Week 3 FRC competition

My robotics team decided to go crazy mode and schedule 2 comps back to back, so I was out waking up early again this weekend. Luckily, the venue was much closer this time, meaning I only had to wake up at like 7:30 instead of 6. I wake up at 7 on school days anyway so it really wasn't too bad. Well... hm. I wake up crazy late on weekends to catch up on sleep so I'm not looking forward to how this is going to affect the rest of the week.

As for the competition itself: really quite fun. One team was handing out cat ears last year so I was hoping to pick some up. Unfortunately they didn't seem to be handing anything out at all this year. Unforch. There were a lot more mechanical failures than there were at the last competition - at least, there were more interesting failures. The prevalence of aggressive defensive plays made it a lot more likely for bots to be damaged. Some matches I almost felt like I was watching BattleBots and not FRC.

Scouting was cool, as always. Speaking of, let me quickly explain how scouting works. Pit scouting typically occurs before matches begin. You go to other teams' pits and ask questions about their robot, gathering intel on structural integrity and the like. Barebones info. Obviously, one must be discerning with what they take as truth; pretty much every team will be overstating their abilities in order to make for a better sell later down the line. 

During match scouting, you're assigned a couple shifts to sit in the stands and take notes on one specific robot. Each shift is usually 6 matches, which doesn't sound too bad... except for the fact that including waiting time between matches, each shift could easily be an hour. It can be painfully boring if the bots you're assigned break down at the beginning of the match or if they're just constantly beaten. Even if they're technically all opposing teams, you want somebody to root for when you're not playing, right? 

When those breakdowns occur, it's important to send people to issue scout, which is actually the secret 3rd type of scouting. It's basically pit scouting: part 2. You march right up to their pit and ask what went wrong, how quickly it'll be fixed, and how likely it is to repeat. Not everyone likes face-to-face scouting. It can be nerve-wracking to just cold approach some random technician and start blasting them with questions. Luckily, my natural proclivity for nosiness comes in real handy here.

So, why is scouting so important, anyway? Scouting is important because of alliance selections. All the most important scouting happens during quals, when robots are randomly assigned to alliances of 3 to play. The top 8 bots become alliance captains during playoffs and get to select who they want on their alliance. The data you've gathered becomes EXTREMELY important. It tells you who's reliable, who's not, and who complements your own strengths. Selections are extremely chaotic: each top 8 team sends a rep who stands out in the middle of the field who announces their picks in front of the entire audience. There's no break between the last qualification match and selections, so the reps are usually being frantically shouted at on the phone by members of their strategy team as they attempt to parse their spreadsheets. If you're high-ranking, teams will pitch to you in the time leading up to selections.

This actually resulted in a situation that began to turn a little bit hostile when two different teams attempted to pitch to us at once. One of their pitching people got a bit agitated and started getting snarky about the other team's robot. I think he was just getting desperate because he knew we likely wouldn't pick his team - and we didn't. We wouldn't have picked them anyway (their bot was less consistent) but his lack of professionalism sure didn't help his chances.

That team got very unlucky later on, actually. They'd been having problems with the bot all competition and after finally getting it sorted they lost a semi-finals match due to no fault of their own. It was actually an error with how the field itself was calculating points. When they argued it with the refs, they were dismissed. I felt really bad for them.

On other stuff: I actually caught a cold from last week's competition, so I was feeling pretty crummy. Wearing a mask while cheering your heart out on a sore throat isn't really fun. But hey, I'd like to believe my cheering made some kind of difference because we made it all the way into finals. We unfortunately did end up losing that one but it's chill, we left the event with enough points to basically guarantee our ticket to the district competition!