Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

I agree with tkell. A team that builds a support-based or defense based robot that is still phenomenal in what it is built to do (i.e. 4334 last year and 2789 this year) shouldn't be penalized for pursuing a different strategy than the powerhouse offensive teams. Third picks often make or break alliances, especially at deeper events.

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

I agree with the logic on making the third pick worth just as many points. The serpentine in particular makes this problematic - I would hate to be the 8th seed and have to pull up on my phone which team "needs" the 1st round pick points more and which team doesn't.

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

Thanks! It's so hard to get love for defensive play...because of our limitations (personnel, funding, etc.) and sponsor issues, it's hard for us to crank out the robots we design and want. We're forced to compensate with scouting and strategy. I've been concerned about district discussions down here in Texas because of how formulas rate defensive teams, in particular because of how the dynamics for eliminations matches are very different than dynamics for quals matches, and our strategy definitely makes a bigger impact in elims. It's my hope that at the end of the month we'll be able to make the point that a creative and smart team can still make a strong impact on the outcome of matches even if you don't have the fanciest robot on the field...but needless to say, we are working on a few surprises for champs that will help us put points on the board :)

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

I definitely do agree that the points for the 3rd robot should be adjusted... Primarily because that means that the 3rd robot on the winning alliance gets more points than any other alliance's robots (including the first two robots on all of the other alliances). Additionally, this method of assigning points gives very few points to the quarterfinalist alliances.

Although I suspect these points were removed in NE's proposal because it makes things a bit more complicated, I think assigning points based on alliance selection order as FiM and MAR do (16 to first 2 bots on Alliance 1; 15 to first 2 bots on Alliance 2; 14 to first 2 bots on Alliance 3... and 8 points to 3rd robot on Alliance 8, 7 points to 3rd robot on Alliance 7, 6 points to 3rd robot on Alliance 6) is the best way to assign points for eliminations (in addition to points based on finish).

Using 2013 GSR and 2013 Pine Tree as case studies (I chose these two because they're Week 1 vs Week 6, vary significantly in size, and Pine Tree is interesting because the red alliance won each matchup):

GSR Pick Order & Results:

610-4124-3609... W
138-131-58... QF
230-1991-1153... SF
885-1519-133... SF
151-229-1277... QF
1512-1922-1517... QF
61-175-172... F
2791-3467-78... QF

GSR Points (based on current NE proposal)

30-30-30... W
5-5-5... QF
10-10-10... SF
10-10-10... SF
5-5-5... QF
5-5-5... QF
20-20-20... F
5-5-5... QF

GSR Points (NE proposal + alliance selection points)

46-46-31... W
20-20-7... QF
24-24-13... SF
23-23-14... SF
17-17-10... QF
16-16-11... QF
30-30-27... F
14-14-13... QF

Pine Tree Pick Order & Results:

2648-3467-2386... W
176-125-63... F
1153-172-1831... SF
69-133-4564... SF
4473-58-1058... QF
78-1073-1922... QF
3930-4055-157... QF
3609-1071-181... QF

Pine Tree Points (based on current NE proposal)

30-30-30... W
20-20-20... F
10-10-10... SF
10-10-10... SF
5-5-5... QF
5-5-5... QF
5-5-5... QF
5-5-5... QF

Pine Tree Points (NE proposal + alliance selection points)

46-46-31... W
35-35-22... F
24-24-13... SF
23-23-14... SF
17-17-10... QF
16-16-11... QF
15-15-12... QF
14-14-13... QF

Seems like the current NE Proposal has several weaknesses:
- 1st and 2nd robots of each alliance get same reward as 3rd robot.
- Winners get 6x the points that the quarterfinalists get (3x the semifinalists).
- 1st and 2nd robots of finalist alliance (theoretically 3rd and 4th best teams) get 66% the points of the 3rd robot of the winning alliance (theoretically lower than 20th in ranking of teams).

These particular issues are improved with the inclusion of the alliance selection points. It'd be interesting to also add in the win-loss information... but I don't really have the time for that right now.

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

The one thing I dislike about the FiM system assigning points based on Alliance Selection is that it gives points for essentially the same thing QF gives points for. The thing I do like is it is a good way to breakdown credit on an alliance.

A proposal I would support would be 8 ranking points for AC1 and First pick, and decreasing from there. This would give 3rd robots 0 extra points compared to the pack, but the difference between the last robot and the first is only 8 rather than 6. Then the NE Eliminations points could be bumped to 10/15/25/35 to make up for the point loss and emphasize results more.

Alliance Points:

8-8-0
7-7-0
6-6-0
5-5-0
4-4-0
3-3-0
2-2-0
1-1-0

Using BAE as an example: (10/15/25/35 + Alliance Points)

43-43-35... W
17-17-10... QF
21-21-15... SF
20-20-15... SF
14-14-10... QF
13-13-10... QF
27-27-25... F
11-11-10... QF

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

While this is sometimes the case, awarding points based on Alliance Selection can also serve to balance out the variation in teams' qualification schedules. If a team has a great robot, but happens to lose a few qualification matches to tough opponents, being picked high can be a chance for them to regain some of those points.

One thing I keep coming back to with the proposed system for elimination points is the situation where the two strongest alliances at an event happen to face off before the finals. The bracket-style tournament is very effective at determining the best alliance, but it doesn't work as well when it comes to ranking the remaining seven alliances.

For example, let's say the higher seeded alliances all win their quarterfinals. Alliance #3 squeaks out a semifinal win over Alliance #2 in three close matches, but then goes on to win two very one-sided finals matches against Alliance #1. Based on this, it would be reasonable to say Alliance #2 is stronger than Alliance #1. Under the proposed system, Alliance #1 would receive twice as many points as Alliance #2 (who all evidence would suggest is the stronger alliance) based purely on the structure of the bracket.

I can't think of a good way to deal with this situation, short of a complex system that takes "strength of schedule" into account, or a different structure for elimination rounds (neither of which I think would be the right answer). But I do think that it's an important thing to keep in mind when creating a system like this.

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

Has anyone run the numbers with the FiM or MAR points system so that its easy to see the difference between the current NE proposal and the FiM or MAR models?

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

To add to the dicussion I did a quick World OPR Rank VLOOKUP for the NE Teams (Thanks to Ed & Ether's data)

This is by no means enough for ranking into DCMP or WCMP, it just gives a screenshot of offensively which teams should maybe make it into the top NE slots... and is just meant for comparison (ie if there is a team in 10th OPR that doesnt make it into the top 50 of our ranking system, its worth looking at to make sure the NE Ranking structure is a good balance).

I do believe some of this will balance out by normalizing for a single event...

Note: the numbers here are the OPR Ranks for World OPR Ranking, NE OPR Ranking and Jack/Brian's NE Ranks sorted by OPR

EDIT - HUGE Apologies - I forgot Rhode Island!! Added now!

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

How about awarding teams something like 4 or 5 pts. for eliminations victories in addition to selection points? This would not solve the problem in your example, but it would bring the results closer to reality:
Alliance 2 has 6 wins in elims totaling 6*5 = 30 pts.
Alliance 1 has 4 wins in elims (2 from QF, 2 from SF, 0 from F) totaling 4*5 = 20 pts.
Alliance 3 has 3 wins in elims (2 from QF, 1 from SF) totaling 3*5 = 15 pts.

This solves the issue Jack was referring to as well. If you include picking points with this, then you are not rewarding teams doubly for being picked and being quarter finalists. These alliances would only be granted additional points if they won a match in the quarter finals. Notably, this would also provide a good way to reward back up robots for their contributions to an alliance in elims. They would be rewarded only for the matches where they helped the alliance win.

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

Not to change the subject, but how about points for awards? How many should be given for Chairmans? how many for EI? Safety? Entrepreneurship? Quality? Engineering Excellence?

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

it would also be nice to see points awarded to highest rookie seed.

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

From other threads it seems like FIRST is pretty adamant about Chairman's being an automatic qualifying award, so I won't touch that. I think there needs to be two tiers of awards at least, because I don't think something like the team spirit award should be in any way equivalent to say the Quality Award. I think things like Quality, Xerox Creativity, maybe rookie inspiration etc. should be one amount, with things like Spirit, Gracious professionalism, safety worth some lower amount of points. A third, higher tier would be EI and/or RAS if they end up not fully qualifying a team for the NE championship. I think these two should be worth something like what the finalist teams get.

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

This seems fairer in that it takes into account the "closeness" of a round in elims by giving partial credit to an alliance that forces a third match, but without penalizing the winning alliance.

Kim's data suggests that there is a rank correlation of about 0.69 between World OPR and NE proposal points, which is worse than I expected.
But since OPR is far from a perfect ranking measure, and we know there are problems with projecting NE district points from non-normalized Regional results, it's probably not a particularly useful measurement anyway!

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

I really like how this system grants points for winning one of three QF/SF/F matches. What I dislike is that alliances that are 0-2 in QF don't receive any extra points for making elims. This also doesn't address the issue of all three robots receiving the same number of points. (Although people seem split 50/50 on that) If every team received a base of 5 points for making elims that would help remedy the first problem. I'm open to suggestions on fixing the second one.

I think that FiM was very clear in its decision to grant RCA, EI, and RAS autobids to DCMP. Assigning those awards points deflates their value and prestige. Unfortunately for rookies, it becomes difficult to assign points to the other two awards when RAS garners no points. I could see myself supporting autobid and 5 for RAS and 2 for the other two awards (I think MAR does this.)

I do like the 5/2 robot/non robot awards split in FiM.

Re: 2013 NE FIRST District Rankings
 

I like the idea of giving alliances credit for forcing a third match.

I think the implication was that points would be awarded for alliance selection, and they would have the points for a QF finish baked into them.