Re: A statistical look at G14
 

I think our team's plan is to make G14 a non-issue by just attempting to dominate every match, even the ones we have no super cells in.Hopefully we'll never have a supercell available to us for just that reason. ;)

Doesn't change the fact that it's a horrible rule though.

Re: A statistical look at G14
 

If you are the team which keeps winning by a landslide then yes you are going to feel like you are being penalized for no reason, but for those teams who were not capable, either financially or technically, to design a robot which is perfect at all the tasks, this is a godsend.

There have been plenty of years where walking through the pits all you hear is "We're matched up against (insert amazing performing team here) 3 times today, we can't win against them." This rule may even the odds a little bit.

It's similar to when your score was based on a multiple of the losing score, it brings the score a little closer together without implementing a mercy rule.

Re: A statistical look at G14
 

No, it's just the opposite. Now when I face off against these elite teams, there's a chance that my alliance partners will put me at a disadvantage because they did well their last match.

My problem with G14 is not what I do, but what my alliance partners do. I can control my team, but I can't control what my randomly paired partners did the match before.

Re: A statistical look at G14
 

lol. as a member of the week 1 regionals for the fourth year this year, i have to comment that the same will probably be true. it always seems like the NJ regional runs a lot less smoothly than NY (last week in previous years). im not sure how this could be remedied, as FIRST wont have 50+ teams ready to play before week 1 to try out the game.

but in general, i think the idea for G14 is a good one, but it will certainly not be as much fun as trying to get the highest possible score.

another bad thing about week 1 this year is the open "fix-it" windows, which seems to allow all teams unlimited time to work on parts for our robots, at least that is how i read it.

Re: A statistical look at G14
 

A more accurate statement to draw from this (since it is a worst-case scenario) is that at least 25% of lunacy matches are likely to have their full super cell/empty cell allotment. Granted, the first couple matches will have their full set anyway because nobody has drawn a G14 yet.

Re: A statistical look at G14
 

In order to truly align the statistical data with what we should expect from this year's game, we need to figure out which game had similar point values for the game pieces and for the endgame. 2008's scoring happened in one spot for each alliance (except for hybrid mode), so I don't believe 2008's matches provide a valid anaylsis for 2009's midgame. 2008's endgame only provided a maximum of 24 points and also wasn't even an option if the alliance didn't already have great midgame execution potential.

In all honesty, 2007 has the correct structure. Even though the game pieces could be worth more individually, there was in fact a sort of scarcity of them relative to this year. This scarcity combined with the 'factor of two' multiplication will provide a more direct correlation to what we can expect in 2009 midgame results. Also, the endgame point values are identical -- in the last 20 seconds, teams have the opportunity to score 60 points without having to rely on mistakes made by their opponents.

Then, do a statistical analysis on teams who would have lost a match had their endgame point values been slashed in half (alot of research, yes). I know for a fact that the '07 VCU finals and '07 Einstein finals would have had a different outcome. Overall, I'm pretty sure that what we'd find is that alliances who put more emphasis on midgame active robot scoring in teleop would have prevailed over alliances who went for defense/endgame strategies.

Re: A statistical look at G14
 

I disagree. 2007's exponential scoring makes the 2x/3x thresholds much easier to hit. You could have one team score 6 ringers and another team score 5 ringers, and have the winning team get double the score. Scoring just 2 ringers less than your opponent's team could result in you having 1/4 of their score. 2005 and 2007 both had strategic scoring: where you put something (and where you had put things earlier) had a great deal to do with how much it was worth. 2006, 2008, and 2009 all have what I'll call 'speed' scoring: you have to do similar things as fast as you can, regardless of location. The built-in lopsidedness of 2007 scoring would make it a poor candidate as a stand-in.

2008 or 2006 would be better choices than 2007 as proxies because your score was approximately proportional to what you did in the game and how many times you did it, much like Lunacy. Lunacy will have less lopsided scoring than either because even if your alliance's robots are all horrible and can't score, your human players can still rack up some points.

Re: A statistical look at G14
 

regardless of the statistics using previous games to determine the quality of a rule, the rule isn't going to change. however, if we use practice games to gain the data, it would at least give us a reasonably estimate of how often the rule will come into effect

Re: A statistical look at G14
 

This is a good point to an extent. I agree that 2006 would be better for a midgame score sampling, though my statements also took into account the endgame and the big picture... which takes additional research and time to get right, so maybe it's inapplicable.

2008's endgame was the deciding factor in some matches, but didn't have as much impact as 2007 or 2009. 2006's endgame was somewhere in between, though many teams incorporated it into the way they scored to begin with...so it then was no longer an isolated 'endgame' strategy like 2007 was or 2009 will be, which rules it out. None of the three years had direct and, consistent human player scoring so it's difficult to gauge where that plays into statistics.

While I agree that 2007's exponential scoring and where you placed ringers had more effects than quantity of ringers, I could still argue that 2007's scoring is more directly related to 2009's than any other because 2009 has similar potential for spikes in scoring. For dumper bots, the scores spike relative to the maximum score just as much as placing ringers in a row did in a typical match -- remember, in 2007 rows of 6 or more were fairly rare. However, my point was more to the fact that 2007's game strategies were more inlined with 2009's spectrum of strategies: on one end you are a bot who can score the game piece magnificently, and on the other you are a defensive bot who's primary strategy is to hold out for the endgame. <G14> makes the latter less attractive as a primary strategy for a game like Lunacy or Rack 'N Roll, and I believe we would immediately see that if <G14>'s implications were put into effect for 2007 rather than 2008/2006. Though I don't want to do that much work, and neither does anyone else I don't think.