I think all this shows is that clearly the lower seeded captains didn’t have great scouting. There’s not much you can do on your end should this be the case.
I agree with many of the other people here that there is not a ton of value in trying to sell yourself to other teams outside of field performance.
There are two times where I would recommend talking to the top seeded teams, but I would recommend doing it first thing Saturday morning.
1.) You had an issue with your robot that caused you to look worse than you are, and you have since resolved that issue so your performance should be significantly better going forward. Example, 1086 had issues with their catapult at the Central VA event. The first day they were performing significantly below their capability. On Saturday morning their drive coach approached us (we were seeded 1st) and told us what the problem was, how they fixed it, and asked us to watch them and give them a chance to demonstrate that they were working to potential. They showed in their Saturday matches that they were working, we picked them, and they averaged 5+ high goals per match on their way to an event win.
2.) You have a niche capability that you have not demonstrated during qualifying that you believe their alliance will need for eliminations. For example, last year at the VA regional, we were capable of stacking totes and capping other peoples stacks, as well as accessing the recycle containers in the middle. Due to our seeding, and alliance partners on Saturday, we continued to almost exclusively build and cap stacks by our selves. Never demonstrating our ability to get the recycle bins from the landfill, and cap other 4+ stacks. The top alliances needed someone with this ability, and although we had it, we never demonstrated it so they didn’t know. 1610 on the other hand made it a point to demonstrate this on Saturday morning, and were selected by the alliance that went on to win.
The key in both of these situations is the ability to demonstrate the abilities. Talk is cheap, which is why I have never put much value in pit scouting. When we seed high, we trust our scouts, they will identify if you are performing well, and your partners have not. However if you think there is a reason why your performance to a point was worse than your performance will be going forward, then it is fair and valuable to explain that to teams, and demonstrate it.
Sadly this is true. After an experience few years ago watching a 2nd year team fumble through it’s first experience as an alliance captain, I now go around and check with the newer teams that might be alliance captains. At SVR I informed one team on Sat morning that they might be a captain and they were shocked. Fortunately they had a mentor team they could get scouting data from (and had a pretty good alliance.) I’ll work with those teams to help them develop a pick list if they’re unprepared.
So my suggestion is that if you’re just trying to get onto an alliance (which is an accomplishment in itself), you might approach those younger teams about sharing your scouting data if you think that you might be a first pick for them (or a 2nd pick of the 8th or 7th alliance).
To be honest you’re not going to influence the draft lists for the first 2 to 5 captains by talking to them. They’ll rely on their own info sources.
“you’re not going to influence the draft lists for the first 2 to 5 captains by talking to them”
Actually that is not entirely true… we were Captain #2 and had a team approach us morning of day 2 (of course we had our first pick locked in) but they were pinning for our second pick. They reminded me of how we played well together put up over 100 and the fact they raised from mid-30’s to high teens with an explanation. They were not on my top 20 list at all but that conversation , a good explanation and a trip to meet the team put them back on it. Plus the belief I felt in the kid who approached us.
When it came time to pick they were already selected but they would have been our pick had they not been selected (I told them they likely would be as high teen ) meanwhile both of us on our alliance already agreed to pick them based on their second day performance and after discussing with our partner. So I would not say blanket captains 1-5 are so locked in they won’t listen. We did and we have a fine scouting department with a deep enough list, never hurts to get more details we may have missed. Sometimes even good scouts can miss relevant info…and picking past 20 I can see where a team may be able to talk their way in to be the selection in the 20-24 range.
I know our pick list in CVR had about eight solid picks, the rest were not as solid and the ones towards the end “needed work” so the ones at the end of my our list were close to those not on it. That is where I believe tail end selections can work their way in onto pick lists sometimes especially if they have solid reasons.
This year at FLR, after three rocky starts (new camera causing glitching right out of auto, and new gearing on the drivetrain due to chewed-up gear boxes the previous week), we played seven of the best games we’ve ever played in the history of our team in terms of individual robot performance…
And were 2-8, ranked 44th out of 48 teams. Without any kind of off-field advertising I had no doubt that we were going to be picked, and when the time came we were the 8th overall pick.
If you’re not in the top eight (or maybe ten), rank doesn’t matter. Do your best on the field and trust the scouts to notice. (And when it comes down to it, I’d rather fly under the radar of teams with bad scouts, and get picked by teams with good scouts, because good scouting usually correlates to high performance.)
Yes, that illustrates a good exception, but they had very specific info to convey about their lack of performance. And we do get requests for whether we are looking for particular traits and we’ll let them know what they might do in the next match (which surprisingly almost never happens.) That can influence our choices, but those bots are probably already on our list.