Just wondering if you need to fit in the batter in order to scale the tower.
Did you find the definition of SCALE in the manual? If so, does it say anything about the BATTER?
(Teaching a man to fish here, rather than giving him a fish.)
I may have phrased it wrong, when you have your whole team surrounding the tower ready to scale. Do you have to fully be on the batter ramp around the tower, or can u hang off a little?
You are correct in assuming that fitting 3 robots with bumpers on the batter and scaling is a spacing problem. The tower faces are only about 28" wide and you are required to have about 6-7 inches of bumper width outside your robot frame. This means that if you wanted to fit within the 28" size of the tower face you can only make your robot about 21" wide plus 7" of bumper. You can however scale the tower to a higher level then what the rules require in order to clear the low goal even more, giving your alliance members more room to scale. Or you could push yourself away from the wall to accomplish the same effect.
Not from a direct rules standpoint, but perhaps from a practical standpoint. If you can’t get at least part of your robot in the batter, it would be difficult (though not impossible if you can tilt toward the tower) to pull up on a rung without going outside of the 15" extension limit on the frame perimeter. The only load-bearing surfaces of the tower are the batter and the rung.