I've noticed that a lot of scouting advice (not only on this thread) is geared towards alliance selection for the playoff (formerly elimination) matches. As a mentor for a team that has done a horrendous job of scouting our first three years (the first two years our efforts were barely up to half-hearted, and last year, we didn't actually use any of the data collected so that anyone would notice): How much do you feed scouting info into the qualification (formerly seeding) matches? If you do use scouting info for qualification/seeding, when and how do you deliver the appropriate up-to-date scouting info on the six teams involved (three opponents, two alliance partners, and yourself) to your driver team, where the info would be of use for planning match strategy?
Back to the general scouting process, I'm figuring that this year with reduced interaction between the alliances, the scouting info on the other alliance's teams can be limited to four(composite) questions, in approximate order of importance:
- What do they bring to coopertition? Zero, One, or three totes? If one or three, can they "complete" a stack of four, or just originate it?
- How quickly do they get the RCs off the step? (seconds to first, seconds to fourth, average number per match)
- How quickly do they get the totes off the step? (seconds to first, seconds to twelfth, average number per match)
- How capable is each team's HP as a "spear chucker" (throwing debris over the wall onto the other side of field)?
The info on the alliance would include these, as well as the following, again in approximate priority order:
- How high (and fast) can each team consistently place an RC?
- Does each team have a history of knocking over stacks, committing fouls, or getting in the way of alliance partners?
- How fast can each team clear the landfill?
- How efficiently can each team work an HP station?
- How high can each team stack totes?
- Can each team get a noodle in/on the RCs? How fast?
- (How fast) can each team deal with inverted totes?
- (How fast) can each team deal with totes on a long/short side?
- How capable/fast is each team at processing litter?
Please advise if I missed something important or you believe that I got priorities seriously out of order.