[Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

This thread is a spin-off of this discussion, and has been started to focus on radical tournament structure changes. This thread is intended to collect innovative ways to structure tournament play. Using previous years as an example, this might include ideas to add human players to a robot-only format, or to change the three robots playing at once to a three-team alliance format. Sizes of alliances, lengths of matches, number of matches at a tournament, etc are all open for discussion. Like the above thread, this thread is meant to collect creative ideas that can be applied to any game concept.

-dave

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Well, I have an idea for the Championship Competition. I was thinking a field only for the Regional Winners/Finalists, that way the best of the best compete on one field and move to compete against the other divisions.

Also for the finals for regionals and championship, add an additional robot to a three team alliance. This would help bring more robots into play and create interesting matches.

Example

Quarterfinal Match 1

Red Alliance : 25, 195, 1114 ( Robot on the side: 204)
vs
Blue Alliance: 486, 365, 341 ( Robot on the side: 395)

Quarterfinal Match 2

Red Alliance: 25,204,195 (Robot on the side: 1114)
vs
Blue Alliance: 365, 341, 395 (Robot on the side: 486)

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

That sounds like a great way to do that 4 team alliance without making the field bigger, but could introduce some unfairness.

I Believe there should be three alliances of either two or three teams.
It would be an interesting twist as determining who's the winner could be harder depending on the game.

Tomasz Bania

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Get rid of the serpentine draft.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

I would also encourage the selection of the "spare" bot by having an additional playoff partner, rather than the current method. Going back to the older method of having one bot sit out each playoff match allows 8 more teams to compete in the playoffs. More teams are rewarded, and the bot on the bubble doesn't sit there and wait -- not wishing bad luck on anyone, but hoping to get an opportunity to play.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

It also means that with a 3 team alliance, the minimum number of teams at a regional has to be 32, and not 24.

I can't see that happening, because there are numerous regionals that can barely get 24 teams, letalone 32.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

I would like to suggest a rule for this thread: no criticizing or critically evaluating ideas. Let the weird concepts flow!

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

I really don't see the benefit of going 1-8,8-1 in alliance selections. Is there data showing that this drafting method helps lower seeded teams? How many regional winners were 1-4 seeds in 2005 vs 2006?

What would be an interesting twist is not allowing an alliance captain to pick another alliance captain. This is probably a better way of 'leveling' the field for the finals. I would imagine that many alliances that win regionals consist of 2 top 8 teams.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

You want some out of the box ideas?

1. Robot size restrictions changed to a sum. Rather than 28x42 (or whatever) make it limited to a footprint of a certain number of square inches. FIRST inspectors are clever people -- they'll figure out how to measure them.

2. Create a total weight limit for the robot or robots fielded by a team. Only one robot can be radio controlled, the others have to be autonomous. For example, you might build an 80-pound "main" robot with two 20-pound autonomous slaves as helpers.

3. Have a "house" robot on the field, running under autonomous control that:

• Plays defense
• Plays offense
• Just drives around aimlessly
• Is attracted to other robots and gently nudges them
• Something else?

4. Place random obstacles on the field, which move from match to match. These range in size from Bots dots to shoe box in size. Some of these light up and can be used as scoring objects during autonomous.

5. Have powered, mobile scoring objects. You don't just pick them up -- you have to hunt them down first.

6. Have a variable number of teams on each alliance. The tournament has three rounds instead of two, with four robots per alliance in round 1, three in round 2 and only two in the finals.

7. Replace the finals best-two-of-three single-elimination format with a double-elimination tournament. All alliances which lose in the first round finals games are put back in a pool, and new alliances are picked from the first-round losers. These newly-formed alliances are then reinserted into the "loser's bracket" of the double-elimination tournament. The winning alliances in the first round are left intact.

8. Instead of doing alliance selection as they now, allow the top seeded teams to bid on partners using virtual bucks. Give each team $100 virtual dollars and have a silent auction for alliance partners. Team numbers and a picture of their robot are posted on a wall (or other conveniently flat surface) and the top-seeded teams then enter their bids on a bidding computer. A top-seeded team (alliance captain) on which other teams have bid can choose to allow themselves to be "sold" or not. If they choose not to accept the high bidder, they are "off the market" and will be an alliance captain. The high bidder gets their bucks back and can rebid them. Maybe this is done in real-time from eight bidding computers and the current bid amounts are displayed on the big screen. I know this seems complicated, but I want to noodle on it a bit. I like the games theory aspect, and it would introduce teams to a lot of modern mathematical theory they don't normally see in FIRST -- but it needs work. I promise to post a more fully-developed version later.

9. Instead of just scoring won/lost records, allow the accumulation of "team points" similar to some auto racing series. This might work best if there were four alliances of two robots each on the field at the same time. The first place alliance would get 12 points, second 6 points, third 3 points, and fourth 0 points.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

There a number of interesting ideas flowing here, but I would like to provide an additional caution similar to the above. More robot per match generally requires more floor space... Some venues are close to maxed out with the current field. It may not seem like a lot, but 2 or 3 feet in some cases makes a lot of difference.

That being said, how about a format similar to this year's periods with the difference that in each period something on thie field (goals, end zones, etc) or even robots themselves change alliance randomly.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

or for even more fun, simply express the starting size as a volume, for example, a 28x38x60in robot has a volume of 63840 cubic inches. A little harder to measure, but could spawn some very creative ideas.

Some other twists:
1) Call me crazy, but why not have house rules? At every regional, or just each weekend of regionals, the game would be slightly different than the other regionals/ weekends. Why? It would be harder to figure out basic strategies just from watching another regional. Then, at championships, all 4 divisions have house rules, maybe the same ones as some of the regionals, with Einstein being some brand new house rule, to give the division champions something new and challenging. It could be length of rounds, how to win automonous, point values, anything (just not robot rules). Oh, and don't reveal the house rules for that weekend until the Monday or Tuesday of each week, to really keep teams on their toes. Then Dave Verbugge could change the target colors on Einstein.

2) Someone suggested this one of the prior years, but what about tag-team alliances. Then you could get 4 robots on an alliance at a time, but only with 3 active. Teams could switch which robots are active manually, or the field would if the 4th robot hasnt gone active within a certain time limit. For even more fun, let the field randomly choose a robot on each alliance to deactivate at the 1minute remaining mark and activate the 4th robot on each alliance.

3) Don't give each team a list of who is in every match and on which alliance. Simply give teams a list of which mathes they are in, without their partners or opponents listed. This way, teams will need to be able to strategize with alliance partners in the "on deck" stage, with only 2-5 minutes before they go on the field. It's more fun that way.

EDIT in response to post 12 from Andy,
Ok, yes #3 isnt a "new" idea, but it would certainly be a radical change to the complete match lists we have had since 2002. The lists FIRST gave out in 1999-2001 had a list of 12 teams on it, so you had a slight idea of who you might be with. #3 suggests giving teams absolutely no idea who they are with. It's another way for FIRST to raise the bar.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Ooooh... now there is an interesting idea, adding onto last year's "periods" introduction. I'll add on to it:

Make one (or more) of the periods "contact free".

For example:

Period 1: autonomous period (could be contact free, or not)
Period 2: Full contact, free-for-all scoring
Period 3: non-contact, free-for-all scoring
Period 4: Full contact, free-for-all scoring

Period 3 would be the "weenie period" where the offensive robots would dominate, and the box-on-wheels would wimper. Once period 4 started, the offensive robots would have to definitely keep their eyes open.

Andy B.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

(must... resist... critiquing... Ryan's idea... aaaah!)

While this may appear to be "fun", it is not new. FIRST did this to us already, from 1999-2001.


Andy B.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

I'll explain why that wouldn't work. Even though it isnt GP, it would happen. Teams would purposely throw matches to get out of the top 8 so that a high seeded team could pick them.

Re: [Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas
 

Variable number of alliance partners per match.
Match 1 is 2v2
Match 2 is 4v4
Match 3 is 1v1
etc.

Have mini-alliance selections before each match
Each match has a random team assigned Red Captain and Blue Captain, then each of those picks the rest of their partners from the other teams in the match. They flip a coin or something to see who gets first pick.