Best Ways To Scout

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Molten

I really got to disagree with the message sent by this one. If the scout is good, they can get everything they need to know from the people directly. There is no need for the stands.

While you're certainly entitled to your opinion and to do it your way, I don't think you could find a single team with a Championship banner who'd agree with you. Probably couldn't even find a team who's captained a regional alliance to gold either.

Teams often won't and don't lie to you, they'll tell you what they expect their robot to do. But that's often not what actually happens. I know many teams who have gone into events with very very high expectations for their bots, both from themselves and others, who ended up seeding very poorly and missing eliminations entirely.
Perfect example, 103 in 2007 on Galileo. 103 won New Jersey and made the semis in Philly. They had a great machine. But it didn't play well and missed the eliminations completely. If you just had talked to them in the pits, they'd tell you, honestly, what they expected from their robot, which had high capabilities.

When in the pits, you don't get to see things like driver skill and tendencies, coaching skill and tendencies, human player skill and tendencies, or how they react to specific other teams maneuvers. The average scout in the stands might not notice a lot of this stuff either (only the really good do), but you have no chance in the pits.

There is no substitute for field scouting, period. Not every team will have the resources to do it at the ultimate level, but you still need it. You think the robot was the only reason 1114 was so good last year?
Consider this. 1114 showed up at 5:15 in the morning last year so they could get the best seats in the division to aid scouting.

Bottom line. Nothing replaces stand scouting. Pit scouting is still important, but you can't accurately create a good pick list or proper strategy without stand scouting.