[Citrus Dad]

The best solution is to set up a team of at least 6 to 8 scouts to follow the scoring and actions on the field. This is MUCH more important than pit scouting--if you have to choose, do field scouting.

If you don't have the resources to field scout, start with the OPR listed in the Blue Alliance (the Android app lists all of them under Stats). While it isn't always a good metric, it will give you at least a sense of relative position--a team at the top of the list will always be performing better than a team at the bottom. Then have 1 or 2 scouts watch the matches and take notes as to which robots are performing best and what tendencies they have. Then the night before the eliminations, rank your selections and focus on the team highest on your list.

In almost every competition we have provided a draft list to a first-time alliance captain. We started doing that after being at an event where a captain was on the floor picking off the ranking list. (We gave 4814 our list in 2013 on Curie because they were rookies, and then they almost beat us in the finals!) We'd rather have those teams already prepared, but I'm guessing that will never be the case.

So, any California teams at our events who are just starting out, come by early in the competition and we'll help set you up on scouting for the event.