Uncooperative Alliance Partners

FIRST General Forum
#61

For many teams (like mine when I was around), the drive team and scouting were separate entities, and I wouldn’t know whether a team abandoned the plan until I met with drive team the night after. That being said, if I really had doubts on a team’s tendencies for this kind of thing, I would ask other alliance partners.

Also, I can say from experience that putting together an alliance that works well together is crucial for an alliance captain, even if it means they take a back seat. Back at CHS DCMP 2016, we played defense as an alliance captain even though we could put quite a few boulders in, and we came a broken robot away from winning the event. Selflessness can go far.

#62

I’ve never been part of our drive team, but I’ve heard re-caps of conversations where it seems like some of the bigger/more aggressive teams have a sort of coerciveness at competitions.

There’s an aspect of respecting the more “dominant” teams, because they probably know what they’re doing at this point, but it’s a little disappointing when the teams come to your team and say “this is what you’re going to do.” without any real discussion

#63

Awesome little addition to the usual setup, how often is there push back or additional information requested in this last minute meeting?

#64

Here is our teams process for approaching match strategy:
->Decide upon Auto strategy based scouting data and teams response to confidence level on their programming. (Will send software team over if they need help)
->Assess our two partners in game execution and plan for a game plan that can maximize their strengths and minimize chances for getting penalties.
->Draw out he strategy on a paper copy of the field which will be used to show auto line ups, teleop routes, and any potential defensive strategy. We usually do this with in the pits with all 3 drive teams.
->In the queue the drive coach will go over the same strategy sheet to address any concerns or questions.
->Brief drivers on fall back plans, incase the strategy does not go to plan or someone dies on the field.
->After match we document on that strategy our partners were able to do, pros/cons

#65

But…Shahil…

how many wins you got?

1 Like
#66

But Akash…

How many pointless posts do you have?

#67

7000

#68

I had a discussion with another mentor (not my team) yesterday and this general subject came up. Their team was wondering how to scout other teams in terms of how cooperative/collaborative other teams are. I said that we do try to make sure that we take notes after every match about things the scouting team feels are important. And that often we will have notes like “team x got in their alliance mate’s way 3 times” or “it looked like their strategy broke down.” In these cases, if we end up with multiple instances of comments like that for a team, and we have not played with them, we may move then down on our pick list. If we have played with a team we will weight our experience with them much more heavily than the observations. I will also point out that while we have put teams with good robots on our do not pick list because they tried to dictate strategy rather than collaborate on strategy, we have also selected and been selected by teams with whom we cooperated well. It is sometimes the case that two pretty good robots that play well together can beat two very good robots that don’t collaborate well.

We do try to briefly recap strategy while in the cue. In particular we like to talk about where each team will be in autonomous and what we each plan to do as soon as teleop starts. Also, if conditions change we try to quickly communicate this with allies. This is not only common courtesy, it is good match strategy. I remember a match in 2013 where the plan was for us to play defense. About 45 seconds into the match 1038’s shooter jammed. As soon as they realized they told us to trade roles. We still lost the match, but we were able to make it very close by communicating well.

#69

Looks like 7291 right now… :slight_smile:

1 Like
#70
#71

I didn’t realize this was something I needed in my life until now

#72