[FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Created for the discussion of any proposed rule additions, subtractions, or modifications for the 2017 FF season.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Recently I've been thinking about the waiver system - waivers and free picks have started to evolve into an "arms race" situation where the faster person gets great teams at no cost to themselves, certainly creating an unfair scenario for teams like RFA, FP, and TBC who all took advantage of the system. So I started looking at all of the reasons a team might want to swap:

1) A team they picked is no longer attending the event, so they opt to replace them.
2) A good team has recently signed up for the event.
3) One of their picks played very poorly at a previous event in the season.
4) An unpicked team played extremely well at a previous event in the season.
5) An picked team earned a lot of points at their first district event, making a high average.
6) One of their picks played poorly at their first district, lowering the average.

Given the reasons above, I think having a more-inclusive waiver system is in need for every case listed above except (1). If a team dropped an event, then the FF team gets first dibs at another team, regardless of waiver order or date (perhaps this should close by the start of the event?)
Otherwise, if anyone wants to swap a team for reasons 2-5, a waiver use should be required, and the team they want to swap needs to be posted publicly and have 1-2 days in which anyone else can take claim. As for districts, I actually support the 1-play swap idea, but in addition to waiver we should set a maximum on the number of district swaps allowed, perhaps around 3-5. This means that you have to judge swaps carefully, and you can't expect to get a lot of unexpectedly good teams, rather you have to put more thought into the original picks.

Another thought I had for the waiver system was to create an auction-based system. Give ever FF team x waiver points to start out with. If you wanted to claim a team, you would do so with an attached price, but someone else could out-claim you, even if you were ahead of them in the order. In this way, an FF team could either claim a few really good teams, or a lot of decent teams, or a mix of the two, making for a fairer waiver process.

On to another topic, inter-district plays.

This one is going to have to be a compromise in some way. If we count inter-district plays for points, then averages could be reduced since teams are ineligible for the legacy awards at those events. If we don't count them, then inter-district teams will have a higher average than most since they will have a practice event that doesn't count for points (just like FRC). I really want to lean towards counting those teams for points at all events, but something has to be put in place if this happens in order to account for awards.

Just some initial thoughts.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

This has been a big point of discussion this season, and I'll link my post that starts the discussion in the main thread.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&postcount=282

I'm curious as to why you think teams should necessarily get credit for inter-district events. As you said, their 'point pool' is significantly limited, compared to teams in that district. Would you draft a team who is going to be handicapped like that? I don't think I would.

This might be fixed, like you said, by an overhaul of the district points system.



Another discussion I would like to have, since this has now come up, is the points system for scoring districts. Some teams, like 68, go to 3 or more districts. Food for thought:

Team A is a decent team, places about 15th and goes out in quarters in their events. They're a community driven team, though, and are expected to win CA each year. Team A intends to go to 3 district events this year.

Team B is from the town over, and is about as good on the field as Team A. It's well organized and makes a big difference for raising rookies in the state. As such, they are expected to win EI this year. Team B is scheduled to go to district events.

Team C is from across the state, and also is middle of the pack on the field. However, they put a lot of pride in their robot, and are expected to get a robot award at each competition. They will attend 2 district events.

Their FF points look as follows:

Team A:
((<Qualification Score> + <Seeding Score> + <Playoff Score>)x3 + 42 (Chairman's)) / 3

= <Qualification Score> + <Seeding Score> + <Playoff Score> + 14

Team B:

((<Qualification Score> + <Seeding Score> + <Playoff Score>)x2 + 36 (Engineering Inspiration)) / 2

= <Qualification Score> + <Seeding Score> + <Playoff Score> + 18

Team C:

((<Qualification Score> + <Seeding Score> + <Playoff Score>)x2 + 15(Robot)) / 2

= <Qualification Score> + <Seeding Score> + <Playoff Score> + 15


It doesn't make sense to me that Team B gets more points than Team A in this situation, strictly as a result of going to one less event. Team C was provided for reference, as it does take a lot of effort, and a little luck, to get two robot awards in a year.

I propose this change to the district points system:
Field performance is normalized independently of Award points. It can be normalized to one or 2 or however many events, but it should be constant across teams.

Awards are normalized to 2 events. So, in this case, Team A would be awarded 21 points for awards, over Team B and Team C.

This can be rephrased or reinterpreted through discussion. One option to implement this is to only consider awards acquired within their district, and normalized across those events. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I agree with you on everything except for this.

I agree that the current free agent process has become a big of an arms race, but we (RFA) work hard to identify swaps. As such, all that hard work becomes marginalized if other FF teams are free to just wait around and snipe waivers.

With that being said, I would recommend that waivers be handled 100% privately. The only thing that everyone gets notified of is the fact that a FF team has been granted a waiver.

While I suppose this addresses the situation of an 'arms race', I feel like this system will be a downright cluster to implement.

What's interesting is that in your hypothetical scenario, Team A is penalized for attending 3 events. However, in your solution, a much more likely realistic scenario is that Team A is being awarded for attending three events.

I feel like your proposed scenario is much more black and white than reality would suggest. That is to say that Team A is not just going to win DCA; they're in the running for EI, a handful of the other non-engineering awards, and even the engineering awards.

Normalizing 3-event attempts worth of awards down to 2 events is ignoring the fact that Team A had three events in which they had the opportunity to win awards, which pits Teams B and Team C at a disadvantage.

- Sunny G.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Okay, not sure how many thoughts I will be able to hash out in one sitting, and i'm sure I will have more

#1 - Newly added teams should never be considered free agents. The only free agents are the ones that were on the draft originally.

Leads to a silly arms race, and not in the "we found them and you didn't" way, which it think is totally legitimate. At TBC almost every single RFA waiver, TBC was aware and wanting to take that team, yet they just posted first, cause I forget/don't stay up till midnight/have school stuff to take care of. This kind of "I posted first so I get the team" is lame. I think a waivers or nothing system is way more fair. This should probably extend to all second play teams, as the exact same thing happens. A smart team like TBC or RFA won't post in the waivers so that their team can get sniped, and will just snipe it once they are a "free agent" so lets do away with that. Lists lock on Tuesday. Gives you two days to process any last minute waiver claim, and if you want to add a team after that? Well sucks.

#2 - We need to fix draft order to make it more fair.

Really simple fix that is already miles better than our current system, though can be improved on:

Draft One:

Team One
Team Two
Team Three
Team Four

Draft Two

Team Four
Team One
Team Two
Team Three

Draft Three

Team Three
Team Four
Team One
Team Two

etcetc.

#3 - Out of district teams don't count for FF points since you can't win as many awards.

#4 - Waivers held privately

I like the idea of giving reward to the teams that find and spend the effort looking for good teams. Its part of the reason that the whole free agents arms race is happening. Though doing this privately is a little hard, since one person will always know what each team is requesting.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

What if we had a google form or the like where you can submit any waivers you want? Waivers close every week at a set time (Say Tuesday, midnight). Then the sheet is checked and waivers are assigned.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Waiver Item #7 (and the PRIMARY reason for waivers, originally):

Somebody bites off more than they can chew and drops or is booted from the league. Now there are a bunch of (probably-decent) teams available.

Also, Case #1 on waiver is the current system. Missing team? Grab a new one, you've got priority, no matter if the team is on waiver or not.

Looking at cases #2-#4, I would say that Case #3 isn't necessarily a waiver--they just want to drop the team for another team. BUT, if it's combined with #2 or #4, that's definitely a good argument for a waiver.

I'd be on-board with a Google form/sheet/other similar device for putting in waiver claims. What I'm less confident about would be full privacy. I think announcing that team X has had a claim made--and, once regionals start, all claims that aren't for a missing team are automatically waivers--should be enough. If somebody was sneaky about it, there might be a way to funnel the google form to a (private-ish) google sheet that would sort out a list of teams on waivers (but not who requested them) and put that on another (public) google sheet... At one point I was going to try to get a waiver-processing spreadsheet working, too. The logic is pretty crazy, though (check for all claims on this team just awarded and make them not matter--it's worse if there's a tiered draft, which we didn't have this year). Might try that as a summer project...



Brennan, regarding the draft order, I believe RFA members and others have posted in the main thread showing that everybody drafted at approximately the same position, on average. I think there might have been one or two teams--max--drafting significantly (minimum one spot) below the normal area. I'd say that that's one option, but it could be significantly flawed if the # of drafts and the # of players didn't match up fairly closely. For District drafts, that'd probably be the better option: Randomize the first one, and rotate the rest based on that. (Once all areas are District, then of course it'll be a moot point.) I was going to pull that for the DCMPs, but was reminded that those are by District score.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Yeah while the average may be "closeish" the first/last picks were terrible. If you look at the points distribution over first/last picks quite certain the top 2 picks will on average have a much much higher point average than any other position. So just because your "average" draft order may be semi acceptable, the huge disproportionate first picks between teams I think is a big big issue. You can see that in my post on the main thread.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Ah, yes.

So the real question is not, how do we keep the draft order at acceptable averages.

It's "How do we keep the top 2 (or 3, if it's a deep event) spread evenly so that everybody has a crack at those top points?"

And that could be accomplished by a rotation, but then there'll be that one player who doesn't get as many if the number of events and players doesn't line up right...Or you get folks complaining that so-and-so always gets the top picks at the good events (2056 at just about any event, streak or no streak, just to name one).

What might be done (this is notional) is to randomize as normal, BUT if certain parameters aren't met, re-run the randomization. That is, if team X isn't getting good positioning, then re-randomize (or non-randomize) them into good position until it evens out a bit. Or if team Y is getting really good positioning, same but into a "worse" position.

I do recall that there was one year where the randomizer (not the spreadsheet in this case) just really liked one person... to the point where I may or may not have re-randomized if they came up near the top of the list...

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I suppose we should bring this stuff back up as it's almost time to begin signups.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Never even saw this thread. I am totally in favor of their being a easier to see interface in terms of waivers like a google spreadsheet. I'd be interested in playing the waiver game but it's hard to keep track of when claims are scattered across the giant main thread. A google sheet showing due dates in would be much appreciated. I'd be interested in putting that together if it's not already being worked on.

Also I wouldn't mind the picking order being modified to make positions 1 and 2 less overwhelming. Something like this I would like:
1-8
8-1
8-1

It just doesn't make sense to me why the first pick doesn't get the last pick except for maybe the championships draft where the top pick slot was earned.

Also I agree about the rotation for draft order. I 100% support that idea.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I'll be putting out the official thread before long, but here are the current changes:

1) There will be a rotation, which will re-randomize every round. (Basically, run through with one random order, rotating every draft, and then run a different random order and rotate that when the first one is done.) One note--and we'll take a look at this later--is the "remnant" drafts where there aren't enough for a full rotation. Those will either be full random or another rotation. District drafts will have their own rotation if I can foot that.

2) After events begin, all teams being picked up will be on waiver. (It's easier to keep track of that than of who's already played.)


Waiver transparency: I'll be working in free time on a waiver processing sheet, and will post it to CD-Media when finished (or at least workable). Some people like to not have others know who they are, for some reason. Input may be a hair interesting. Also, I think a dedicated waiver thread will be in order--that's something we've done in the past, and didn't manage to do this past year.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I guess the next thing to bring up is do we want the waivers to be public? My vote would be no, and I seem to recall RFA having a similar opinion. Having them private allows for that fun competitve edge on finding important teams to swap in, without the "whoever posts first" side of it.

Update waivers weekly on say... Tuesdays, and have them submitted via gdoc forum?

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I really like the idea of a set day for waivers to be submitted. Would make it easier for many to participate in waiver wars since it can be scheduled on when to check and submit them. This is especially critical during the middle of build season when it's much harder to make time for FF.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Or during competition season.

I'm going to leave the discussion open on waivers for a while, as I'm sure there are more items to tease out to improve that side.


The other discussion item I'd like to note: there aren't a lot of player-to-player trades in FF. They're legal to make (team or draft slot or some combination), just wondering if there was any way to incentivize those. I don't think I've seen one in 3-4 years.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Not sure if it needs incentivising, just doesn't seem overly practical. In general people aren't going to trade within an event because they should have gone by their list, and if they got randomed out they probably have bad teams that nobody wants. I guess technically inter-event trading could be possible but complicated.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

True that. I was thinking something along those lines.

What I'll probably do is to make it clear--again--that trades (draft slots, teams, or a combination) are fair game, provided that picked teams don't change tiers of tiered drafts.


One other item to discuss...

#2Champs. Any ideas on handling that little drafting nightmare (picking order, same time/different times, what happens in one affecting the other, etc.)? We've got time on this one, and an absence of usable information, so this one will probably remain open for a while.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

[QUOTEboth cH;1597805]True that. I was thinking something along those lines.

What I'll probably do is to make it clear--again--that trades (draft slots, teams, or a combination) are fair game, provided that picked teams don't change tiers of tiered drafts.


One other item to discuss...

#2Champs. Any ideas on handling that little drafting nightmare (picking order, same time/different times, what happens in one affecting the other, etc.)? We've got time on this one, and an absence of usable information, so this one will probably remain open for a while.[/quote]

Draft both after week 7. It's just two drafts where before we had one. One on Monday, one on Tuesday. Or something like that.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Um... Not sure you've seen our Champs draft. All 8 of 'em. (Yep, that'd be one draft per division, run over 4 nights.)

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I have seen the champs draft, but I am expecting 4 divisions per. I could be wrong (which would, admittedly, throw a wrench in the system). So then we can do it as we normally would, except now 8 drafts over two and three days instead of 4 (staggered start times). Or we could split it across the two weeks and do one draft before HOU and one before STL.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I'm assuming that there will be more than 4 divisions. 100-team divisions can be done, while still giving everybody 10 matches, but that puts a tremendous stress on everybody (and Frank has said something about that). But I'm not assuming that there will necessarily be 8. There are ways to handle intermediate sizes.

I would also not plan on more than 2 drafts per day. There have been exceptions, but they've been makeups when there were no other options available. It's just too hectic, particularly if tiers are involved for some reason. Basically, >2 drafts in one day is the absolute last resort in order to finish on schedule. (Going into a CMP travel day is preferable, and we avoid those.)

The one other "wildcard" element in this discussion--and it affects overall timing--is whether the South winners play at North. If not, then we can do them at the same time. If so, then we cannot.

This is why I've opened the discussion, to be able to discuss it as information comes in and start forming plans as far as what happens if X or Y is shown to be the method.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

One little problem (in my mind, at least) with the "rotation" cycle for drafts: team order stays consistent. Not all FF teams are created equal; take this situation into consideration.

FF teams A - G, team A is the "best" team, meaning they make the best picks, and B is the next best, then C, and so on.

The team order for the first cycle might end up like this:

F
G
E
A
B
D
C

In this situation, team D and E (who are roughly equal in picking ability) will have drastically skewed outcomes. Team D will be getting worse picks on average since D comes directly after B (who makes the best pick much of the time) 6 out of 7 drafts, and after A in 5 out of 7 drafts, while E always comes after F and G, who may leave better picks more often.

The only difference in a real situation is that we don't usually know who the best FF teams are (or can only guess at best), but that doesn't change the irregularity that goes on here. Especially in districts, where we'll only have one cycle, this irregularity needs to be addressed. Luckily, it is as simple as changing the rotation cycle. Rather than moving 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 and so on, it can be more like 1 to 5 and 5 to 9 and 9 to 3 and 3 to 2, or some "random" cycle like this, which not only puts FF teams in the same draft spot on average, but also immediately behind and ahead of different teams throughout the cycle.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but maybe this would be an easy change that makes drafting even more fair than adding a simple cycle.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

:rolleyes:

With any regulated switch you could come up with an algorithm that could be pretty good, but I think this is fine the way it is now.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

So I would like to propose a change to how districts are scored to make their scoring more in line with how the individual regional drafts work. I feel the cultural change awards (the ones you can only win once) should not count towards the points for an event but as a flat bonus point added to the teams average. Basically I feel when looking at how the original scoring system was developed, back when every event was drafted, that the Chairmans Awards high point value was done not only because it is the highest honor in FIRST but also to make the "chairmans teams" for lack of a better term competitive drafting prospects and with the districts averaging points they no longer are.

Basically what I am saying is lets say I know there is a solid team from Florida about to make the leap to being a Chairmans contender so I draft them as my last pick in both Orlando (Week 2) and South Florida (Week 5). My bet paid off and they win the award at Orlando, so I swap them out of South Florida and I have gained a Solid 42 points from that bet with no repercussions. Now if the same was applied to a district you only gain 21 points from the investment, or in the case of some teams 14, and in 2014 I know a team who would have only got 10.5.

I feel that it is sad from both a game play and a FIRST cultural level that our highest honors can result in the such low point production and having them be flat bonuses not counting for an individual event score would solve this.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

That's not a bad idea. As I recall, the affected awards are DCA (42), EI (36), WFFA (8), and Dean's List (4).

We may also be changing the district scoring system entirely--normalizing points rather than averaging has been suggested--but that is something to keep in mind.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Sounds fair.

Also can we have district teams only count for points in their respective district?

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Worth discussion, I think. District teams competing in regionals should get points the same as any other regional team, but inter-district play is an interesting discussion.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

Is there any spreadsheet that has all the drafted teams for each FF team at each event. Just being able to easily track which FRC teams that FF teams have will significantly help trading.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

There was one maintained by RFA last year.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I like this idea a lot. It makes more sense for the way we have set district fantasy up, and makes these awards much more important. After all, teams try to win Chairman's in a season rather than an event. Robot-wise, though, a team tries to win an event. I think this also solves the inter-district play debate. Count robot performance and non-culture awards on an event basis, average across all district events a team plays at (including other districts), then add the bonus points for the culture awards: DCA, EI, and RAS. This gives an identical point pool to all teams regardless of the district they're playing in.

Only one issue with this needs to be resolved before we can make it an official rule: in some rare instances, teams win the same award twice.
NEVER does this happen with Chairman's, but Rookie All Star and possibly Engineering Inspiration can be handed out to the same team at multiple district events. 6012 won a Rookie All Star at both district events the competed at last season.

Perhaps count the culture award flat bonus only once. If a team wins two RAS, give them the points for one. You could perhaps only count points for the highest culture award achieved (i.e. points for Chairman's only, not both Chairman's and EI) but I would disagree with that because a team that wins both of those awards, in my opinion, deserves more points.

Let's get the discussion rolling, folks, so we can figure out this rule (and others) before drafting season begins.

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I'd go with points for any culture award earned. I want to say that there's something in the district rules about not winning RAS twice, but I'm not entirely certain.

So, let's try this out:
Robot awards and robot performance are averaged--you're eligible for everything at every event--or POSSIBLY normalized to two district events. Culture change awards (DCA, DEI, DRAS) are given separately, on a per-each basis. That is, every time a team gets one of those awards, they get those points. (If teams like 6012 are good enough to win RAS twice, then you better believe they're good enough to get 30 FF points.)

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

So something that TBC has brought up in internal discussions is that for districts under a flat bonus model (I think is good) the current values of points assigned to winning that is rather high with the rest of the scores being averaged. I would pull up last year's district score breakdown but it seems the doc has been taken down :(

Perhaps visiting the discussion on a separate district scaling with the flat bonus model?

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

#2Champs Drafting Idea:

What's often a struggle for teams is keeping up with two simultaneous drafts. With Champs having twelve drafts over two short weeks, this provides a significant challenge. However, here is what I'd like to propose (two solutions).

1. Three staggered drafts on Monday and Tuesday before each Champs
- Carver starts at 7:00pm Monday, Galileo starts at 8:15pm on Monday, Hopper starts at 9:30 pm on Monday, all with different draft runners
- Repeat for all divisions

2. Two drafts each day on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday before each Champs
- Carver and Galileo start at 7:00pm on Sunday
- Hopper and Newton start at 7:00pm on Monday
- Repeat for all divisions

I personally am a fan of #1, but I think both are viable solutions, especially since no one is competing on April 16th (although April 23rd would produce a potential challenge).

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

#2 is consistent with what we've done in the past, though #1 is viable (though... I wouldn't necessarily say that the times would work as proposed. Some folks on the East Coast gotta sleep, right?).


The other possible option is to run "list-required" drafts. If every FF team submitted a list, it'd take about 10 minutes to run a draft...mostly formatting the original posts! Just go "put a list for your 1st pick or longer in, and we'll go until somebody's list runs out."

Re: [FF]: 2017 Fantasy FIRST Proposed Rule Changes
 

I only say that so no drafts would overlap. We could easily start at 7pm, 8pm, 9pm. Regardless, at worst case, that draft would finish at ~10:45pm ET, which would be before the end of a the average Sunday night or Monday night football game.

I don't think doing a "list-required" draft is the ideal solution: live picking helps break up the draft and allow people to follow the action a little more easily.