Re: Week 3 analysis
 

While scoring the high goal effectively is good to have, being able to move and pass is more important. As a matter of fact the most important stat is assists. If you're in your eliminations, you pick an ally who assists score is bellow 200 you are cooked.

The stats don't lie:

Team Rank Assists Name
971 1 640 Moutain View HS
114 6 330 Los Altos HS
668 9 320 Pioneer HS, San Jose
100 26 160 Woodside
766 31 230 Menlo Atherton


----- Teams picked for finals, probably based on high goal ability or name recognition - I am guessing ------

1868 50 120 Space Cookies
115 51 110 Monta Vista, Cupertino
1351 52 100 Arch Bishop Mitty


In Sacramento - (the 1 rank 971 picked the 2 rank 1678, their third pick was 766 - who they modified to a pass through during lunch after alliance picks. They ended up winning, even though during one match 766 was dead on the field. 1868, 100, 115 and 1351 all made into the finals - and I am guessing they all had 10 point shots but not the consistency.

When 254 picked the lowest seeds at Inland I heard they were booed because people though they were being arrogant. That is BS. They picked teams who could pass the ball to them. So My advice is if you get to finals pick the remaining partners based on assists, not on rank.

BTW:


My team 751 rank 30 assists 310

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

At least in the Michigan Districts, the penalties are down immensely. Average Tele-op score per team by the end of the Howell district was something like 273 compared to 430 at Southfield. I assure you that teams weren't on average scoring 160 less either.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

This is at least the second time you've aired your dirty laundry about how you disagree with the picks at the Sacramento Regional.

While I actually agree with the premise of your post, stop the slagging, it makes you look childish.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

Please stop putting down 115, 1351 and 1868. All three teams are exemplary and have incredibly competent and hard working students who have produced awesome machines to play a very difficult game.

Also, we were devastated that 766 was out one match (1678 blew a main breaker one match too...) but very relieved when they got working again. We loved working with 766 and their robot was a steal as the 24th robot in the draft, much like 4161 was a steal at Inland Empire. There is no doubt in my mind that our success at both events has hinged on the two fantastic teams of 4161 and 766.

BTW: Your ASSISTS in ranking does not actually reflect your robot's ability to create assists. It reflects your alliances ability to create assists across all of your qualification matches. Theoretically, 751 (or any other team) could have sat on the field motionless every match and still gathered 310 assist points over 12 matches. This is why teams scout.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

What I learned in Utah:

Defense is hugely important. In one qualifier, our alliance had 2 shooting bots (our shooter broke) and the other team had 3. We brought the game down to a few points thanks to hard defense from both sides (props to the 399 drive team).

Robust robots are hugely important. Many teams did not realize this, and after a match one ref came up to me and told me he was gonna start calling technicals on our alliance if I kept hitting robots too hard. I didn't really understand this, as we always hit with no protrusions from perimeter, but something to be aware of.

I didn't see many instances of pedestals not lighting up.

Overall, Utah was a lot of fun, and I'm excited for the Colorado regional now that we got the kinks worked out of our bot.

Congrats to 2996 Cougars Gone Wired for their win! See you guys in Denver!

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

We realized the value of assist scoring, and we were lagging at one point. In our quals match that we scored 222 (against an alliance that went entirely dead halfway through), we scored 7 teleop points and about 65 auto. The rest were assists.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

How to Lie with Statistics

I recommend spending more time on building relationships and marketing your team. All teams suffer from the "our robot is better than that robot", but upon further reflection I've often realized that "their marketing is better than our marketing." I believe that teaching students how to sell their robot, can be just as important as how to build it.

Team spirit, robot presentation, and pit involvement all help your odds of being picked. Rather than blaming everyone for not seeing your robot, it may be more constructive to ask what could have been differently to make your robot/team stand out more.

I noticed you are also one of the lucky teams to get to attend a second regional. I would say get your team pumped for that regional, and make it so no team can ignore you :).

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

This is very true. I remember being at a regional during Lunacy and our scouting data showed that the top team after qualifications had scored a whopping 1 ball the entire competition. Luck is definitely a part of qualification rankings.

As lineskier said, marketing your team is definitely a good way to help getting picked for eliminations. Make sure you make good impressions with those teams that are high in the rankings when you play with them. Teams remember who they enjoyed being paired with, and if they think you are difficult to work with they won't pick you to play with them.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

Whoa guys - I never said anything bad about any team or would dream of insulting anyone. The POINT of the post is to stress passing is more important than having three high shot teams that can't pass. Also, I am guessing at what the criteria for the third picks were - only the alliance captains know, and when you're the 8th to 3rd alliance - you probably haven't really got a handle on who to pick. It is probably: "OMG who is left that I've seen make one good play during the day." While scouting is important, any team ranked 10 or lower hasn't really expected that they need to have a deep pick list. Say if you are a 10 seed moved up to or 8 and you don't have a high shot, your first pick will be the best high shooter out there. Then you third pick is whoever best left who complements the alliance, and at that point your best bet is someone who can pass and run defense.

I used the alliance picks at Sacramento as an example to make the point. I really do believe that the assists score is a better indicator of performance then rank. The ability to pass in a third alliance pick is more important then rank or the ability to do a solo 10 point shot. Maybe the assists score doesn't reflect passing ability accurately, but is the best indicator I have. I backed up this hypothesis by showing the relative ranking and assists of team in my local area that I am familiar with. How the heck is showing the stats of a team putting them down? It is public information that everyone can see.

Any FIRST team is terrific. I expect to see the the Space Cookies, TKO, Wildhats, MA Bears, Spartans, MVRT at SVR in 3 weeks and have my team play with and against them along with the Poofs and many other legendary teams. I expect they all will be working at top efficiency, having learned the importance of passing, and expect to have a blast.

Perhaps some statistician can analyse the the strength of alliances based on rank vs. assist scores to prove or disprove my hypothesis.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

As to the feeling that if there wasn't 200 plus assist points for each robot on your team you'd be toast, check out the MAR Clifton District. 1626 won the event as Alliance Captain 2 with 140 assist points. Partnered with 869 (240 points) and 1257 (140 points).

Scouting and putting together an alliance that works well together is far more important than the ranking stats. Look at how many No. 1 alliances are going down this year. Our picks were ranked 15th and 21st respectively.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

With all due respect:

One of our mentors already addressed this in the previous thread. 1868 was not selected on name recognition, or purely having seen them shoot into the high goal. Our scouting consistently showed that they would make a great second leg/truss/assisting robot for our alliance.

No statistician on earth will ever be more reliable than a good scouting team. Statistics and rank don't mean anything, especially in a game like this. If you want to prove or disprove a hypothesis, watch matches.

Please stop guessing, especially after some of us have publicly stated our decision rationale. Please don't be so quick to assume that an alliance captain below 3rd doesn't have a competent scouting team.

And just to say it again, we were proud to have 1868 on our alliance. They were friendly, cooperative, and good-spirited, making for some of the best matches we have ever played in.

Now please, let's stop :deadhorse:

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

First thoughts looking back at our scouting and the discussion of our elimination strategy:

The ability to score under/around defense is what makes or breaks top bots.

Stopping the truss shot to the human player and forcing the opposing alliance to go pick up the ball adds a lot of time to the cycle. This is a difficult feet because you basically have to ensure the robot stays facing the goal so the ball will not go out of bounds and end up at the human player.

2 Assist cycles if executed quickly can outscore 3 assist cycles (secret sauce speeds this up substantially).

Versatility in your alliance is super helpful: three robots that can pick up, truss, score high, and play defense at all other times can adapt to any other alliance. Many alliances ran into the issue of being forced to score low by the way they picked their teams - this is much easier to defend.

Defense is essential, but if your score is lower than your opponent it does you no good to forgo assists for defense

Along with that last one, winning auton and playing heavy defense the entire match is a viable strategy

Don't miss

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

This one is huge.

A good inbounder with reliable passing (even better if it can truss to HP), and a solid shooter, while the third bot plays some hard defense, can win most matches.

Looking back on how we played matches, it's a strategy we'll try to implement more often.

Also, it's important that every robot actively handling the ball be either playing defense or keeping defense away from the ball.

The latter is one I saw a lot of need for, but there was never enough of it.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

This. If you're ahead, and you've got 3 robots playing defense, it is entirely possible to keep most alliance from ever getting the ball past mid field. It's not very exciting to watch though.

Re: Week 3 analysis
 

I do agree with this. One of the guys from 67 works with me and I was discussing this with him.

The thought process for our pick list as far as shooting goes is limited to this:
1) can the team score in auton?
2) can the team score in case we're drawing strong double team defense? (In this case, we would change on the fly to let the other team score and we'd play assist. That usually confuses the other team for one or two easy cycles until they pick up on it.)
3) Can they do a truss pass?
4) Are they so good that we wouldn't want to play against them?

That's about it. All of our other pick-list criteria was centered around how well they inbound, pass, floor pick-up, defend, don't foul, etc.