[Zac]

As Jay pointed out, scouting is tough, plain and simple.

A few additional things that I have noticed which play into your three questions...

While teams may have scouting data, even good scouting data, they don't always analyze it well. What I have seen time and time again is that 3 good robots don't always equal a good alliance. Many of these games require the alliance to divide and conquer. For instance this past year, having 3 robots that all score 10 boulders in the high goal consistently then climb looks like a great alliance on paper. But if they all require using the low bar to cycle, and then need the center spot to climb... well thats just a traffic jam. A good alliance needs to be 3 robots that can work well TOGETHER, and bring out the best in one another. I have seen on many occasions an alliance of 3 good/ok robots work together very well and take down seemingly unbeatable alliances made up of awesome teams that just trip over each other the entire match.

One of my favorite alliances to be on from this past year was at the Boston regional. 1768 was with the alliance captain 1058, as well as 5563 (they actually came in as a backup robot early in the eliminations, and were an absolute jackpot). I have never felt so comfortable on an alliance. 1058 did what the were doing best and made sure to get boulders in the low goal for the guaranteed tower strength, this simultaneously gave the rest of the alliance a huge sense of relief. All of a sudden there was so much less stress to score X number of boulders, 1058 has that covered. This meant less stress for the other drivers. 5563 was absolutely awesome, and knocked down the defenses while being simultaneously invisible most of the time, they were cautious in when they crossed as to not disrupt any shots that were being taken, and they always stayed close to the defenses to allow for easy driving around for the rest of the alliance. 5563 also allowed for 1058 and 1768 to climb on the outside positions of the tower, and would then drive up the batter at the last second to avoid bumping either robot during the critical "get the hooks on" phase. It was fantastic. Each robot on the alliance allowed the others to play to their strengths.

This is also important to notice while scouting. I saw several instances this past season where a robot would cross several defenses, and get the check marks on the scouting sheets, but in doing so that robot cut off an alliance member, then crashed into the other alliance member causing them to miss a shot. Performing well while causing your alliance partners to perform poorly isn't an easy thing to quantify on a scouting sheet, and often dent make its way into the notes section.

~Zac