[smurfgirl]

I like to say that there are three factors in the recipe for success at a competition: a good robot, a good drive team, and a good strategy.

The third component, the strategy, relies heavily on scouting. Scouting is incredibly valuable to strategy, alliance partner selection, and success in match outcomes. You can have a fantastic bot and drivers who know how to operate it, but if you don't know how to work with your partners or how to counteract your opponents, you won't be reaching your maximum potential as a team or as an alliance.

If you find that your scouting data isn't valuable to you, it probably means that you're just not taking down the right information. Think about teams' robots in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, how they could complement your own team or why they would not do so. Look at trends in their performance over the course of a competition- are they getting better or getting worse? Have they had technical difficulties and have they resolved them? Some more qualitative observations could help to round out your quantitative data and give you something more meaningful to work off of.

(For example: just because a team scores an average of 12 times a match doesn't mean you should pick them as an alliance partner- if you both score can only score from the near zone, you might not be the best match. However, if they can score 12 times in a match and they complement your team's playing style and abilities, they're a great pick! Even if you're up against powerhouses, look for their vulnerabilities and how you could stop them- can they only score from a certain angle or position? If it takes them a long time to line up with the goal in order to score, you could try bumping their corner to misalign them and cause them to take up more valuable time. The exact things you want to watch out for vary by game, but you should get the picture.)