[BrendanB]

Great points in here mainly figure out what/why you want to scout. Aside from collecting numbers what I find more important is being able to look at a field of robots and determine what type of robots we want on our alliance and then rank the robots we see on the field that would best fit those roles.

Prioritize robots that have strengths you don't have. Pick robots who will work well with you. If all three of you need to go to the landfill to get totes you'll all be in each other's way. The same goes for the HP station.

The same can be said for autonomous: pick robots that have routines that work well with yours to achieve the highest score.

Keep an eye on the field for consistent performers who can perform tasks reliably from match to match. Keep an eye on teams progressing as the weekend goes on. Some teams increase their performance near the end of their rounds and can be huge dark horses in alliance selections. Find out why teams are under/over performing by talking in the pits.

Don't just look at the top robots on the field the more important partners are the ones who will be around for the last 8 picks and can often be the most important. Last year at early events it was hard to get a robot in the third round who could quickly and consistently gain possession for a three assist cycle or consistently score a ball in autonomous but a few were out there. Most of the time teams won't be in a position to pick the one of the top 2-4 robots at an event so don't dwell too much on them.

Having the numbers on who scores more totes/rcs in auto and teleop is very important but don't just focus on getting numbers because you need to examine each robot through a variety of lenses that numbers might not show. In previous years teams who had a low average score could have been slaughtered with defense in their matches while your higher average teams never had defenders on them. Defense isn't applicable this year since alliances are separate but whenever a scout tells me "This team is really good they scored xxx on their own" I want to know if they were defended.

Scouting with small groups isn't easy but its doable. You can throw 20 people at scouting but if they don't understand how to analyze a field of robots all the data in the world can't help you.