Chief Delphi - Frank Answers Fridays

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Re: Frank Answers Fridays - Expanded Championship

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tanis (Post 1389087)

I could see setting up each regional to generate more championship slots by expanding the 4 team alliances to regionals and districts.

This year was somewhat of an experimental year for 4 team alliances at Championships and from what I have heard it was well received by everyone. If FIRST decided to expand this to regionals, that would guarantee one more slot per regional (which is a nontrivial number of slots).

It was well received because at Championships the 32nd robot picked is better than the 24th pick at most other events.
The fields at many regionals can be very weak and this could easily lead to a lower level of play at Champs...especially when you see a 5th or 6th seed win and their 3rd pick was chosen on the basis of, "this robot can drive".

Do it for District Championships, maybe. But definitely not regionals or districts.

Re: Frank Answers Fridays - Expanded Championship

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tanis (Post 1389087)

Several regionals have less than 36 teams, and many, many more do not have 36 functional, contributing robots. I do not think 4 team alliances can be blanket implemented at regionals. This would only increase the number of low-performing teams at the Championship with no increase in high-performing teams.

I think the most obvious thing to do would be to expand wild cards to be given / passed through any team that is currently registered for the Championship. For example, if 2791 made it to the finals of FLR this year, the wild card would be eaten by hall of fame team 341 instead of passed to the first pick. These edge cases can be accommodated with a larger Championship.

Re: Frank Answers Fridays - Expanded Championship

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMadCADer (Post 1389015)

One thing that a lot of people don't mention much is how big of a disadvantage it is to go to an early regional in the current CMP qualification system. If Week 1 is the only event you can attend then you arbitrarily lose out on the possibility of getting a wildcard slot, even if you lose to teams that do generate wildcards later.

When some team wins in Weeks 1 and 6, the runner up Week 1 should have just as much of a shot as the runner up when the wildcard slot is actually generated in Week 6. Only one of them can get it, but it shouldn't be based on when they competed. It should be based on something that matters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin Montois (Post 1389024)

Absolutely right. This has always bothered me about the current Wildcard system.

One item I haven't seen discussed here (which is understandable, as there's only a few of us still around) is legacy teams.

This season, we qualified for the Championship in three ways. We won TVR, FLR, but we also had pre-qualified and pre-registered as a legacy team along with the HoF teams.

One way that comes to help give out more wildcards during Week 1 and earlier events (as the probability for receiving a wildcard slot increases with each week) would be to generate wildcards for HoF teams and legacy teams, as some others have mentioned. While this wouldn't have generated any extra wild cards for 2014 Week 1 events, it would have generated a few Week 2 and 3.

However, I think that most of these issues will vanish as regionals give way to districts (whether or not the model makes sense for the area in question -- but that's a topic for another time) with proportional championship slots.

Re: Frank Answers Fridays - Expanded Championship

Proposal on Championship qualification, given an extra 200 slots to fill:

HOF and Legacy teams, previous year's champions, previous year's EI and RAS all prequalify. (30 teams)

Districts get an expanded number based on percentage (as-is now, no need to tweak formula). Probably about 150-200 total teams.

Each regional gets 6 teams in addition to prequalifiers. To do this, the Wild Card is tweaked as follows:
--ANY prequalification, at any event by the winner of a qualifying award results in a WC slot becoming available. (Win the event and win RCA, one wild card team goes to CMP.)
--WC slots are awarded first to the Finalist alliance by order of selection, then to Rookie Inspiration and Highest Rookie Seed. Any remainder after that become Wait List slots.
Result is 300 teams attending, give or take a dozen.

Wait list teams are given points during the season, based on finish, awards, and time since last Championship appearance (this last being something like 10 points+1 point/year>4 years). Roughly 100 teams get in via waitlist this way, decreasing as more districts take slots (but those slots also give more teams chances to go).