A few Off Season Questions
 

Hi all -

It looks like we will end registration of the Red Stick Rumble with eighteen robots. With that in mind, I am considering the best way to run the matches.
Should I run a normal qualification schedule and provide more matches per team? Also, what is probably the best way to run elimination matches without the full 24?

Thanks everyone. It looks like Red Stick is going to turn out to be a great time.

Best -
Daniel

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

I suggest doing a regular schedule and let all 18 teams play in the elims with the top 2 seeds getting byes into the semifinals.

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

If you only have 18 teams, I would run as many matches as you can, but maybe increase the delay time between matches (I forget what it was this year, maybe it was 12 minutes?) add 2 minutes or so and see how many matches that gets each team in your schedule.

The good news is 18 is divisible by 3, so you can have even alliances for elims (if no one breaks badly). With 6 alliances there are a variety of ways to do it...

1v6, 2v5, 3v4, and then some sort of round robin with the 3 remaining alliances to see who your winner is.

Another possiblity is to basically use the normal bracket but give alliances 1 & 2 a bye directly into the semi finals (since there are no 7 & 8 alliances). This is the easiest if you are using some sort of FMS, as they aren't terribly easy to manipulate. But does mean Alliances 1 & 2 play 2 or 3 fewer matches than the other alliances.

You can also go back to the old days of FIRST and do some sort double elimination type bracket with alliances... so that instead of teams you have alliances. That could be fun & interesting, but would have to be manually tracked and not done on an FMS (I think).

Have a great time!

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

At panther prowl last year we had only 22 teams so everyone picked and then alliance 1&2 faced 8&7 in 2v2 matches and if 1&2 won they picked one of the 3 robots on 8&7 respectively to join them. I would not recommend this but if you do instead have 6 "dead" numbers where anyone can pick to have the bye teams and pick from the opposing alliance upon victory

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

You could run the event Bunnybot style. There are no scheduled matches, teams just join the que as they are ready to play. This means that you don't have to go to the effort of writing a schedule (stacked matches won't be blamed on the event organizers) and you don't run any matches with dead robots. It will also heavily favor reliable robots.

From a competing team's perspective, it works really well. It also reduces stress when the robot is not working, making repairs safer.

Contact Dale from 1540 if you want full details. I'll post a copy of the full rules when I get home from work.

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

If you really wanted to, you could consider doing eight two-robot alliances and two backup teams. It would be an interesting twist on this game certainly, but that's the kind of thing the teams going would probably have to agree on.

Six alliances seems like the way to do it. Four would be better if it didn't exclude a third of the already small event - seems to make more sense to have 3v6 and 4v5, then the winners of those matches go onto regular semi-finals, giving 1 and 2 a bye.

I feel this is a particularly good solution with the serpentine, as it gives the alliances that made the last two picks of the draft extra time to potentially repair or modify their alliance partner.

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

If you do byes, you should give the #1 and #2 seed the option of passing on those byes to a lower seed.

We've been given byes at a few offseasons, and it's just bummed our team out; we'd rather play more matches.

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

You could start with semi finals rather than quarter finals. Gives you more time for seeding matches.

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

As a team going to Red Stick. I think we should make sure we get all the qual matches we can 9-10 or more to make sure we get a good solid ranking. We're also training new drivers so the more practice the better.

We should do 1-6 alliances so no one is left out and snake should be fine with this field of teams. I don't see any supper #6 alliance having a huge advantage here.

1 plays the winner of 4 vs. 5.
2 plays the winner of 3 vs. 6.

I like the idea of passing down the bye.
1->4->5
2->3->6

That way no alliance is punished if they want to play more matches and they just sub into the other alliancess spot in the quarterfinals.

Also I would really love it if we could somehow confirm with teams the week before that they are coming. That way we could possibly do a tentative match schedule. Events with tentative match schedule > than events without.

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

You could just have 4 alliances of 4 teams but only 3 teams would play each match. This would resolve the issues of having 6 alliances and with only 4 alliances you could also up the number of matches to win from 2 to 3. This would give teams more potential matches to play. And it would likely take close to the same amount of time as an 8 alliance elimination bracket

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

At our off-season (The Duel Down Under) we modified the game so that it was played with 2 robot alliances instead of 3. We had 14 teams, therefore 7 alliances.

QFs
QF2 - 2v7
QF3 - 3v6
QF4 - 4v5

SFs
SF1 - 1vWinner QF3
SF2 - Winner QF2vWinner QF4

F
Winner SF1vWinner SF2

I quite liked having the smaller alliances, because it meant that it was easier for newer teams to find space on the field to play their game. =)

Re: A few Off Season Questions
 

As another team participating in Red Stick Rumble, I second the idea for alliance #1 and #2 having a bye to the semis. I ALSO really like the idea of being able to pass those byes to other alliances if they want to play more matches.

Can't wait!