Scouting is one of the hardest things in the game to master but one of the more important to master if you want to someday have a world champion.
Step 1:
Look at your opponent’s Fighter Scouting report. It should look something like this:
Fighter Scouting Report
Lights Off
Lights Off stands 4 feet 9 inches tall and reportedly weighs 124lbs. He is currently
registered in the Featherweight division. He fights for U.S. Midwest and is managed by Alcatraz Gym
has has a rating of 15, a status of 20 and record of 57-41-0 (54/37) and is currently A . His record in world title fights is 2-2-0 (2/1)
Link to this FighterTag Locker Fight History Available OpponentsPractice against this Fighter
From this we can see a few things. A 4’9” fighter is almost to the lowest limit of 4’5”. He has also won 54 of his 57 fights by knockout. This fighter is certainly a slugger. Now we have to figure out how many ability points he probably has.
An easy way to figure out the minimum value is to go rating+status+53. This will give 88 Ability Points in this case. For a fighter like Lights Out, I would probably take that as he has also lost 41 fights in his career and 37 losses by knock out are almost certain to have made him loose points from Injury Points. But lets assume you are facing a slugger with a similar build who is 20-0-0 (20/0) with all first round knock outs. 20+20+53=93. As most first round KO’s once they also get the winning streak start giving 3 or so APs per win, it would probably be safer to guess he is actually 20*3=60+53=113. Personally it would probably be more like 108-110 range, from experience, but I would always rather over-estimate my foe than to underestimate. From here, some really smart people will pen and paper it and get a rough idea of what the guy looks like. If it’s an easy match this is what I do as well. For a match I am not so sure of the out come I move to the Create a Boxer tool in the gym. It will let you put points in, move them around, change the build, ect until you get something resembling your opponent. Now that you know what your are probably facing, go back to the scouting report and click on the gym the fight is managed by. In the above example it is Alcatraz Gym.
As time goes on managers come and go. Sometimes when they leave the game, either for good or just taking a hiatus, they leave fighters on auto schedule. The first thing I check for is to see the last online time. If they have not been on in a significant amount of time, I just saved myself A LOT of time looking at past fight reports. If it says 11/27/2019 or something, you can look at any fight that fighter has had after that date and it is safe to assume that the fight plan has not changed. If they have logged in over the last week or so you can expect that they are going to change the fight plan. After playing you will learn which managers constantly log on and which ones log on religiously for a week or two then disappear for six months. Beware these managers and check their online status before your fight runs or run the risk of the stars aligning in their favor and face a fight plan you were not prepared to meet.
Alcatraz is an anomaly in the game as the commissioners go in to balance the fighter’s ability points and ensure the default fight plans are in place. Those plans are listed under Alcatraz Gym in the Help Files. This means that it will have an online time that may be recent, however rest assured that it is not an actively managed gym. The fight plans are a known quantity and while decent quality, if you know your opponents plan, you can find ways to exploit weaknesses in it.
The Official Bot Gym is managed completely and automatically by the game. Even the commission has no access to it and only the Game Admin has any ability to do anything in it. It will also show a recent log in time, however this is an automated process that occurs when the game is assigning BOTs to fight. BOTs are generated from real fighters from real gyms and retain the fight plan that was in place at the time of generation. Like Alcatraz, however the plan is not changed. What it is generated with it will run until the fighter is beyond beat down. That said there are managers past and present who can make god-like fight plans with variables to make baby Jesus cry, so just because its an automated BOT fighter, do not underestimate them. Even the best managers in the game have multiple losses to the Official Bot Gym. We will get to looking at how to read the fight report and figure out what is going on in a minute, which can get really useful against particularly hard BOTs.