How many times do you scout a team???

Hey everyone. I’m my team’s scout captain this year and I was just wondering, at competition how many matches do you scout a team for?

As many as possible. There is no such thing as too much data on a given team.

Precisely. Our team has decided to pit scout, game scout and re-pit scout if necessary.

Keep an eye on the list of teams at your regional, some veterans may be slacking, and some rookies might be dominating. Don’t write off a rookie team just because they are rookies.

As many as possible. There is no such thing as too much data on a given team.

I feel like if we were to scout all 40 teams like 6 times then we would 240 sheets of paper with information that we would have to sift through and it wouldn’t be very helpful. Also let it be known that my team isn’t very big we have about 20 people on our team and the ones that can scout will not want to do it all day.

We have two different types of scouting.

  1. Pit Scouting: Our students go into the pits to get specific information from each team at the regional in regards to their robot. (Drivetrain, autonomous modes, 1 or 2 speed motors, etc.)

  2. Match Scouting (the one that holds more weight): Other students will sit in the scouting recording match data, and how a specific robot performs. We typically have six students doing the scouting, and they are rotated every now and then.

We handle scouting very seriously, as that helps us figure out who exactly are the top performers at the competitions, so we try and get as much information and data as we can.

Having information for every team for every match is very helpful. It lets you see how a team progressing. Is there a team that is progressivly getting better or maybe even getting worse?

It is a lot of work to sift through all the information, but after spending 6 weeks to build the robot, I think its worth it to spend a little more time to give yourself the best chance at winning. Many teams have developed fancy computer programs or other systems to avoid having to go through all those sheets.

All of them. You never know when a team that has been struggling all day Friday will “get it together” on Saturday (or worse, fall apart as the competition wears on)…

You can fit more than one team onto a sheet. And let it be known that 330 has been known to scout every single match, for 6 robots, at one person per robot, and this would be with about 15-20 people (not just team members).

And two of those people were entering data into a computer.

To expand on Eric’s post: Every team, every match.

1511 scouts every match :slight_smile:

We do pit scouting and match scouting (yes, EVEN finals & matches we’re in!). This way we can line up all the actually information. Pit scouting is good, just to get an idea of what teams have as far as robots. We always say that seeing is much better than just listening to the numbers :smiley:

Hope this helps!

We tend to scout a team all threw the competition.

As has been said, more data is always (always) better. If you’re worried about having too much paper to sift through consider having one of your programmers do up a scouting program, or at least get good at inputting the data to [your favourite spreadsheet program].

Wow thanks everyone…you have given me some good ideas for scouting, now I just have to convince my team to let me do it:yikes:

If you don’t scout every team at every match, you won’t be able to track progress. A low ranking team that suddenly fixes a part and scores twice as much as usual in their final matches would make an excellent, if underrated, alliance partner.

Even if you are not the picking alliance, you should have a ranked list of preferred picks of every single team at the regional.

We don’t stop scouting teams until we’re knocked out of the event.

We do 3 separate scouts per team but mostly for the teams we play with and against hope that helps and be sure to make a pit scout in addition!
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scout scout scout=3 forms

  • a pit-scout(scout of the pits)
    -there is no such thing as an over scouting :0

All of this said (and Crystal answered what 1511 currently does), if you are shorthanded there are two solutions.

  1. What we did our rookie year
  • Have 1 or 2 people at all times watching matches and taking data. (we used a single excel sheet that had all of the teams in each match listed, but you could also just have one sheet per team with their match numbers on it)
  • They preselect 2 teams per match to watch for that match, and gather all the data they can.
  • In the selection process, you make sure every team is covered 3-4 times.
  • If one of the teams chosen is a DNS or just dies (or does very little), you gather data on another team in the match.
  • Make sure you get one match per “time period”… we used to try for a practice match, a friday morning, a friday afternoon, and a saturday morning.

This method limits the number of people you need to scout but also gets rid of the “they were temporarily broken” or “temporarily awesome” issue. It is not as ideal as having data from every single match, but just like in Robot Design, you HAVE to do what your team is capable of or its just not going to be useful data anyway.

  1. SHARE
    Find another team that has awesome scouting and ask if you can help them in exchange for their data, or just have their data, or some other kind of trade. 1511 has worked with teams in this manner, providing our data to teams that don’t have scouting systems or that come help us. Many teams are very open with their data.

Good luck!

Definitely as many as possible. We do at least one time for every match a team plays between Friday and Saturday.

It matters on how important that team is to your schedule. you should scout at least every team once at a competition. But if a team is your opponent in a qualification match, then you might want to scout them more than once. Its all a matter of how many people you have on your scout team. The more the marrier.

we have our 6 scouts and assign a spot for each, that way whatever team is in that spot is scouted, and we do that for every match up to the playoffs.