Future Championships
 

How should the format of the championship be changed?
How should teams qualify for the championship?

Old thread. I figured that one was old enough to start a new one.

Re: Future Championships
 

Oooh boy...

Let me start by saying that while I do want the Championship to be a qual-to-attend event, I understand that it's a lot more inspirational to attend than to not, even if you get your behind handed to you every match. So, can't be solely on robot merit. I'm also going to utterly ignore FLL and FTC, other than assuming that they'll be taking up roughly the amount of space used now.

Let's start by cutting the number of teams/division. Let's arbitrarily make it 70 (for now), with an absolute cap at 80. 70*4=280 slots. 80*4=320 slots. Not enough with only 4 divisions to get even all of the qualifiers.

So... We add a pair of divisions. Let's call them Watt (after James Watt) and Tesla, just for grins. 6 divisions, each with 70 teams, that's 420 teams max, with potential to grow to 480. Eliminations within each division play like normal; Einstein is TBD (leaning towards a round-robin where the top two play each other in best-of-three). I'm assuming that space can be worked out, either in the current venue or in another one.

Here's the fun part, though. Of those 420 spots, a minimum of 20 are open only to teams who have not been to the Championship in more than 4 years. Registration is offered by FIRST when the teams sign up, on the basis of maximum time since attendance (veteran teams returning as rookies excepted), and can be accepted or declined by the team. Another X slots are opened in a similar way, but on the waitlist.

The remainder of the slots (in this example, 400) are open only to qualifiers--the standard winners, RCA, EI, RAS system, or the District-model qualifications. Each district system can qualify a number of teams determined by their percentage of the whole FRC competition--1% sends 4 teams, for example. Wild Cards are in force anywhere the district system is not, and INCLUDE slots taken by a district team competing outside their area.

Eventually, with the district model taking over entirely, it'll all be district/district championship qualification--but I'd still want to hold 20 or so slots for teams needing an injection of inspiration. How to hand them out? That's a tough one.

Re: Future Championships
 

Without reading the back story:

If more matches are added requiring another day (Tuesday evening/all day on Wednesday vs Wednesday evening/Thursday), I don't mind flying in on Tuesday morning and paying for another night in the hotel. However, it is possible that not everyone (students/mentors/volunteers/staff/etc.) will be able to support this schedule. FIRST may not be able to support this schedule either as an extra day costs additional money.

FIRST is growing. Adding two FRC Divisions with 66.667 to 100 robots per division is not a bad idea, but is there enough room to accommodate another practice field in the convention center and two more fields in the dome?

Which brings up the other option to move Jr. FLL, FLL, and FTC to their own Championship events to gain back the floor space, but where does that leave these future FRC students?

Can the store be moved to a different location to gain back the floor space?

World Congress Center in Atlanta seemed bigger to me (unused floor space).

Re: Future Championships
 

This is from last year but I think that it fits in pretty nicely with the discussion:
http://nop-jepblog.blogspot.com/2012...mpionship.html

Re: Future Championships
 

His second paragraph mentions the percentage of FRC, FTC, and FLL teams that make it to their respective World Championship/Festival. I don't know where he got his information on number of FLL teams, but last year (when he wrote it) there was around 19-20,000 FLL teams. This year there were about 21,000 teams, with about 84 spots at World Festival. (To my knowledge.)

My opinion is that all programs should remain in the same venue together, at the same time. This lets students (and others!) to see the other programs and what they do.

Re: Future Championships
 

From what I remember from last year I tried to find a more exact FLL number but since FIRST doesn't(didn't) have that information on their website I ended up just estimating a lowish number.

If your numbers are correct than 0.4% of FLL teams qualify for the World Festival.

Re: Future Championships
 

Some day I would like to see the Einstein Field at championships to be renamed The Kamen Field.

Re: Future Championships
 

Adding more divisions makes a lot of sense to me. It would allow for more qualifier matches and still allow room for those teams to go that should be allowed to experience champs for inspiration.

The district model has one major drawback where we live - distance. For example: San Antonio and El Paso has 550 miles of nearly nothing between them. This is the same distance as going from Philadelphia, PA to Myrtle Beach, SC. You can cross seven states with many teams in the same distance that one of the El Paso teams would have to travel just to get to the next major city. Granted this is an extreme example; however, it does highlight my concern.

Re: Future Championships
 

I'd love to see almost like a ticker-like box on the website that has the current count of teams in each program.

*If I rememeber later tonight (my work computer has IE7 and won't load the page I need) I will give the exact number for Jr. FLL. Today should be the last day you can register a team as registration was open until April 2013.

Re: Future Championships
 

I actually calculated this out the other day. It would take teams from Montana(5), Wyoming(3), Colorado(48), New Mexico(5), North Dakota(3), South Dakota(1), Nebraska(0), Kansas(20), Oklahoma(48), Iowa(5), Missouri(62), and Arkansas(18) to make up an amount of teams that just barely exceeds the number of teams in Michigan.

I love the theory of the district model but there are a few kinks that would need worked out for areas that do not have high density of teams thoughout a state or a predetermined amount of land.

Re: Future Championships
 

The issue with adding more teams is that FIRST STRUGGLED to get to 400 teams this year. Even with a wait-list and the wildcard system. I think it had to do with pulling teams off the wait list to late. If a wildcard isn't claimed/used from a competition then teams need to be pulled off the wait list right away or here is a shocker we need to just not have a wait list or wildcard and champs is only as big as the teams who register for it when they qualify. :yikes: Crazy!

Re: Future Championships
 

I really don't want second picks to be universally not included. I believe a lot of second picks are what make the difference between winning and losing particular regionals, and no system designed to exclude the so called "carried" second picks could be perfectly fair to those that made very legitimate contributions to the alliance. For example, the WPI Regional this year would not have been won if 3044 was not on the winning alliance.

I heard an idea at the Championships that I don't know if I support. The idea was essentially to allow an optional, opt-in "fifth division" for rookie all star winners, culture change award winners that did not medal at events, etc. That way, these teams get the "championship experience" while not dragging down the level of play or being forced to play nightmare match after nightmare match. The division would be optional so that rookies who feel they can handle the big dogs could still compete in the normal four divisions.

Re: Future Championships
 

Auto qualify Chairman's Winners. Everyone else gets in via district-like points system.

Re: Future Championships
 

This with slightly less teams per division and 16 alliances instead of 8 in elims. "First round" is single elimination. Other rounds play like normal.

Re: Future Championships
 

Agreed.

If a universal point system isn't on the table, another way to do it is by qualifying a set number of teams at each event, no matter what. There's a pecking order of which achievements qualify you for the next level, and if a team near the top of that list is already qualified, the bid goes to the next team on the list.

One possible list:

1. Chairman's Award
2. Winner - Captain
3. Winner - 1st pick
4. Engineering Inspiration
5. Winner - 2nd pick
6. Winner - replacement bot
7. Finalist Alliance Captain
8. Finalist 1st pick
9. Rookie All-Star
10. Finalist 2nd pick
11. Motorola Quality
12. GM Industrial Design
13. Innovation in Controls
14. Highest seeded semifinalist captain
15. etc...

Let's say this system was in effect at a regional where the winning alliance included a HoF team and the Engineering Inspiration winner. You'd end up qualifying the RCA winner, the winning alliance, the finalist captain, the finalist first pick, and the RAS. It's 7 teams in all since the HoF team was already qualified.

This system has the advantage of being easily scalable (just reduce the number of qualifying teams to 5 and you've just reduced crowding at Champs) and it would be very easy to implement.

Re: Future Championships
 

FTC uses this method. Here is their list

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...nt-information

Re: Future Championships
 

Yeah; I didn't mention them since people might get scared by the association with FTC. FTC qualification is unfair for one big reason: not enough qualification slots from each tournament, so the winning alliance captain's first pick usually doesn't qualify for the next level. With only two spots to earn from most events, only the Inspire winner and the winning alliance captain get invitations to the next level. In my opinion it is questionable to put the Inspire runner-up ahead of winning alliance first pick, but that is a judgment call. Anyway, FTC either needs either more slots at the Championship or another layer of competition (super regionals) to remedy that. It's a problem.

Re: Future Championships
 

Who would really opt in to that, though? Who wants to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to go to championships and then decide beforehand that they have no chance of winning? Obviously that's not what the championships are about, but I doubt - in fact I hope there are no teams in FRC with that mindset.

Re: Future Championships
 

I'd like to see some sort of leveling. At the very least, there should be some attempt at balancing the 6 teams in each qualification match.

There shouldn't be any matches at the World Championship where an alliance scores less than 10 points. It's hollow for the winning alliance and demoralizing for the losing alliance, and it doesn't make sense to the crowd.

I sat through three rounds like that and it's no fun. I'd love to see a system where every match was a tossup, and OPR wasn't the near sure thing it is now.

Re: Future Championships
 

Please don't bring back the Alliance Algorithm of Doom. It was bad in 2007, and I don't think it will ever be a good idea.

Re: Future Championships
 

That's way before my time, and I've never heard of it; can you elaborate?

Re: Future Championships
 

Someone apparently thought that lower team number = better robot. Result:

All teams at an event were placed in one of three brackets, by number. (This wasn't too hard to figure out by Week 3, BTW.)
Each "random" alliance was composed of one team from each bracket.
Add in the normal turnaround time and a deemphasized "not too many times with/against each team" factors, particularly at a small event.

Result: You guys (1124) would NEVER be with 1114 in a match*, but would probably get pretty badly beaten by them in 3-4 matches. 330, on the other hand, might be with them in 2-3 and against them in 1-2. Guess who seeds higher, regardless of who has the better robot?

It was so bad that corrections had to be applied mid-season because of such cases as mentioned above, and then it did a better job but not the best. It has never returned.

*Unless you happened to be on the other side of the dividing line from them... probably not.

Re: Future Championships
 

I've only got one year in, so I went back and read the 2007 threads. That algorithm definitely made everybody unhappy.

I suppose the current luck-of-the-draw system generates less unhappiness overall, but many times it felt more like a "Convocation" than a "Championship".

Re: Future Championships
 

This might answer your question. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/at...1&d=1363286050

While I don't necessarily agree with the "super-regional" concept, I do like the district model they have set up here.

Re: Future Championships
 

Crazy stuff, I guess that's why it was never spoken of among our team. Although it generated some nice discussion back then...

Re: Future Championships
 

We're from Iowa, and I'd love to get into a district system. We travel about 5 hours away for the events we attend. It would probably be roughly the same if we were in a district system. If we qualified for district championships, the result would be that we'd get three regular season events instead of two for the same registration fees, and we'd end up having to travel to an extra event. If the new events are still in our ~5 hour driving radius, that sounds like gravy to me. (and 12 qualifiers per event? Sounds pretty nice...)

Re: Future Championships
 

I have been saying this for a while. The store takes up space in the convention center, and is not even close to being NEARLY big enough to accomodate its traffic. There are so many unused spots in the facilities that can be used.

Yes, Georgia World Congress Center had a much bigger convention center and a lot more open space than St. Louis. I've been wanting to go back ever since we moved away.

Re: Future Championships
 

Here's a thought that occurred to me because of this other championship thread.

How about we have N super regionals that essentially take the place of the championship? After those are done, the winning teams get to participate in a much smaller event where the super regional winners duke it out. I'm talking about a very small number of alliances, like 4-8.

I suggest this for two reasons:
1) Venues only need capacity for 100 teams instead of 400
2) For the vast majority of teams, it doesn't add a level of championships*

*That's my big complaint about the conventional FRC super regional idea. Too many competitions for teams and families to pay for; too many vacation days for volunteers and mentors.

Re: Future Championships
 

All this is making me wonder if FRC will ever start to look more like high school sports in competition structure. In football, for example, the state championship is the end of the road. Not that I think it will happen soon, but will the FIRST championship go away in the future?

Re: Future Championships
 

I don't think FIRST will reach the exact model of HS sports. The goal of a FIRST team in every HS, in my opinion, is incredibly challenging and likely will not happen. My personal feelings towards the endpoint for FRC(in it's current state, that is) is a Superregional structure. Districts--->State Championship---->MAYBE regional championship, 40-60 teams-----> Super Regionals, ~100 teams---->Championship ~400 teams

Re: Future Championships
 

I definitely don't think there will ever be an FRC team in every high school. What I'm getting at is you just suggested a structure where teams may have to go to 5-6 events just to complete their season. How do you fit all of these events into the year? You could move build season to start earlier, but then you have winter breaks in the middle. Champs really can't move any later because of AP Testing. Travel time and money start to pile up, and most teams still can't sustain anywhere near this level of events. It's possible that eventually the solution is to just cut it off.

Re: Future Championships
 

I agree.
FRC teams come and go, much greater, than the number of sports programs such as football getting cut from a high school once they have a team.