Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

If there is an implementation of the seeding or ranking model, make sure it isn't unfair to the teams that can't go to many regionals. I think it's fine if there are more chances to get to CMP the more regionals you go to, but if you did a cumulative point tally of sorts, teams that are unable to go to more than one will have a huge disadvantage to those who are able.

Also, I second Tesla, Euler and Turing.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I agree that this is an important consideration. Ideally I wish every team could compete in two events, and that is the biggest reason I like the district model. But since most teams compete in one event, I think a points system should basically guarantee that a win or a Chairman's from a single event gets you into the championship, while other types of achievements could be added together from two events to qualify a team.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Going to eight somewhat smaller divisions wouldn't necessarily be a huge logistic challenge. If you do something like the 2006 GTR dual-field setup, alternating matches for Galileo Alpha division teams on one field with Galileo Beta division teams on an adjacent field, you can share big-screen video and personnel between them and you won't need a lot of separation between the fields. You can double up the split divisions in the pit area, so you wouldn't need much more in the way of volunteers.

It would be a very busy time for people working dual fields, with a match starting every 3 or 4 minutes. But the pool of qualified volunteers is getting large enough that I don't think that would be the limiting factor.

I think the biggest issue would be more than doubling the number of Einstein matches.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Would that mean correspondingly fewer and shorter speeches? :D

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I had an idea about how to increase the number of teams at the championship, but in an effort to not derail this thread I have put it here:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=105379

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I doubt you'll get a single working mentor to sign on to that system. Some of us already burn too much vacation on FRC. You'll also have a hard time pulling kids out of school for an entire week.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

This is a nonstarter simply because it requires FIRST to rent a venue for an entire week (maybe more?) and it requires students/teachers/mentors to miss school/work for a week.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Yep, 2 days off for a regional is already a lot, a whole week off for robotics just doesn't sound practical for someone who is working full time. Especially since most of us get only 2 or 3 weeks off a year...

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Just some random thoughts,

Sometimes losing at a regional and not qualifying for Champs is a good thing in disguise. Our team built a killer of a robot last year. We entered in only one regional confident we were going to 3 peat as the first seed and gain our berth to Champs. We ran into CAN problems with the Jaguars and a bunch of small problems on the field and we lost critical matches in quals. We ended up in the 5th seed alliance going against the #1 seed in the semi's at our home regional. We gave the Poofs and the Holy Cows a run for their money but we lost in the semi's and our season was over. We were real disappointed we didn't make it to Champs but this didn't stop our team. We took the monies we would of spent at Champs and spent it on new tools and new CAD computers. We did more demo's showing off the robot we built. We competed at 2 off season events and won Cal Games. We went to Madtown and lined up against two World Champions 973 and 254 in the finals. We searched for more sponsors so we can compete in 2 regional's this year. We held summer CAD classes for any student interested. We organized our growing team and sought out some new mentors to bring in new capabilities for this year. Our team also stepped up team promotion to judges at the regional this year. We figured it out that it doesn't earn any recognition if our innovative robot features are a well kept secret. We had mentors from two other successful teams come and talk to our team about how to talk to judges to show them what a great robot we have. The team didn't win a judging award this year but the judges came back multiple times to ask more questions and that was pretty exciting. Even more important than winning is the way our team worked together at this years competition. The students' level of accomplishment grows every year and it shows. There were students working on the robot, talking to judges, helping other teams with their robots, looking at other teams' robots, and watching matches to scout the other teams to see who would make the best alliance partners. This year has been a great ride so far and I am very proud of our team.

FIRST is about being gracious competitors and we take that very seriously on the MVHS team.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I don't know other regionals, having never attended one, but I do know the Hawaii regional very well. This year, for about 80% of the teams at the Hawaii regional, Hawaii was the only regional. I don't know anything about other regions, but my guess is that that number seems unusually high to many teams on the Mainland US. For our regional it is actually unusually low. We just can't afford the airfare.

I am against any sort of ranking "counting statistic" that takes multiple regionals into account simply because it leaves Hawaii and Israel teams out in the cold. If the "buy-in" slots to Worlds were taken away, I would rather they were replaced with extra slots at the individual regionals assigned in proportion to the number of teams at an event than by extra slots worldwide.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I would still advocate for a qualification system like the MAR/FiM model, but you do bring up a good point that we would have to figure out how to accomodate teams who only attend one regional. One of the requirements of MAR/FiM is that teams must attend two district events. Obviously, this is not feasible on a regional level because, as you mentioned, teams from far-off places (Hawaii, Australia, Israel, etc.) simply cannot afford the airfare. And, of course, we can't tell those teams "too bad." I think we could be able to figure out a system that has qualifications for the championship, but only requires attending a minimum of one regional.

What if only the best regional performance of each team was considered?

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Personally, I think averaging the number of events would be the 'best' method of doing a points system based championship that allows for teams to compete at any number of events.

Interesting thing to think about on the subject of a points system Championship:

If FRC moves to a points system Championship, SHOULD there be a larger gap in time between the end of Regional/District play and the Championship? Traveling to the Championship on short notice seems to become more and more of a nightmare each year, do we really want to see ~200+ Teams (Assuming there are some auto qauls) trying to book flights, rooms, buses, dinners, shipping robots in the same 2-3 day period?

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I'd actually advocate against using averages. And here's why:

Take two random teams. Let's say that one (Redateam) is a rookie/2nd-year team, and the other (Blueateam) is not. Redateam attends one event, and does quite well, but not well enough to qualify via a merit-based slot (say, finalist and a couple of non-qualifying awards). Blueateam attends 2, does the same as or even slightly better than Redateam at one, but at their first event they were pretty lousy (not in elims, maybe one award that isn't based on robot design). Redateam will qualify over Blueateam based on that average.

What happens when enough teams start figuring that out? Any team not in a district system will probably restrict themselves to a single event to improve their chances if they're decent to good. Less cross-pollination results, or maybe more as teams travel farther to find an event they can do well at in a one-and-done.

Why do I say this? I've seen it. Anybody who's seen my FF picklists for this year would notice a number of 2nd-and 3rd-year teams near the top of the list, partly because I used a lot of averages to help generate them and those teams have fewer data points than the 4th-year-plus teams (just an artifact of the generating system).

But, on the other hand, the best score method will have teams attending multiple events, trying to get a better score. Ditto for total score.

So, where does that leave us? I'd say back at the District system. Combined score from the first X events. With one minor change:anybody not attending at least X events gets X/N*CS, where N is the number of events they did attend and CS is the combined score from those events. (Basically, assume they got the same score at a second event.)

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

That's interesting, I was about to present the opposite argument, also warning against averages.

Say, Purpleateam and Greenateam are essentially on the same level from build season. Like so many teams out there, they have potential, but overlooked a few things and not fully dialed in Purpleateam attends 2 events, but Greenateam can only afford 1 event. Both go to their first event and do alright, but not well enough. For Greenateam, that's it, better luck next year. For Purpleateam, they go home, spend the next few weeks improving, and end up Finalists and award-winners at their second event. Their points are averaged, or even their best score is taken, and they make the next level.

This seems to happen to some extent at every level almost universally. I don't see a really great way to avoid this. Taking only the first event doesn't account for the phenomenal improvement some teams make, but I don't see a good way to measure the potential of single-event teams. Certainly its worthwhile to compare like elements as much as possible (teams to other teams in their event, or at least other teams with the same number of events at that point). Beyond that though, I don't know.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I'm not sure if this has already been mentioned, but my mom recently came up with a great idea to make regional finals more fair and interesting. If you are a top 8 team, you cannot chose another top 8 team. I for one am tired of seeing the top two teams form a super alliance, and ruining other very deserving team's chances at attending nationals.