My team just recently qualified for the world competition in St. louis on a wild card and I was just wondering how teams who normally make it their scout the vast amount of teams. Are current scouting program is good for regional events, combining pit and stand scouting information, but I feel that it will become too difficult to keep track of at the world competition when their are so many teams and too few people. Anything will be very helpful, Thanks
Congratulations on your Wildcard, attending Champs a great experience.
There are around 600 teams which attend the Championship event, you don’t need to scout all these teams. The 600 teams are divided into 8 divisions of about 75 teams each. You only really need to scout these 75 teams, all of which play on the same field as these are the ones you will be playing with and against for in the Division part of the competition. On the Einstein field, the winning alliance from each division plays against the other divisional winners.
Once you know the other teams on your field, you can use BlueAlliance.com to see how they did. Hopefully there is a link to a few of the videos so you can watch each team play, especially in their playoff matches.
At Champs, go around the pits, and ask what improvements, if any, the team has made. Watch the qualification matches to confirm the pre-champs intel.
Pit scouting is more difficult at champs, but every division has their pits together and you have two full days of qualification matches, so it shouldn’t be too hard. However, scouting teams in your division ahead of time by watching their past matches is a great idea!
IMO the only real difference between the St. Louis and a given regional/divisional (other than a larger pool of robots) is the depth of the field. It seems that there is a dearth of quality high shooters this year, yet very many good breechers. The difference in these numbers is very important in the selection of an alliance in the elims. A robot’s specialization is significantly more important this year than in years past. Because of the different role each robot may have on an alliance this year, we are happy that the number of good high goal shooters should be deep enough to have at least two on each of the 8 alliances in each division during elims. It is doubtful to find that in any regional or even divisional CMP this year.
Scouting at the Worlds should, in theory, be conducted in a similar fashion as you would at a regional/district, albeit more tiring since there will be more matches (assuming that we start on Thursday afternoon again). If you assign one/two people per robot in a regional/district, then you should do the same at the Worlds. Compiling at the end should be the same.
When the divisions get released with the list of teams in each one, try to pre-scout the teams in your division by checking out their reveal video, if they have one, and looking at their past matches. If by chance there is no picture, or reveal video or video of past matches make sure they are first on your list to pit scout. Also make sure, to pit scout the other teams to know if anything has changed since their last match. Other than that, just scout your division and you should be fine.
I suggest that you panic 
/s
Think of it as a big regional. except there’s 6 of them going on at the same time. and the venue is gigantic. and the whole experience is fantastic.
With a bigger team, we were able to scout as normal the two years I went to champs (and in 2013 there were 100 teams per field, if I’m remembering correctly); everyone had to take on a few more teams than at our regionals/DCMP (and a lot more than our district events), but not many more. this might be different if you’re low on people. Pit scouting would be a fantastic idea if you have the manpower; to be able to see all the cool stuff people come up with up close is something all the scouts should get to do - every person who goes there really. even if you can’t scout in the pits, at least try to get a picture of all the robots so you can get an idea as to their functionality.
There’s no reason why your field scouting should change from earlier, unless you think there’s something you can do better than you did last time.
Keep in mind that every team that is going to CMPS has had at least 1 event - district teams at least 3 - so there should be video of most, if not all of the teams. utilize this to do some pre-pit scouting, or to replace your pit scouting if you just wont have enough resources for that.
in the end, though, it just depends on how much work youre willing to put into this. if you chose to collect all the pit scouting info, and you know it’ll take you until 3 in the morning to compile together all that information, you can choose to stay up, or cut back then (whether it’s because you’re too tired, or pretty much guaranteed to be a 3rd/4th robot, or whatever). if you chose to not collect that info, you cant decide that you want it later.
Congratulations! We were so happy when the second wildcard was generated at FLR, knowing that our friends from a few exits up I-87 would qualify. The robot 3044 produced this season is unfathomably accurate at scoring high goals from the outer works, hitting something like 7/7 in several matches. All of team 20 was impressed and appropriately concerned about facing that robot in finals.
Anyway, The Rocketeers run a collaborative scouting program called Constellation. If we wind up in the same division, pm me and I’d be happy to put you in touch with our head scouts. We can answer any questions you might have about the system.
Best of luck in St. Louis!