The Technomancers have a scouting team to scout both the pits and the matches.
Pit Scouting-
The scouting team is divided into pairs and each pair has a folder with ten or so teams scout. The number, of course, depends on the number of teams at the event and the number of people on the scouting team. We find our assigned teams and ask them questions such as (and these are based on the Breakaway game):
-how long they have been a team
-if their bot could play front, back, centre, or more than one
-how they scored balls and any other offensive moves
-defensive abilities/moves
-how many bumps they could shoot over (if any)
-if they went over the bumps, through the tunnels, or both
-type of wheels
-could they hang
-if they had an autonomous
-if they had pnuematics (and if so, where was it located on the robot)
-of their robot had any other outstanding abilities that they wished to share
-etc
For the matches:
Our scouting team would work in shifts (3 people would watch about 8 matches and then it would go to the next shift). Each person was assigned a section of the field (front, back, middle) and would take notes on the two robots in their section. Such notes would be:
-if they bot had an autonomous (and if they scored)
-special moves or abilities
-good traction
-if they helped other bots or were assisted
-how many they scored and how
-defense and offense (and how well they could do in these areas)
-which alliance won the match
-score
-etc
For both the pit and match scouting, we had spreadsheets that our scout master typed up for us to use.
Also, whenever we have finished scouting all of the teams and the matches, then we discuss as a group, what teams had the best robot (based on scoring, overall reliability, extra abilities, defense, offense, etc) and our drive team would also give us input of the teams that were easiest to work with at the driver station as well as the speed of the human players. We separated the team sheets into piles of "definatley like" (which was more like our "to make us feel better" pile since most of them were already ranked in the top 8), a "like," "last resort," and "definatley NO." This really helped us to make our list for alliance teams.
It does take a lot of dedication as some others previously stated. It is basically all that the scouting team and I did at teh competitons but I loved every minute of it.
You get to meet awesome people, watch matches, collect buttons, etc