very rarely will a team pick a team for alliance that they have never spoken to. Sometimes, the worse team is picked simply because they are friends with the other team and didn't know who else to pick.(happens more in second draft).

If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me.

[Hanna2325]

A quick easy way is just to make an excel document where u input each teams total points, hp points, robot scoring points, and any other features that you'd like to note. This might take some time with only three people, b/c it is best just to watch one team at a time and track them rather than trying to catch everything on ur own We did it in shift using just paper then added all the info in later to excel. The good thing about having it on the computer is that u can then reorganize it by different features more easily I hope this helps

[Kersten]

I also think that printing of handouts with your robot info on it can be helpful because it tells other team's scouts what they are looking at so they dont have to try and figure out much about your bot but really focus on how well it performs