What do you think
 

I think I have found a small flaw with FIRST. We were seated in the top 8 all during Qualification matches. The problem was, our last match (the 2nd to last one) was lost due to our alliance not hanging. The score was 100 to 115. This shot us down to posistion # 12 from the 2nd place we were in the beginning of the day. If we would have went up. (I am not blamming it on that team, just givin the info) The only problem was, every team already had made the decision on who they would choose in the alliance choosings. Everyone still thinking we were in the top eight didn't add us to their list. This was very frustrating for our team after doing very well in NJ finishing 3rd, and being in the 1, 2 or 3 seeded spot, and not getting picked. Has what happened to us ever happened to any other teams? What do you think about what happend? Many teams after the choosing were like uhhh....you didn't get picked?

Re: What do you think
 

I agree that it is highly annoying, but there isn't much that can be done about it. You would think that the other teams would have you on their list and just skip you if they knew you weren't a possiblility, but that isn't really the fault of the system itself.

Re: What do you think
 

wow thats a difficult situation - I would be surprized if teams ignored the top seeded teams for picking alliances - the other 7 top seeds would be my first choice - pick the bot that did the best that compliments your robot (or the one you REALLY dont want to have to go up against)

How many teams were at the event? some of these large regionals make it very difficult to keep track of everyone - but even still, I would think a primary input to scouting would be the final placement in the seeding rounds - 12th place would be a prime candidate.

Re: What do you think
 

yea... that is really fustrating, and very disapointing, but similar occurances like this have happened several times before. the only thing that is guarenteed is that the top eight teams will compete in the eliminations... the other teams can only hope. :( :( :(

Re: What do you think
 

as matt said in another thread... i dont think the problem here is due to a problem in FIRST, but with a problem within teams themselves. Anyone at UTC today knows about the mass chaos that was the alliance pickings. There were teams being picked that had already been picked, alliance captains being picked that were ranked higher than the team picking them, and teams being picked that dont exist and/or weren't at the regional. Also i was disgusted with the amount of rudeness and the amount of bitterness that was going on during and after the pickings. For example... one member of an unnamed team (in the top 8), after being picked by a higher ranked team responded "we're happy with the partners we got" (or something to effect of that) What ever happened to lines like "In the true spirit of FIRST, we sadly are forced to decline"? Overall, i was disgusted with what went on today at the UTC regional, and i would hope that other people would not have to experience this kind of strange, cruel torture.

(This post was not meant to offend anyone or any team. Any examples used for for the just that purpose, an example)

Re: What do you think
 

HUH?!

someone tried to pick one of the top 8 teams in the second round of picks?!

you cant do that - once a team has picked an alliance partner that top seeded team cant be picked by another team.

Re: What do you think
 

Well Ken, some teams tried... In the second round of picks there were teams picking other allaince captains, then picking already picked teams, then picking non existent teams. Ahh yes, there was also the dispute involving 237.. Apparently, since they (ranked 6) were in the top 8 and rejected one invitation(571), they could not accept the invitation of 126(5) because they had already declined another team.

Re: What do you think
 

ok - next year FIRST has to put 3 Zire PDAs in each KOPs, along with a scouting program, and a way to update all of them on the field during alliance selection from the IR beacons :^)

It would REALLY help if FIRST could display the remaining teams on the big screen, according to ranking, updated in real time during the selection process.

Re: What do you think
 

This is a very frustrating situation, and two very prominant situations stick out in my memories just during my driving career, and one being on both sides of the situation.
In 2002, I had experienced an unusual amount of successes along with my fellow driving partner, and team members. We were alwas seeded in the very top, and never questioned the fact of not being in the position of being able to pick. As the alliance captain, I have only ever done picking of highly seeded teams at official competitions. However, after I returned from post-season competitions, I analyzed my work and found that I had choose teams that I knew worked well, had experience, and we had worked with prior too; eventhough they were seeded quite low at the competition.
In 2003 though a new game began with a new robot and new strategies. We, as a drive team found ourselves at a very different and unfamiliar place. We had never experienced what we believed at the time as "failure". We had been driving together since the 2001 game, and were unfamiliar with having to bite our nails to find out if we were going to the finals (elimination rounds). At our Regional, MidAtlantics, we uncrated finding ourselves very unprepared and had a great amount of work to even consider competing by Friday morning. By the time Alliance selections rolled around, we were rolling and starting to shine on the field. A rookie team (1048 Martians ?? correct me if I am wrong) had faith in us, and asked us to assist them alongside 303 in the finals. We proved to be a strong alliance eventhough they picked us from around the 30th seed of 32 or 34 teams.
We had prequalified from the year before for Houston. We went on, and became a powerhouse in our division being seeded #6 the entiire competition all the way through till our last Qualification match. We had our fist misfortune with a drill motor since we became opperational for the season, and we didn't have a stong alliance partner. It was a close match, and a long battle, but it ended up bumping us to #14. All day Saturday fellow teams had attempted to "buy our bid", to have us pick them, and praise us for our work. However, when it came selection time no one was even aware that we had been bumped from the top 8. It was heartbreaking as a floor team as it was our last Horrrrah! together, and it was so close, but slipped away. I believe there is a thread somewhere - a discussion was started regarding this situation in Galileo at Houston in 2003 - that only two teams ranked between 10 and 20 were taken to the finals in alliances.

........ sorry for the long posting, just my pennyless thoughts ................

Re: What do you think
 

almost every regional is like this, although probably not to the extent of what you say happened at UTC =(.

the gracious professionalism slight is pretty much unacceptable anywhere, regardless of how many teams or whos picking you or whatever. but i remember at pittsburgh, there was confusion as well, between whether or not a team would accept, and there was a lot of pressure on the singular representative out there, and one team had basically everyone telling him to do something while he was signing that he was going to do the opposite. we had teams picking other teams who had been picked etc etc. what would help is if during the picking, a live list of teams that have been picked and the pickers (basically teams you cant pick) would be displayed during the selection process on the big screen.

Re: What do you think
 

I think that would be a very good idea. I think this idea should attempt to persue this for next years competition. I dont think it will be very hard for them to attempt/do. It would also help the top 8 and keep away from confusion. The PDA idea would be cool, just not to that extent, lol. (they probobly could get some really cheap ones donated or somting that you must return for the next year or ELSE pay)

Re: What do you think
 

well we have a situation kind of like yours.. we where 5th or 6th after 8 of our 10 matches then the last day we did not want to break any thing before the finals so we left it up to our alliance partner weather we would win or not... we lost our last two and ended up in 13th for the regional... luckily enough teams saw how good we where and we got picked first by the first place alliance... if i was in your situation i would of been pissed off for a while becuase i knew we had a good robot and if we did not get picked. it would sucked big time.. any ways remember theres always next time or even the nationals to get em back!

Re: What do you think
 

(we dont have the money....only way would have been to win the regional and get payed for by FIRST)

Re: What do you think
 

this was going to be team 61's last year becuase of lack of support from the school ect... but thank goodness we won the regional becuase now they want to support us...we have done one regional for 6 years now becuase of lack of money but since we won florida we then went to our sponsers and asked for some money. thank goodness for having great sponsers we were able to raise over 5,000 in less than two days... well since you can not get em this year remember next year!

Re: What do you think
 

what happend suck for us , but there is no changing it. i hope that next year they top seeded team can accualy figure out what is going out, they seemed to not have a clue what anyone else was doing.

Re: What do you think
 

No, I don't think this is a flaw in the system. Its the mistake of the teams that didn't choose you. If your robot was as good as you say it is, they should have had you on their list even though you were in the top eight. In scouting we include everybody above us in ranking and then just cross them off if they choose a team (and not us). I do not think FIRST should change the Alliance Selection procedure. If nothing else, its a suspensful part of the competition.

Re: What do you think
 

I would not blame the coincidence on FIRST. There were MANY good teams at UTC, and picking the best partners was very tough. It all depends on the choosing teams strategy. For example my team has a meeting and ranks each team to our specifications, and then ranks whom we wish to pick first, followed by the next ranking team in case our first choice is picked by someone else.
Also, the game this year ranks team by their number of wins, AND THEN qp's. This may be a flaw in FIRST, but I still wouldn't point fingers. I mean, if your team wins all of their matches, GREAT, but if you won by only five points or so, not so impressive, however that puts you up in the ranks. I think teams don't look at ranks, but at qualities, and effectiveness. And if it's not up to their standards, or isn't as great as other teams, your lower on the list to pick from. Now I'm saying this in general to give an example, and have nothing whatsoever against your team. I saw you guys out there, and you were good, so I don't know what happened. On a second note; the alliance captains of the top seeded teams did not seem to be prepared or aware of the alliance choosing rules, so this might have also had an impact on why your team wasn't chosen. I don't know what happened out there. This is a one time instance for your team, and it just happpens. I am sure that your team won't be on a streak of bad luck, so cheer up, and good luck in the future!

Re: What do you think
 

I dont believe that FIRST pays for anyone anywhere to goto nationals even after they won a competition (someone correct me if wrong please =D). The same thing happened when 188 won west michigan last year. There was only 1 or 2 weeks in between and what ended up happening was that only the drive crew, human player, 1 teacher and 1 mentor went to houston while the rest of us stayed at home. I feel for your team, but theres not much anyone can do right now, and personally I feel the system is fine the way it is. Maybe your team could try to talk it up with the other teams a bit more? Prepare flyers and handouts and distribute them just before alliance pickings? or have representatives go out and talk with the high seeded teams as well. A lot of times high seeds pick other high seeds and then the 9th, 10th, 11th seeded teams pick and some do so without pre-scouted lists because they didnt originally believe they had to. At pittsburgh something like the 12th or 13th seeded team got to pick

Re: What do you think
 

At the Arizona regional (or BAE...i can't remember) they did have a list in the background of the top seeded teams and then on the right side they had the teams that were left. it wasn't applicable to our team because we got picked by the 2nd place team, but i'm sure it was very useful in 2nd round picking for other teams

Re: What do you think
 

I also seem to remember there being a list of the top teams and who they picked along with the remaining teams on the big screen at the Florida Regional (most clearly remember this in 2002 at KSC). But this year at FL regional I don't think they had it and yes there were also problems with teams picking teams not in the regional or allready picked teams.

Re: What do you think
 

Same thing for the Pacific NW Regional.

Re: What do you think
 

If I'm not mistaken they did have this in 2001 and 2002 not sure about 2003 and well pretty much non exsistant in 2004

Re: What do you think
 

This was exactly the case at the Detroit regional also. When a couple of teams made it to the top 8 alliances due to intra-top 8 picking, the big screen proved helpful. They weren't quite expecting to be there or prepared with a list of teams that had been picked, etc., so they used the board to help them out. It was nice.

Re: What do you think
 

Perhaps there needs to be some discussion about how to do selections... What do your teams do?

Our team (343) tries to build a list of our top 24 or so choices by Friday evening. It is reconsidered during Saturday. If we are fortunate enough to be in the top eight, the person on the field just has to look up into the stands. One of our people in the stands holds up a chalkboard with the recommended team number. The people on the field cannot keep up with such a complex thing as a shifting list on the fly... (However, that doesn't excuse the team from selecting team numbers that don't exist or from picking someone with a higher seed during the first round of picking.) Our people in the stands are marking off numbers and communicating with our person on the field. If you have a tentative list that is long enough, no matter how many of your top picks are taken, you still have a number ready to call out.

<my opinion>
As for the rankings throughout the day... I honestly don't believe that list is good for very much. Yes, it does provide the list of the top eight teams. However, I believe that some teams do well or poorly because of the teams with whom they are paired. Also, the team ranked 13 might look better than the 30th team on a list of rankings, but the rankings don't tell you if #13 is going to cooperate with you. A helpful #30 can be far better than a stubborned #13. The quality of an alliance partner is to be measured with far more information than just their previous productivity while randomly paired.
</my opinion>

I would enjoy hearing about what your teams do to prepare for alliance selections! Please share!!!

Re: What do you think
 

Life is flawed. Your's is yet another example of FIRST imitaiting reality.

Re: What do you think
 

One way to work around this would be to take a break between the end of matches and alliance selection. This way, teams have a chance to mull over the final rankings, and talk to the teams they are thinking about picking. I beleive FIRST did this one year, but I can't remember which.

However, it is much better now then it was in 1999. In 1999, you couldn't pick teams ranked in the top 8. Thus, if you fell from 5th to 13th in the last few matches and people didn't realize it, you'd have no chance. However, this year, if teams 1-4 had wanted to pick you, they could have picked you regardless of whether you were 5th or 13th. It would affect the 5th through 8th seeds, if they hadn't noticed it.

I can only think of once that one of my teams have felt "snubbed" in the alliance selection. That was nationals in 1999. We ranked in the mid 30's and I thought we were better then some of the teams that did get picked. However, two teams in close proximity in the pits to us (308 and 312) were also snubbed, and their robot's were even better then ours, so it made me feel better.

Re: What do you think
 

No the problem was, we were 2nd, then we lost our last match which put us down to 12th, so only one team would have had us on their list. We were on teams in the top 8's list to accept if choosen by us, but they didnt realize untill after. I think the problem was, the showing of the rankings. They should announce the top eight, then have a break, so teams can then choose who they wanted. Picking would then not be based on assumption from seeing a team high all day and would force people to do more efficient scouting!

Re: What do you think
 

It is not a flaw in FIRST. They use methods that are MUCh more fair than the NCAA, or other college organizations. They base everything on your overall record, as well as the strength of your opponents (hence being ranked by the number of points they score). The problem rather, is with scouting. When we get ready for an alliance selection we rank EVERY team that we might possibly want, starting with the number one seed. This way if this situation happens, or if we rise in the rankings, we know exactly who we want. THen, once we are on the field and our allianc captain has the bib on, we cross out picked teams/higher seeded teams, thatway NO ONE gets overlooked.

Re: What do you think
 

That is what every frirst team should do, but sadly, that is very complicated to get every team to do, and every team would not do this if some how you told every team

Re: What do you think
 

Other: please explain:

not accusing you of doing somehting wrong or somehting like that.
last year we were in 52nd firday goign into sat. that friday night we made flyers and went to kinkos and got them cut and gave like 3 or 4 to each team to get our team out there... so once the picking came about the 6th seed or so picked us and we won. oh btw after sat. we were in 12th place..

i say... you should have went around to teams and handed out flyers about your team and team's bot during the time b4 picking alliances and tell them what place your team is in...

my 2.56958605895 cents

Re: What do you think
 

This happened to us, and I dont really have much sympathy, because when that happened, you needed to go out and make everyone aware of what happened, about your bot's capabilities, etc.

In 2002 at Nationals, we were seeded between 4th and 7th in the Einstein Division the entire competition. In our last qualifying match, we were up against team 16, which had an amazing ball collecting robot. at the time, we were ranked 7th. We ended up losing the match 48-52, and got knocked back to a tie for 11th, which Team 93 won, and we got dropped to 12th. Had we won that match, we would have been seeded 1st or 2nd. We thought we were going to be picked by a certain team, but due to some breakdown of communication or something, they picked team 10, which didnt exist. We almost moved up into the top 8, but ended up being one pick away.

We knew our robot was one of the best single goal robots in our division, and we knew for sure we were a lot better than many of the picked robots. There are 2 possible reasons we didnt get picked by someone else.

1) We didnt fit the alliance captain's strategy (We would have complemented at least one alliance, Im sure)

2)We failed to make ourselves known to the top 8 teams and the teams likely to move into the top 8.

The real culprit here was #2. We did nothing to make our name known to the other 7 teams in the top 8, since we figured the team we performed well with earlier, and had been planning to pick had we been in the top 8 would pick us, we didnt make any effort to show other teams what we could do.

At the end of the day, I had just as much fun anyways, and was happy we made it so far after having a non functional robot at SVR.

It isn't all about how you place in the competition guys. We placed dead last, with a record of 0-8-1 at Sacramento this weekend, and I had a blast!

Cory

Re: What do you think
 

This would have been a very good idea. We usually do this, but the match lost and the alliance pickings were a full 5 minutes apart at the most, so teams already had choosen and sent their representitives up on stage, so this would not have changed much. That why there should be a break in between the end of qualification matches and pickings and no showing of ranks (also we were going to be moved to first by winning that match but our partner didnt hang for the first time in the comp, and the only time. just our luck! We would have also gotten lots of qp 115 of it but..thanks to the other team we got screwed. What ever tough its over now Just trying to make everyone aware so it DOESNT happen to them)

Re: What do you think
 

Ben, i know it sucks, but please stop whinning about this. Although this really isnt fun, its life.

i hope that in the future they can make the system better, but if everything is perfect, we wont be prepared for it.

Re: What do you think
 

Does any one have any ideas on how to FIX this problem that us and many teams have had in the past? Also, many teams will encounter this in the future if it is not fixed! So ideas are greatly appreciated

Re: What do you think
 

Yes -Dean Kamen knows how to fix the problem:

from last years kickoff meeting: "at some point in the next six weeks you are going to start feeling like you are involved in a robot building contest. Then you are in serious trouble" -DK

the fix for the problem is to not take the competion so seriously - you got to test your robot against 30 to 60 other teams for 3 days and see how well your design worked - that is the purpose of the event - not to see who can build the best robot in your area

if the competition was meant to be a serious contest there would be serious prizes - like scholarships and large grants of money to every person on the winning team - and the contest would be one on one - no alliances - so the best robot would be the one that wins - and you would not see teams helping each other during the build season or in the pits, or encouraging schools to start new teams - because people would be focused on the prize and would not want more competition to beat to have to win it.

The fix is to not take the games so seriously - its intended to be fun - to be a learning experience about engineering and teamwork

the only way to fix the problem like you want to would be to turn FIRST into something else.

If you go home from a FIRST competition feeling like "we got screwd" then you dont "get it".

Re: What do you think
 

i think someone metinoed about a top 8 team being picked in the second round... that was us 121... one of the other alliance captains tried to pick us after we had already picked another team... strange indeed... and it was just mass confusion... *shurg*

Re: What do you think
 

I don't know if there is anyway that this could be considered a flaw with FIRST. It is the responsibility of teams to know who would be good partners for them, and prepare themselves. As a team, we make fliers about our strengths and strategies well before any events and have them available to give out to teams. If nothing else, other teams can look and see if you really do what you say you'll do.

Teams also need to go through all the teams at the competition and rank them in terms of who they think is their best options for partners. Just because someone is ranked highly doesn't mean a lower seeded team isn't better suited as a partner, as has been mentioned several times in this thread. We consider many elements when choosing partners, including but not limited to their performance in objectives we see important, their reliability, friendliness/'good to work with', etc. As Ken said, it's about having fun so you want to pick a team you want to work with and can form a real team with.

It's part of the game, and we've all been disappointed before. Teams will prepare as much as they see fit and pick who they pick. You just have to accept that it's what they think is the best, cheer on through the finals, or spend the extra time working on your robot in the pit to make it better.