Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Hi CD community,

I was wondering if someone could help figure out how Coopertition Points being integrated with QS has changed seedings this year?

If anyone has data on what the average seed delta would be if Coopertition Points were the first tie-breaker and QS was based solely on win-loss-tie.

Or more generally, have people seen it having a huge impact of giving teams higher seeds relative to their win records?

Thanks.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Many teams just "coopertitioned" their way up the ranks into the top 8 in the regionals we attended. We did find them worth a little bit too much in the QS than expected/ hoped for. Sometimes, the not-as-effective robots were in the top 8 not because they were carried by other teams, but because they had teammates who did the coopertition, or they did the coopertition. And coopertition points I believe are worth 2 wins in qualifying score.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I strongly believe that you should read the rules on this...

The maximum amount of Coopertition points earnable in any given match is 2 points for each alliance per [G41]. Therefore, Coopertition points are worth at most 1 win per match.

Coopertition points can double your effective win total. However, the Coopertition points themselves are worth only one win each time you get them.


Back to the matter at hand:
I've seen some of the rankings changing. The coopertition score really boosted some teams quickly--if a team got a run of coop balances and wins at the same time, they could go from low to high in a few matches. I've seen that when monitoring Fantasy FIRST points live. However, I have no hard data.

I think that the coopertition bridge is the single biggest contributing factor to the relatively high number of elimination upsets this year. Teams that weren't doing so well could balance and score and seed high--and then get taken down by teams that were doing well. But in the process, they could sure split up powerhouses. OTOH, the powerhouses realized very quickly that the Coop bridge was extremely important, and someone on their alliance would go for it every match. This shot them to the top of the rankings at many events--but the triple balance could take them out of competition.

The coopertition bridge, IMO, is one of the best strategic elements the GDC has ever put into an FRC game. It forces you to think about ranking strategy, strategy for relating to other teams, and split-second decisions without good communication with the person you're working with (a real-world challenge). And they got it just about right. Could they have minorly tweaked the point values for either coopertition or winning? Probably. Would it have been nearly as effective? No.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Eric,
I am not a firm believer in Co-op points as is. Some tweaks need to be done, but I can't seem to come up with suggestions even after reading about the whole GTR East thread and the events that unfolded prior to our last qualification match 89 at Lone Star. Let's just say there is a correlation between the team that 359 chose as its second partner and the same team that played in that match.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

It sucks that to seed well you now have to rely on your opponents being good and not just your partners.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Well Cory, at Lone Star it was about us not getting that Co-op points because it "wasn't in the best interest of other teams."
Too bad, we did.;)

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

What? Blasphemy! Next thing you know, they'll be doing something crazy, like have our ranking based off our opponents' score. :rolleyes:

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Speaking purely from anecdotal evidence, Coopertition Points had a huge impact on our rating. We had a pretty average win-loss-tie record, but only once did we ever get a coopertition balance (a combination of us not being able to balance well and our alliances not being able to live up to their promises). As a result, we were ranked really low.

Regardless, I think Coopertition Points are a great element of the game, and I hope FIRST keeps them as important (or nearly as important) as they are now. I think the reason so many teams suffered because of them is that in past years, the endgame has been such a long shot that teams didn't concentrate on it. That was our mistake, at least. Now that we've had the opportunity to learn from that mistake, I hope FIRST will keep a similar system around and teams will give it more credit during the design phase than we did this year.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

You could always directly control your opponent's score when rankings were based upon it.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I feel like FIRST will never truly implement a system where your ranking is determined by your performance and your performance alone. Especially when there is such a huge difference between the best and the worst.

At least it's better than the system from 2010. That was an awful system.

People quickly jumped onto the CP train once they figured out what it was. Perhaps if you perform numerical calculation, you'll find the standard deviation in rankings will be high in week 1 regionals, but it will be very low in the later weeks.

I remember performing a slight analysis for the Peachtree Regional and removing the effect of the CP points only caused a slight shuffling between the teams, and really didn't make a huge difference in the top 8.

- Sunny G.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Except when you weren't allowed to score for your opponent.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

2011 you could lose the minibot race to improve your RS.
2010 you could directly score for the opponent.
2009 same as 2010
2008 you could leave the balls on top of the overpass or push them across the finish line if you wanted to.
2007 you could not do anything to affect score.

I don't feel like going back further, but it's pretty clear that this is the first year in awhile in which you cannot directly contribute to, or take actions to not reduce your opponent's score.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

If you're referring to 2012 by this statement, you can score for your opponent. Nowhere is it disallowed. I also recall a Q&A answer to the effect of "It matters that it goes in, not how it goes in." (The question, IIRC, was something along the lines of "If a ball bounces in off *probable object for stuff to bounce off of*, does it still count?", or it might have been a direct "Can we score for our opponents?")

However, it helps you not one bit in the rankings. The win+coop are the only things that count.

Also, just a minor quibble: I distinctly said "score for your opponent". I made no reference to failing to score points, or not scoring as many points as you could, which has always been on the table. If you take my words as I said them, then 2007 and 2011 are both cases where you could not legally score for your opponent. If, however, you choose to take "score for your opponent" as "take actions to not reduce your opponent's score", then you have to go back to 2001, where you had no opponent but could raise or lower your partner's score (or your own) with some careful maneuvering, or 1991, when FRC had yet to run a single competition.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

And this is bad because...?

Seriously, if you don't like the idea of being handicapped by a deficient opposing alliance, do something about it. Don't just gripe about the situation. What can you do, you ask? The answer should be obvious: help your opponents to be good.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Hall of Fame FIRST Team 254 has arguably helped more teams become good than any other team in FIRST. I don't think they need a lecture on helping their opponents.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

This is a bit more complicated than just helping your opponents do well. In previous years, I have helped both partners and opponents with their machines, often doing things as simple as helping them get their drive working (2009 comes to mind) or as complicated as helping them with code/electrical etc. Usually, in previous games, it was just about getting the robot to move and with some sort of degree of control so that the machine could at least positively contribute to the scoring efforts and or strategy in a given match - 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 were easy in regards to this, as long as the machine moved, it could do SOMETHING.

Looking at this year and the bridges, helping every one of your opponents, or lets say a reasonable number of them would be a daunting task. There are many, many teams that built robots that aren't capable of climbing bridges reliably or even at all, and we're not talking about easy fixes either. Teams used the wrong wheels, wrong gearing, the frame geometry impedes with the bridge, CoG is too High, etc - fixing any one of those problems is much more than one would expect to do for any single opponent for a single match.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Amen, Karthik:

To me, the real problem here is that someone at FIRST still misses the key point:

They keep trying to change the motivations of the teams by changing the Qualifying promotion system to depend on something other than winning matches. This goes back for over a decade and keeps coming in and out of the game design. They seem think this will somehow change who wins. This does indeed serve to change how teams will play the game in qualifying. However, all such attempts fail to change anything in the end because we then proceed to play an ELIMINATION series that is ONLY about winning.

So, FIRST's attempts at trying to change what we do on the feild really don't change much after all, since the teams who know how to win invariably end up as the leaders at the end of the tournament anyway. What these attempts do serve to do is:
- Make the game more bimodal and more confusing to the spectators, since the robots do different things on the field depending on what part of the competition you are watching.
- Make the game less sport-like, since bizarre concepts like this are found no where in any main stream sport.
- Drive a lot more 'noise' into the qualifing process, since advancing in the rankings can often be most out of an individual team's control.
- Set up a lot of built in upsets in Eliminations, since the teams best equipped for winning the tournment may not be the qualifying leaders.
- Cause a lot more frustration in the actual execution of the gameplay
- Open the door for attempts to "game" the qualifying system, since the motivations of the opposing alliances may not be the same.

With 3 on 3 alliance play, we already have so many reasons to help and cooperate with other teams that we do not need more deliberately injected into the game design.

I still believe that if we are legitimately trying to make FRC be recognized as a real sport than the GDC must treat it like one. These 'social engineering experiments' do not really belong here and they really don't work anyway. Good atheletes and good sports teams win tournments, and no one seems to have a problem with this. Good Robots should excel at Robotics Competitions.

If FIRST wants to try to level the field, maybe they should create some kind of handicap rankings. This is done in golf and other sports to allow players of different proficiency to play against each other on somewhat equal terms in the same league. I personally do not think this is necessary, but whatever the solution, messing with the Qualifying promotion system has never really worked, and probably never will. The best games are the ones in which the teams with the best execution will rise to the top in both Qualifying AND Eliminations.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Amen Jim! Well said!

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Jim,
Great explanation and good points!
Once again, you have shown why YOU should be on the GDC. Haha.....

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

He already is... just for another competition. ;)

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

This weekend, at the NC regional alliance selections, for the first time I can remember, the first four selections were teams not in the top eight.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I see what you did there

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Whether or not the Coop bridge is a "social engineering experiment", I pretend it's not and instead interpret it as just another aspect of the game. It is just another challenge - you have to cooperate with a drive team ~60 feet away from you in order to get an extra 2 qualification points. It makes the qualifications matches exciting.

I've anxiously watched numerous matches, rooting for either a non-balance or a balance on the Coop bridge depending on what would help my team. I've watched webcasts where it seemed like in every match there would be an attempted Coop bridge balance that failed at the last second, a heart wrenching way to end each match.

The Coop bridge is a GREAT addition to the game this year. Let's face it - it might be confusing for outside spectators to watch, but the vast majority of the people watching a qualification match are going to be familiar with the great power of the Coop bridge balance. What an amazing thrill it is to watch a Coop balance attempt.

Many people in this thread have complained that FIRST always tries to introduce elements of the game that are out of an individual team's control:
In any FRC game there is going to be an element of luck, and that is directly built into the competition structure. That's what makes it great, in my opinion. If the BEST teams at an event always won, then my team should go to MSC with absolutely no hope of winning. Yes, our robot is good, but to be honest the improvements we are making to our robot and code are not good enough to be better than 67 and 469's entries at the event.

Yet I still have hope for winning. The competition structure might provide us with a little bit of luck, and what will make it interesting will be the elements of the game that are beyond my team's control. I'm not ready to give the state championship to 67 and 469 just because their robots are plainly better than my team's. And from the perspective of someone on a powerhouse team (I used to be on 67), I would still find it very boring to go to a competition knowing for a fact that my team will win. I am a fan of the "noise" at the competitions.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

IMHO, the 2010 ranking system, post week 1, was the best at getting the top teams to seed the highest.

If FIRST wants to be a sport, should that not be the ultimate goal of the ranking system?

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

The sports with handicaps don't change the game every year, and the handicap stays with a player, not a team! That makes this seemingly attractive idea a non-starter, imho. :)

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I think a part of this discussion is that not everyone cares about recognizing FRC as a real sport. I also think that there are those who want to celebrate the "social engineering experiment." The bridge (and how it is used) on the field and in discussions off the field, shows that there is a lot of work for the participants to do in order to balance it.

That doesn't make the situation black and white. It doesn't make it right or wrong. It provides opportunities for members of FRC to implement healthy discussions regarding strengthening the program and its positive impact.

Jane

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

"To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders."

Dean Kamen, Founder

Mission

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

Perhaps someone at FIRST is not missing the key point; rather, they are striving to fulfill their stated mission.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

At the end of the day, I think all teams crave success on the field. Few things are as inspiring as being directly rewarded for your hard work. As Jim pointed out, Elaborate Qualifying Schemes like the Coopertition bridge offer low-end teams only a slightly better shot at tasting this kind of success. This approach is dangerous and, in my mind, low end teams lose more opportunity for inspiration than they gain.
To illustrate my point, let say you just decided to take up the sport of golf. You can take two approaches: you can have fun with the sport and not count scores accurately or you can be brutally honest with yourself when counting your scores. If you take 12 strokes on a particular par 5 and give yourself a bunch of mulligans to lower your score, you will not know if you improved the next time you play the hole. However, If you were brtually honest with yourself the first time out and you were to shoot a 9 on that par 5 the next time out, then this can motivate you to stick with the sport. In other words, accurately tracking your progress can be another source of motivation/inspiration.
When FIRST clouds the game objectives on the field, It becomes hard to benchmark your teams performance versus the rest of the field. It becomes harder to track your progress from one year to the next. A low end team might, on average, only get half the score of an elite team one year. Scoring 75% of what an elite team can score the next year can be motivating/inspiring. This cannot be objectively measured in quals this year when the elite team spends half the match more concerned with the coopertition bridge than scoring points. Without elaborate qualifying shemes, teams can point to incremental objective progress and claim success. The current system makes it hard to define success as anything other than winning an event or an award. To me, this is bad for FRC.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I think one of the biggest problems I see with the CP this year is that they make qualification rounds play completely differently than eliminations. You can argue that higher skill level/quality in the eliminations makes things completely different, and it does to some extent, but here the highest level goals are different.

You are trying to win two completely different matches at once instead of one, and don't get me started on metacoopertition.

I don't think this is a good thing.

Every single match with a team that understands the rules and wants to seed high plays out differently than it would have without CP because of the need to coopertate to compete in rankings.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

While I am actually a fan of the coopertition bridge system, I fail to see what it has to do with this. Teams continue to act in their own best interests, just as they always done; it's just that, as they often have in the past, occasionally their interests are compatible with other teams'.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

As with other aspects of past games and seeding systems, I believe that FIRST is attempting to support their stated vision and mission. I don't know their minds nor their intent. I was responding to Jim's comment that FIRST is missing the point.

I'm trying to illustrate that I believe that FIRST intentionally creates these aspects of the game and/or seeding systems to make their point.

I happen to be a fan of the coopertition bridge also and I liked the Breakaway seeding system. I was not a fan of 6v0 and I would not consider it gracious to refuse to attempt a coop bridge.

I also want to see the best, most effective at playing all aspects of the game, be seeded at the top and go into eliminations.

The game design does not inhibit that, actually, if everybody cooperated on the bridge, the best should actually separate themselves from the pack by collecting four QP per match versus two.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

The CP points allow a team with good balancing ability to get very high seeded; but is that really a good thing?

I understand teams wanting to be in picking positions, but when a high seeded picker is only able to score bridge points, then they really only have one opportunity to pick a strong scoring robot, and often are left with a rather weak alliance. (this isn't always the case obviously, but it's happened, a triple balancing team is definitely an exception here).

That said, the CP bridge is very exciting to watch, and despite my team having tragedy after tragedy surrounding that bridge, when it works right, it is very awesome. There are also a huge number of times I've seen one team save another in a great show of GP.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

If I remember right, in San Diego, all alliances selections came from the pool, no alliance captains were selected.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

2 picked 3

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

1662 (#2) took 599 (#3).

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I agree with Jim on most of his points, but I'm not sure I think this one is a Bad Thing. Having some element of uncertainty does make eliminations more exciting, since there is no guarantee of the "top" teams being seeded high.

In fact, this may actually be a good thing. Young teams that don't know how to scout & prepare for picking will either get lucky, get some help from some other team, or totally mess up their picks. This could result in those teams (or others that aren't in a position to pick) realize how important this aspect of the competition is, and change their behavior the next year. Which results in stronger teams, and better competitions

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I agree with EricH's perspective above -- I think the coopertition bridge has been a great part of this year's game at the two regionals attended by 1519 (Granite State Regional in Week 1 and North Carolina Regional in Week 6). However, we haven't had direct experience with the regionals where the Coopertition bridge became an ugly point of contention with teams intentionally refusing to balance with other teams in order to affect the other team's rankings, so our perspective may be limited.

Our #1 seeding at the North Carolina Regional was a direct result of our acquiring Coopertition points in 8 of 10 matches (the highest at the event). However, bridge balancing was the #1 design goal for our robot, as it was apparent to us from reading the game manual that Coopertition bridge balancing would be essential for high seeding in Rebound Rumble.

Accordingly, we designed our robot to optimize balancing. We knew it would be difficult to balance with another team whose drivers were over 50 feet away and would have a robot very different than our own. We made design decisions about the CG of the robot to increase our balancing ability at the cost of making 3-point shots more difficult. (A lower shooter makes 3-point shots tougher than for a higher shooter.)

Some would point to our 6-3-1 record in North Carolina and say that we didn't deserve to be the #1 seed since we only got there based on our Coopertition points and the #2 seed had a 9-1-0 record, making them a clearly better robot!

However, in all 4 matches that we didn't win in North Carolina, we lost the match by a point spread of less than 10 points and our robot was on top of a balanced Coopertition bridge each time. (If you're curious, the point spreads in our non-wins were 0, 4, 7, and 7.) In each of the matches we didn't win, there was at least one empty spot on our own alliance bridge. If we had instead balanced on our alliance bridge, we could have increased our own alliance's score by 10 points and might have come away with an undefeated 10-0 record, but we would have had fewer Coopertition points. (I would note that this scenario is not always a valid argument, because in many cases the other robot we were cooperating with could have done the same!) I also know that if we hadn't been regularly heading to the coopertition bridge with 45-60 seconds left in the match, we would have been able to take a few more shots on the basket before heading to our alliance bridge.

Nonetheless, the Coopertition bridge is a key feature of this year's game. I like it, as it adds a strategic dimension that hasn't been present in the past, and also make coopertition apparent to not only the teams, but also to the audience that is part of the culture we're trying to change!

Then again, we designed our robot expressly to be good at balancing on the Coopertition bridge, so it only naturally follows that we would like the game feature!

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

If your partnes are not as good, but you can find just one robot on the other alliance that simply drives and knows how to listen to and stick with a half-decent pre-match co-op strategy, it gives you another method of hurdling past that roadblock and remain in the running for top seeding. We were able to use this to good effect this season because of the methods we used to communicate our plans to our opponents. They were able to comply with the plan the majority of the time.

I wish we'd have had this option available to us at the previous competitions we've had absolutely horrid match schedules handed to us.

I LOVED the coopertition system this year and hope it remains intact for both offseason competitions and future FRC games. It gives teams several different pathways to success.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I'd even go one step further. With the coopertition bridge, long bots have an advantage in the quals. Why? Because they are easier to drive and balance (on a 2 robot balance).

In the elims, wide bots have an advantage because they can more easily triple balance.

Therefore, the best teams for the elims are typically not in control of their alliances. It makes for a very strange game.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

The coopertition point system this year is great - I love it.

If you are a good team that gets bad opponents, then do your best to get them on the coopertition bridge when you can and win consistently. If you get a tough schedule, then do your best to win while balancing the coopertition bridge consistently.

A prepared team can do just about all of the work to get the opponent on the coopertition bridge. You can tip the bridge for them, then go to the other side and push them up once they get their front wheels onto the bridge. If you're complaining that your opponents are so bad that you can't balance with them, then you can probably afford to dedicate a full minute to getting balanced, and it will work at least some of the time. I find it silly to say that the purpose of this system is to give weak teams a chance at seeding high. Everybody plays by the same set of rules, and the good teams prepare accordingly. In no way do I see the coopertition aspect of this game making it less competitive.

In any case, this system is pretty good at putting the best teams into the #1 alliance captain spot. It is not 100% at finding the best team, but neither are the systems from previous years. And neither are the systems in place in sports.

I like this year's seeding system a lot. I don't like systems that encourage you to score on yourself. By the way, scoring on yourself intentionally isn't an element you expect to see in a sport. I like a system that lets my team work together with an opposing powerhouse in a positive way. I like a system that can reward hard schedules or easy schedules in different ways, instead of simply screwing you over if you have a hard schedule.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I've been playing around with competition data from FLR, and using data from the FIRST website as well as some simple Excel, found the average difference between this year's ranking system and a simple W-L-T system to be 4.15. Team 1507 (woo!) was the only team to move 0 places, ranked 1 in both. Team 1511 moved the most at 17 places, from 8th to 25th (for reference they had 5 wins, 7 losses, and 12 coop points). I plan on doing this for at least Buckeye for my own use, but is there interest in seeing this data from other events?

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

In response to the above poster - great effort, but I don't think such data would be that useful. If there was no Coopertition Bridge, the best balancers would have been on the actual bridges, impacting the score of the match.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

That is the data that OP asked for, and it's a cool stat to look at, but I agree with you that it's pretty useless.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Part of the scouting I've been doing for this season, amongst the usual hybrid, teleop, end game stuff, is how rankings would have turned out if coop score didn't add to qualification score (i.e., qs = qs - cp). There were some major changes.

Some major examples include the following (The 'separations' below are my speculation based on who I thought the number 1 seed would have picked had they had the chance. No guarantee):

• 125 would have seeded 1st in Boston, separating 341 and 233
• 3568 would have seeded 1st in Kettering, separating 2337 and 33
• 1114 would have seeded 1st at Greater Toronto West, likely resulting in them allying with 2056 once more
• 1868 would have taken 1st in Central Valley, separating 254 and 971
• 624 would have taken the 1st seed from 359, splitting up 359 and 118

A lot of people are saying that if the coop bridge wasn't in play, that the better balancers would be balancing for their alliance, and the result would be different win-loss rating, which would put those teams on top anyway. And that's true. But the numbers above are just from basic review. If there is some way to find a list of who balanced on the coop bridge, it may be interesting to look at how scores would be different if a team with consistent balancing had instead aided their alliance in a double balance, or even just getting a single. It may also be worth noting that, assuming both alliances offer up their best balancer for the coop bridge (which is what I've been seeing), both alliances would gain the extra balancer.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

The rankings system can have purposes outside of getting the best teams into the top spots. The 2010 system strongly encourages offensive strategies over defensive ones in qualifiers. This has two important effects: 1) Robots are more likely to get a chance to do what they're designed to do, and 2) the spectators get to watch more scoring.

I would argue that the 2012 system is similarly good at pushing the best teams to the top while also making the matches more exciting for teams and spectators. The coopertition bridge is exciting precisely because it is so important, and also because it often comes down to the last second.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

In addition to this, balancing the alliance bridge takes less time than the co-op bridge in most cases. This is for a lot of reasons, but I would estimate teams budget at least 15 extra seconds to do a co-op bridge balance than they would for an alliance team balance. This means that the robots doing the co-op balancing would also have more time to score a few extra baskets. I agree with you for sure: scores would be quite a bit different if not for the co-op bridge.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

While my comments were addressed to the general community and not to Cory and the Cheesy Poofs in particular, I am struck by the seeming disconnect here. If a member of a team recognized for its efforts to bring up the overall goodness among many teams doesn't like the fact that his team's ranking can suffer when competing against a lesser-performing team, it's possible that he does need a refresher on the topic. However, it's likely that he's just focusing on the idea that the "best robots" should be rewarded by seeding higher, even as this year's tournament rules explicitly challenge the old standard of what "best" means in a larger context.

It's surprising to see how much polarization there is surrounding the inclusion of a strong inter-alliance cooperation element into the ranking formula. I almost get the impression that some people think this is a robot competition. ;)

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Going into competition season I thought I would hate this rule but I quickly changed my mind. It really forces you to talk with your opponents and focus your endgame strategy across both alliances.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

It does.

Perhaps there are some who are ready for this type of flexible thinking involving strategy and communication and there are some who are not.

I never try to guess what the GDC is thinking when they introduce the game challenge each year. Usually, I leave the season thinking that I will never know and that, we, as a community of competitors, don't ever really know all of the goals that the GDC has embedded in the challenge. I also think that sometimes, even the GDC is surprised as the game evolves and teams create ways to play it.

Jane

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I'm guessing that you are correct. I know that I have been surprised at times. Of course, I always attribute that to the fact that there are a whole bunch of very creative folks in FIRST, or as GHWB said "smart people" and some of them are very competitive. One of the best things about the community in my opinion.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Oh, but you should try it, Jane! It's fun, like jigsaw puzzles or murder mysteries!

Seriously, I believe the GDC has two overarching objectives:

(1) they want the game to visually promote FIRST's core values -- two robots from opposing alliances striving cooperatively to balance the center bridge is a powerful image. (EDIT: see Taylor's example below.) And,

(2) they want us to think until it hurts. Introducing game-theory based ideas (Prisoner's Dilemma, Nash Equilibrium, etc.) with tangible and immediate results forces a kind of thinking that conventional sports do not. That thinking experience has real-life value -- life is more complex than sport.

I love the coopertition bridge. And I love that it has forced the top-tier teams to build robots for both qualifying and elimination strategies. I commented in the 67 pit at Waterford that, because of their strategy, losing a qualifying match to them is like winning, and defeating them in a qualifying match is like winning twice. So every team should want to see HOT in as many qualifying matches as possible, whether as an opponent or an ally. How cool HOT is that?

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Actual conversation I had with a layperson while explaining the game:

"So what's up with the white bridge?"

"See, that's called the Coopertition Bridge. If a blue robot and a red robot balance on that bridge together, then everybody in that match kind of gets a win."

"Oh. Why's that?"

"I think it's FIRST's way of saying that even though red and blue are on opposite sides, they can come together for a common goal and both gain from it."

"Oh. That's really awesome."


This simple message is, to me, the beauty of this game. Whatever the cost of the CS/QS algorithm to specific teams, the message contained within vastly outweighs it. The game transcends the competition, and this is beautiful.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

Taylor ~ I got the same thing when explaining the game to friends and family that came to the event as well.

Well said. :)

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

IMO, 2012 has been the most interesting year for having a ranking system that makes it hard for the ultra-elites to cement themselves at the top since I started doing this thing in 2003.

It has EASILY been my favourite to watch. HOWEVER, my friend who came to one of the competitions and understands how the scoring works, and what the coop bridge does, but without a frequent look at the rankings (say, by putting it on the big screen between matches briefly) it was hard for him to really see the effect it was having. I think putting the rankings on the big screen between matches (in addition to, or replacing, whichever, the slideshow) is something we should have been doing for a long time. I think it would make it easier for a casual observer to see the effect that matches are having on the rankings and how that affects the overall competition.

I have FRC Spyder on my phone. I was refreshing it after every match to see what the rankings were doing. Everyone should have been able to see it.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

It would be interesting after showing the scoring results screen to have this sort of screen. For each team show what rank they are after the match and how many places they moved up or down. Split the screen into 6 big parts so that the numbers are big enough to see (I find the number lists on the alliance selection screen to be too small :p ).

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

I understand your point, but I think this practice would be dangerous. I often have rookie team members glued to the ranking screen to see how we're affected after each match. A common chorus on our team is "rankings don't matter until Saturday afternoon."
As has been discussed before, there is quite a bit of luck built in to FRC games. From the Coopertition award formula to the serpentine draft, FIRST injects chance into the competitions. Also, as good scouts know, sometimes good teams end up on not-so-good alliances. Just because a team is ranked low, doesn't mean it is underperforming (the converse is also true). One match on Saturday at QCR catapulted us 20+ positions directly pre-match to post-match.
The ranking system is necessary to create the alliance captains, but IMHO it should not be broadcast to the general audience throughout the event. If you would like to show the effects of rankings to a friend, you can use the FRC Spyder app to which you alluded.

tl;dr: Rankings are an important tool, but much like OPR, they only give you a biased snapshot of a team's performance.

Re: Effect of Coopertition Points
 

@ Taylor: I agree. Rankings aren't everything.

However, the stated goals of the FIRST family of programs is to reach the maximum possible number of people to inspire and recognize science and technology, thereby inspiring people to pursue careers in STEM fields.

In order to reach the maximum possible number of people, we have to CAPTIVATE the off-the-street spectators, the local news crews, the local governments, and inspire them to sponsor and create new teams, in new schools, everywhere. The GDC has been trying really hard since 2010 to create simpler games, with easier-to-understand scoring and rules that can be conveyed to a total outsider in a few short sentences. They hit a home run in 2012 on this front as far as I'm concerned.

Rebound Rumble in 7 sentences:

Its robot basketball, there are 18 balls on the field, and 4 baskets for each alliance to score in. The top basket is worth 3 points, middle worth 2, and bottom worth 1. Matches are 2:15 long, and begin with a 15 second Hybrid period, in which robots must operate on their own code without driver input (except Kinect). During hybrid, balls scored carry a bonus of 3 pts on top of their ordinary value. During the last 30 seconds of the match, teams attempt to balance on the alliance bridges and coopertition bridge. Alliance bridges are worth 10 pts for one bot, 20 pts for two, and during eliminations 40 pts for 3. Balancing the coopertition bridge is worth bonus ranking points equivalent to winning the match.