Re: #1 seeded teams
 

Exactly agreed. That is why you sometimes pick oddball partners. They may work to help you or they may serve to hurt you. But it's all luck (we found out the hard way).

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

I'm going to put some numbers out there. I suppose many (not all) would consider the best team to be the team that scored the most points. So lets look at last years nationals since our selections there have already been brought up.
175 was seeded third. Seed 1 picked Seed 2 bumping us up to the second pick. We then picked 33 (possibly seed 11?). The reason we did this was because Team 33 had the best robot in curie division. (again if you consider the highest scoring robot to be the best robot) By those same numbers (objective as always and I'm sorry if it seems like I'm tooting my own horn) we were the second best robot in the division. The third, I believe was 118. Team 108 (I had no idea they were seeded so low, our scouting system doesn't take wins and losses or alliance total scores into account) was somewhere in the 5-8 range as far as scoring goes. So, at least in our division, Seeding did not have that much to do with actual scoring ability.
At Chesapeake last year, the top scoring robot (173) was seeded first. They then picked 1027, the third highest scoring robot. They did in fact win. The third seed robot was, 007, was the sixth highest scoring robot. Seeding was a bit closer than nationals, but not much.
This year a Chesapeake the highest scoring robot, 293, was third seed, the 2nd highest scoring robot, 341, was, I think 10th seed, the fifth, 175, was 4th seed, the sixth was 1389, which was actually still around for the second pick of the third alliance, the 1st seed, only undefeated team, was 1629 the 8th highest scoring robot. I am not sure of the seeds of the 56 and 399, the third and fourth highest scoring teams. The seeding this year reflected score even less than last year. However, the seeding did accurately predict winning in every single match up of the finals. This, I think, is the exception, not the rule. Again this assumes that you consider the best robot to be the highest scoring robot. Not necessarily true. Part of the first seed's success at Chesapeake was based on the fact that all three teams got up the ramp all but one time.
So there's the endless string of data that seems to come whenever I post.
I think that it really depends on the ability of the lower seeded teams to scout. If every single team had great scouting, then this would level the playing field. As it is, some teams do not have great scouting. In Chesapeake I think 6 out of 8 first picks were out of the top 8 at that time. This brought I think seed 14 into picking position. This team would be at a disadvantage because they were not expecting to be picking. Some teams end up seeded in the top 8 without ever having done great scouting, making their picks somewhat random. If you are a number one seed and the earlier seeds leave good robots (much more likely at Nationals) you will have a much better chance than if you are a first seed and no good robots have been left behind (much more likely at smaller regionals). Let me know if any of that made sense.

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

I took some time to look at that problem from a statistical point of view. If a team does well in one match because they are with complimenting robots, they have a lesser chance of repeating the same scenario. Therefore, "how good teams actually are" can be found by looking at their individual score for a match compared to the teams they are allianced with's average scores over the event.

I have started an excel spreadsheet program that will help factor luck out of the equation for rankings.

www.team195.com/scouting/aimhighstats.xls

Please take the time to look at this spreadsheet. If you have any questions, please post or PM me. The format is quite crude seeing as I made this in a short amount of time, but I plan to further the development of this tool to help aid in team selections at nationals.

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

Just a side note. I checked into, but i haven't wrote anything down. But for those that think that the #1 and #2 seeded teams are the best think of this. of the regionals i have looked through. only 1 #1 #2 alliance has gone on to win the regional this year. so what does that say about #1 and #2 seeded teams being the best?

Just something to talk about.

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

It all depends on what is considered the "Best" robot. Highest scoring is not necessarily the number 1 seed. The #1 seed SHOULD be the robot that can do well no matter who it plays with. If you were to continue playing until all possible alliances pairings had played, that is who would come out on top. In this case, it would be interesting if the #1 and #2 seeds would be the best alliance partners.

However, this is not the case. At the regionals, it will end up that the robots which are able to score more despite heavy defense, incompetent alliance partners, etc. end up on top. And so, the #1 and #2 seeds may not have complementary strategies. In fact, they may have the SAME strategy. In this game, that could mean that they get in eachother's way, or become easier to defend against.

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

Considering that matches are 3v3 that number would have to be HUGE. When we went to 3 teams per alliance we sacrificed a good deal of accuracy in our seeding. Your robot is nothing more than 1/3 of youR "randomly" paired alliance. You are against 3 other bots, 2 or 3 of which might be powerhouses. If you are by far the best bot on your "randomly" paired alliance, you will draw all the defense and your partners may not be able to take advantage of this. I like the new 3 bot alliances because of the complexities it add to elims, but it does make seeding more difficult. It could be worse. At least seeding is based on wins and losses instead of entirely on loser's score (like 2003).

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

I would suggest significant factors are:

1. The quality of scouting (as stated previously)

2. The depth of the field

3. How different game play is between the qualifying rounds and the playoffs(specifically defense).

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

Remember you can't really quantify what team is the best off of just a few factors. A team that doesn't have a good score can be very good, or a team with a high score can be low-quality (for example they might have unreliable electricals). The best robot isn't the best shooter, or the best defender, or the best picker upper, it's a combination of good components that work together well. In my experience, the only thing that would be able to take all the factors and spit out good, reliable, accurate rankings is an experienced human with a photographic memory.

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

Along those line the best elimination round robot is not necessarily the best qualifying robot. Remember the qualifiers and elims never quite play the same.

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

First, thank's Tom for posting that spreadsheet. It's an interesting tool.

I would agree that the seeding rounds give a rough estimate of the best robots at a competition. Suprisingly, in Tom's spreadsheet the top 8 teams in the real rankings stayed ranked within the top 8 in the scaled rankings. This means that the seeding system is working fairly well.

I would agree that top 8 teams can pick "oddball" robots and win a regional. This is because the current ranking system rewards high scoring offensive rounds. Which is unfortunate because the skills needed during the finals are a little different. Offense wins #1 seed, defense wins championships.

My original point was that next year there should be a rule that two teams from within the top 8 should not be allowed to allaince together during the finals. They are the best robots at a competition. This isn't communism. FIRST would rather have the final rounds be exciting for all teams rather that just the dominant alliance. Every alliance should have the same chance winning.

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

Yes but then you would be taking away from the qualifcation matches because if you know the number one seed will pick you if your not in the top 8 then all you would have to do to make sure you are picked by them is get out of the top 8.

My opinion on making the top 8 pick outside the top 8 will just make the qualifing rounds useless because if a team wants to be with another team bad enough they will just lose. And then were is the fun and enthusiasm in that for the kids and for the people watching?

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

I don't know about that. It wasn't true last year and I don't think it will be true this year. We will see I guess.

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

I agree with everything you said (especially the last thing), except I have an example of something contrary to high scoring offensive bots being rewarded. At Pittsburgh (granted, the smallest regional, and therefor statistically less reliable), the top three seeds could not shoot for the high goal at all. All three, however, were pretty good dumpers, but their top quality IMHO was their strong defense.

Another point I think has already been brought up: the #1 and #2 seeds may have too much in common for them to do well by picking each other. The alliance that wins will be the alliance whose members best complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, as well as work together cohesively. From Chesapeake, the only loss for our #1 alliance (1629, 175, and 1184) was due to an offsides penalty that resulted from miscommunication, from not working together. We had three very different bots, two of which could shoot, dump, and play at least some defense. One could dump and play excelent defense. The thing I love about this year's game is the number of different strategies that can win. You have to adapt your strategy for every single game, more so than last year...and that's why I carried a giant bottle of Tylenol all weekend!

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

From Sacramento/Davis Regional today, we (1351) were the #1 seed.

Our first pick was seed #18 (it may have been #13, those who know me know my memory for that sort of thing is a little fuzzy) which a -lot- of people were surprised by, but the pick was subject to huge ammounts of discussion and a lot of scouting by our best scouters. We had a way to get our own bot onto the ramp and win the round. The only rounds they could keep us from just dumping balls into the high goal was the time we were triple-teamed, and 649 worked perfectly as a high shooter unless they had someone on them...

But not to bore with strategy. A victor fried several mins before our first match, requiring us to use our timeout and a lot of frantic people to replace it and plug it in. I'm assuming because of the general panic, a pwm didn't get plugged in all the way (just to clarify, I don't blame anyone for this, it took hours to figure out where the problem was afterwards and multiple tries just to plug the dang thing in because it was sticking) and we never could figure out the problem on the field. Not having the left hand side of our drivetrain pretty much lost us two matches we would have easily won.

All it takes for the #1 seed to lose is a stupid system failure with bad timing to render their entire bot useless for twenty minutes.


[edited as per request and to correct a couple things, I typed this late]

Re: #1 seeded teams
 

From LA, 2nd seed won, 1st seed was finalist.
Actually, first seed picking second seed may have the potential to go all the way. The record for the first and second seeds at LA: 9-0-0. By the end of the finals, it was 13-2-1, and they were simply outstrategized.

It's not the alliance that wins the finals, it's the strategy that is tailored to the alliance faced that wins.