What happened in Curie???
 

Why weren't teams seeded 10-28 picked? And how come the top 8 teams did not pick each other? I know that there were two declines, but it seems really weird!

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Sounds like a really strange coincidence. But I can't really see why it would be anything more than coincidence.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

From my experience, seed position has little or nothing to do with how good a team is, it is mainly based on luck of the draw. One of the best teams in Atlanta (the Thunder Chickens) seeded 7th, while other teams almost as good seeded very low. I was at a regional where for a while, the number one seed was a robot that had had not played in a match. The robot was not functional and they missed the first 4 matches. The pairing was such that their alliance won those matches w/o them, therefore they were seeded #1. By the end of the quals, they were the 6th seed and chose 2 more teams.

This is my biggest complaint with the seeding system. When a non-functional robot, one that has missed all of its matches is the #1 seed, there is obviously a problem

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I agree with you that it's not perfect, but can you offer anything better?

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

OPR? i dont know, im just throwing something out there

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Does anyone know how the scheduleing is done in atlanta? It seemed like a lot of top notch teams were given very tough schedules, and the less competitive teams (or not well known) easier ones. :confused: I don't know, I wasn't there. This is just a simple observation from watching online, it may not hold any weight. It just seemed weird to me, to see so many rookie and not well known teams playing against one another.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

OPR can be affected just the same way as rankings can. Strategy is, and should be a factor in FIRST games, and OPR doesn't always show that.

fuzzy1718, the scheduling is absolutely random, based on team number. (the algorithm try to arrange it so each team doesn't play more than1 match with/against another team.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

There is nothing someone can do to improve the ranking system. 3 out of our 7 matches we had all 3 bots there. 2 out of 7 all three worked. The pairings as people call it may be unfair or not to your liking. So pretty much we lost 5 matches easily. The ranking system didn't do justice to ours, but its life. In other divisons teams were ranked 9 or 10 and didn't get picked up. As people have mentioned in other threads, if teams scout right you'll get picked. Other reasons they come to a conclusion is:

-experience of the team
-chemistry
-other factors unknown to me.

Curie was also very weird to me it seemed. IDK why, but like teams such as 1771 and 190 were ranked very low. While some kinda ok teams ranked very high. So like Martin said its the luck of draw, especially this year teams just can't just carry an alliance by themselves.

Oh well, next year should be fun.:P

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

How about keeping track of the points scored by each robot, and using that as part of the seeding formula? (maybe instead of the score of the other team?) that way, the teams that score well will get a boost. This may penalize those teams that specialize in defense, but that could be a good thing. As I pointed out after last year, one does not get ahead in life by preventing others from achieving their goal, but being the best at achieving yours.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I disagree. Being a good offensive team doesn't meet the goals of FIRST. Strategy has to be a big part, and each team's individual score doesn't show that. Teams should be rewarded for playing good defense.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Look at the Field. There were awesome robots that seeded really deep, and there were a lot of so-so robots that seeded high. Also, they way the Elims played out was crazy. Every Quarter Final Series was pushed to three matches (except 217's QF) and only one higher seed beat the lower seed. There were also 2 inter top 8 selections but they both resulted in Declines.

As far as final rankings go, there were a lot of teams that won regionals or did very well that ranked low. This Always happens at an event like The Championship where great teams play great teams. Remember, one always has to win and one always has to lose. And if you get bad luck and get matched up against awesome robots in 4 of your 7 matches and you're not getting any help then it's just how the game goes. Also, there were a lot of teams who came into Curie and got shut down by strategy and good team work in both the Qualifiers and Elims. There were some teams who came in and played exactly like they did in Regionals and well, word travels on how to beat you.

Needless to say, Curie was awesome.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Love the idea martin, maybe then some of the teams that just play defense year after year will wake up. (A huge problem in Michigan)

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

FIRST is supposed to be not only a competition, but a model for real life. How many people in real life get a promotion at work by preventing a co-worker from doing his job? ( I'm sure it happens, but it is the exception, not the rule).

One of the reasons I liked Overdrive was the limitations on defense. I believe that the GDC can devise a game that stresses goal attainment, while discouraging goal prevention.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I know that match selections threw some really great teams low in the rankings. I know 79 was in Curie and they only won 1 match on their first day because of alliance seletion, they were kinda annoyed. They ended up about 60 something. However, they were the first pick of the #8 seed and were on the list of many other teams. I know that the thunder chickens (seeded #7) was about to pick them.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

You are comparing it the wrong way. It's not compared to an employee who disables another employee at the same company and thus gets promoted, but to an employee who disables a big part of a rival company, and thus gets a promotion.
FIRST is supposed to be a sport, look at any sport in the world (well, almost any) and you see defense. Basketball, Football, Soccer, Tennis...Whatever you want - defense is there, and is a big part of it.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Well think about it a different way then. Im about to apply to college in November. I am going to get in over somebody else because I am more qualified/suited/prepared than they are, not because I stop them from being as qualified/suited/prepared as they could be.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

These posts often pop up at the end of events, but the answers to the questions never really change. Randomised ranking is part of the FIRST qualification system and it is something that every single team has to deal with.

While it is indeed unfortunate, and often frustrating, to get paired with robots that, are in your view, weak or, worse yet, don't show up (particularly this year), good teams are always able to find ways to win. This weekend, some of FIRST's best teams found ways to seed extremely well (111 and 1114, for example, went undefeated). If you look over their schedules, I'm sure you will find not easy matches; these teams worked extremely hard with what they had and they came out on top.

As for Curie specifically, defense dominated the qualification rounds as teams learned very early that the best way to stop some of the talented scorers in the division was to play a very tough shut down game. This type of strategy saw numerous powerful scorers stymied and left many of them with losses.

We all know that rankings do not really reflect robot performance. Scouting is the only way to discern how well a robot is accomplishing various tasks that your team desires from an alliance partner. I am sure that the teams that seeded in the top 8 were aware of this and chose to select the numerous talented teams that seeded not just outside the top 8, but the top 28 (254 at 34, 1771 at 36, 68 at 51 just to name a few). With such talent available outside the top 28, compared to the robots that ranked from 10 to 28, it is not surprising at all that the alliances ended up as they did.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Disabling a rival company? I can't think of a legal (not to mention ethical) way to do that other than being better at what you do.

Yes, some sports stress defense, some have none (look at golf) I am not saying that defense has no part in first, but I do believe that it shouldn't be the only function of a team.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I'm not going to go in the ranking of the robots picked. I would rant on for a whole page on how bad half the decisions were...

Besides the quality of the robots, if anyone else noticed, only 6 of the robots were 4 digit number teams. 18 teams were either double or triple digits. No rookies were picked, 2 2000 teams were picked, and 4 1000 teams were picked. It seemed that the captains didn't even look at younger teams. Experience is no excuse. Some of young teams that were not picked won regionals, or made it to the finals at their regional. These teams obviously know what it takes to win something, and have just as much experience in this game as a lot of veteran teams. And not mention, older teams are replaced every 4 years. Mentors are the only thing to remain a constant in any team, for the most part. A lot of the young teams that made it to championships have mentors that have been on teams before. In this sense, these teams have the same experience as veterans.

I'm disappointed in what Curie turned into. I would hope that it will change for next year, but I doubt it will change at all.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Golf is an individual sports. The whole comparison to companies/collages doesn't work here...i can go on comparing it to survivor of the fittest (those who go to caves survive better than those who hunt lions) or to any other thing that suits my goal.

FIRST should be compared to a sport, and in FIRST a better and more offensive robot is not always a better alliance partner.

Many of the teams can't afford to build good offensive robots, does that mean they are not deserving to play and rank high, even if they have good mechanisms to stop others? Think of the 07' game - ramp bots did'nt score by themselves, they defended and than used others to get points, and still they were a huge part of the game. 08 had 2 balls for 3 teams, the third one chose between laps and D....

I think defense should stay here. If it was about building the best offensive robot it wouldn't have been FIRST.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Having what it takes to win at a regional does not translate into having what it takes to win at the Championship. Sorry, but them's the facts. Think back to last year's NFL playoffs. The Baltimore Ravens had a young team that had what it took to get into the lower-level playoffs. Then they met up with a team that had what it took to get to the Super Bowl. When a bunch of teams that have what it takes to get to the regional finals come up against a bunch of teams that have what it takes to get to the divisional finals (where there are twice as many teams in the division), the teams that have what it takes to get into the divisional finals will win out, every time.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

What rookie teams would you suggest should have been picked? As far as I am concerned, the alliance selection seemed very well done. Obviously there were a couple teams left that I thought could have been strong second picks, but overall I was very happy with all of the alliances. If a captain is picking there alliance based off of rankings alone, they will lose. Especially at the championship when you only play 7 matches, your ranking will be very driven by your alliance pairings in qualifications. I know we were ranked 36, but were top 3 or 4 in opr and that was even with 2 matches we had in which one robot either did not show up or was disabled the entire match, thus drawing constant defense from 2 robots in those matches.

Scouting is what wins regionals and championships, and all of the truly top teams have not achieved the success they have without very careful statistical scouting of every team. Although our alliance ended up losing in the quarterfinals, and we definitely had our chances to win the matches, I feel that the winning alliance out of Curie was incredibly strong and I was proud to have them representing our division.

I do completely agree that something needs to be changed about the game and how a purely defensive robot or even worse a no show team can end up as an alliance captain. Of course if there is a robot so incredibly awesome at defense then they should seed very high but the idea of a team that is not particularly good at anything can seed in the top 8 is wrong. This year, 247 was one of those teams that were just so incredibly good at pinning other robots that you just had to be impressed and I thought that that was an incredible pick for the 217/68 alliance, as 68 definitely was able to score more with another robot setting pins for them.
There also needs to be some type of filler line or something for no show teams, as particularly this year, having a non functioning robot or a no show was essentially a death sentence. Perhaps what needs to be done is to cut down the number of teams at the Championship event. I feel that too many teams have the opportunity to buy in without actually demonstrating that they can win. With less teams at the event, FIRST could increase the number of qualification matches resulting in less of an influence from luck. Maybe instead of so many teams buying in, FIRST should add an award at regionals for the highest scoring or best performing robot.

Obviously these ideas are not completely refined, but I think there is a serious flaw in the system when teams that do not run for multiple matches are becoming alliance captains, and there are still no shows at the championship event.

As with any sport, the championship should be the absolute best teams competing. I dont think we really saw truly exciting matches until the elimination matches at the championship.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Disabling a rival company:
1> Such as beating them to the patent office (ala Alexander Graham Bell?)
2> Orgainizing a corporate buyout of a company that has a new product that will out-do your product
etc,etc...

Such things are legal and (usually) ethical.

Most sports have defense. Defense creates a challange that may not have been accounted for in the design process, and thus requires strategy to overcome. Good teams overcome defense or account for it in their design process.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I thought Curie had the most "normal" alliance selection of any of the divisions. Let me share some things I observed.

First, our team agrees that 7 matches is really not eough to statistically determine who the top 8 really is. Unfortunately, teams that are clearly not top 8 caliber will get into the top 8. This is one of the reasons the FIRST in Michigan district model had 12 matches at each of the district events.

In our team's opinion, there were 4 teams in the top 8 that were not really top 8 caliber. Such is life at the Championship.

Our team scouts every match and takes the best statistical data we can for each and every team. Scouting the actual matches is the best way to definitely determine if a team will make a good partner in the elimination rounds. On Friday, we have a 3 to 4 hour strategy meeting where we make a pick list of the top 24 teams based on our scouting data and feedback from the drive team. We use feedback from the drive team to help determine if a team is hard or easy to work with. Our scouting team then focuses on the teams that are very close in performance on Friday to see how they are doing on Saturday morning matches. We really focus on teams that are performing better as the weekend moves along.

OPR and other indicators are really only needed when you can't actually watch the matches in person. We do not use OPR because OPR will not get you to Einstein. Period.

Here are some other things we do not use:

- Record in the division
- Ranking in the division
- Performance at Regional events
- Team number
- Where a team is from

I can't even tell you what 68 or 247 records or rankings were because we didn't care.

For the last 5 years, I have witnessed the strangest picks by teams in the top 8. Teams that would have been our 4th or 5th pick slipped all the way to the bottom of the draft. This year in Curie was the first time that I can remember that the teams selecting partners during the draft basically picked how we would have picked (except 68 as they should not have been around for us). With 87 teams in the division some good teams will be overlooked and there is no way aroud it.

I want to make one more point. The serpentine draft has caused a lot more teams to decline. I can tell you that our team prefers not to decline, but will if we feel that it gives us a strategic advantage. We declined 1806 (the #2 seed) not becasue we didn't think they were a good team (they were very high on our list), but simply because of the serpentine. If the serpentine did not exist, then we would have definitely accepted their invitation. Team 1806 knew prior to alliance selections that we were going to decline as I told their team that we would decline. They used a very good strategy picking us anyway so no one else could select us. They basically forced 217 and 399 to form their own alliances (they asked 399 to be their partner too and 399 declined).

Our division had only 14 teams with a positive "plus/minus". Plus/minus (for our team) is the number of points scored by the robot minus the number of points in the robot's trailer. This year it is the biggest indicator of a team's contribution. Obviously, for pure defensive bots we only look at points scored in their trailer as +/- will, by definition, always be negative. As the #7 seed, we knew we could get two very good robots to complement our playing style. We felt we could build a better alliance from #7 than from #2. And for those of you wondering, I didn't realize we had an all Michigan alliance until about 10 minutes after selection. It is just the way things worked out.

Someone made a comment about high number teams not getting picked. We had a few high number teams on our list (I was suprised no one picked 3115), but we had the #7 and #10 picks in the draft.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

That is a great post and I will probably be saving it to help us with scouting in the future. I too could not believe that 68 was till around for you guys. On my list I had them at least in the top 5 including your team.

One other rookie team that I was slightly suprised not to see selected was 2815, but given the teams that were picked I dont see what team they could have been selected in place of. Overall I thought the selections went very well and all of the matches were fairly close as a result.

I am still disappointed that we did not have the opportunity to play with 188, 217, or 68 at all at the championship, but that is just the way the matches go. There is always next year to get the chance to play with these incredible teams.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Yo guys, were really great at Atlanta as well, you guys had an amazing alliance, and put up a great and enjoyable show. We would like to work with you guys as well in the future. Like you said, there is always next year!

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I have to just chip in a couple points about the earlier discussion involving defense.

I don't like overly defensive games, they tend to be boring, but defense has a definite role in FIRST, in my opinion. It's a very very large part of what separates FRC from just being an "engineering competition," "race," or "skills contest."

Secondly, where do you draw the line between "defense" and "strategy?" Is pinning a robot to aid your alliance partner's scoring effort defense? Is reserving your balls until the end of the match to ensure the other team doesn't get additional ammo defense? Is swerving your trailer out of the way of your opponent's best scoring machine defense?


As for rankings, the only real solution is to play more matches. How you accomplish that has been debated and contemplated for years, but no clear solution has emerged.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Team 188 had one of our most concerted scouting efforts in our team's history this year. We individually tracked every ball shot and missed/scored by every team, separated by both their robot and human players. Here are a few interesting numbers they found on Friday night. These are stats up to Friday night only, and reflects what teams use to construct their preliminary pick lists. Of course things often change Saturday morning, but here goes:

Actual Team Points Scored per Match (Robot and HP Combined)
(teams in bold were involved in the eliminations)
19/24 is by no means cause for panic...

Here are the robots that were selected outside of the top 24 and some notes as to why I would have put them into the eliminations:

If you want my personal opinion, I thought the teams that participated in the eliminations were top notch. I could make an argument for any of the teams that were not bolded and left out in my list above, but the reasons why the robots below them were chosen are compelling enough. Unfortunately, some of the top scorers will get left out. It's happened to us plenty of times in the past, but you play the game as hard as you can, and hope that the teams in picking positions do their scouting, and if you're doing something that won't show up on the stats, make sure you let the decision-maker on the top teams know exactly what you're doing.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

FIRST games are usually not scored on a robot by robot basis. This year that would have been very difficult to do accurately. The determining factor is the alliance score. Consider the case of three decent scoring robots on one alliance where one is asked to play defense against the opposing alliance's best scorer. Would you do that to win the match for your alliance if that negatively affected your individual team score? I'll agree that FIRST's system is not perfect, but I don't know of a better one.

I'd like to see more events so there can be more matches. Each team got 7 at Championships, usually 9 or maybe 10 at a regional. Still there will be some strange situations. I remember that at Peachtree in 2007, there was a team that was 5-1 after six matches, despite having never moved on the field. Though we were 4-2 at that point, we were still very happy for them.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Same thing happened in Archimedes except only one decline. We were stuck playing the #1 Alliance, and we got owned.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I'm pretty comfortable, overall, with how the qualifying, ranking and selection process works.

What I DID notice this year, however, is that the correlation between robot performance and ranking was lower than in other years. In other words, there was more "luck" involved in your placement after qualifying than in other years. (Note that I am NOT saying that a top placing was all luck... nor that in other years luck has not been involved... just that this year luck, or random draw, was more important.)

I attribute that to the nature of the game... in previous year's, for instance, some matches were essentially over by the time a team ran their auto mode (I mean that in a "positive" way... that a team could WIN in auto, whereas this year a team could really only "lose" the match by not moving in auto and getting a full trailer.) This year, auto really didn't account for much, but a lucky shot of a super cell by a human player did.

Nothing wrong with that, we're all playing by the same rules and the selection process is an effective process to minimize random effects, but it does result in some weird standings and dissapointment for highly ranked teams who aren't selected. Hopefully next year's game will be one where qualifying match results better reflect robot ability.

Jason

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

to make scouting easier, they should keep track of an individual robots score
then combine it in the end..

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I guess this is one reason why Atlanta is not one of my favorite competitions to go to. I see the opportunity and experience as a phenomenal one, but the odds of getting very far are stacked against most of us. For the past 5 years our team has fielded a very competitive robot, maybe not a hands down winner but good enough to finish in the top 8 most of the time. Then when we go to Atlanta, we seem to do well, but not well enough to break into the top 8. When alliance selections begin, we don't get picked and are surprised by some picks that are made (one pick last year in Arch was an inoperable robot). I know some of the alliances have made their picks by Friday and some simply go with who they are comfortable playing with (maybe from other regionals and such). The alliance selection at Championships is sketchy for most teams (lack of scouts and the shear number of teams are major contributing factors). I don't think it is wrong and don't know of any way it could change - it is what it is, but it is one reason why our experiences from Regionals are often more exciting at least in a robot performance way. However, no Regional can compete with the wrap-up party, VIPs, and Einstein matches in Atlanta. Short of a Blue Banner, our team only tries to attend Atlanta every 2-3 years and instead tries to visit out of state Regionals in the other years.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I encountered the same thing in Newton in 2005. We seeded 8th and led our own alliance, and I don't remember there being any declines. We went on to get SPANKED by the #1 alliance with 330 at the helm.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I have to agree with Paul's comments here and say that on our end our team also does a fair amount of scouting. We usually have a 3 hour meeting on Friday with our scouting team and also list the top 20 robots that we should pick. Once we get the input from the scouting team, the drive team talks over the picks made by the scouting team and we order them based on information given to us by the team.

During this event we also collaborated with team 188 and greatly benefited from their data. One of the major data points that our driver Brad wanted to look at was the amount of balls in the robot's trailers. This influenced our picks to a point, but we stuck primarily with the information from our team members.

As for the decline, we also mirror Paul's thoughts on this. Although we would normally accept the invitation to join 1806 on the playing field it was a matter of strategy, alliance picking, and bracket positioning that caused the decline. We felt that we could create a better alliance being the fourth alliance. We knew that 217 would not be available by the time that it was our turn for the pick and it was an excellent move by 1806 to breakup the possibility for anyone else to build up an alliance with them. We felt we had a strong chance with 188 and 329 to take it to the finals and we nearly had it, taking the showdown to 3 matches :P We were very happy with our alliance and the effort we made for Einstein.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

[QUOTE
This is my biggest complaint with the seeding system. When a non-functional robot, one that has missed all of its matches is the #1 seed, there is obviously a problem[/quote]

I don't know of which team you're speaking of or of how far into the Qualls you're speaking of, but 175 was first seeded for a good portion of Friday and Saturday until our loss against the thunder chickens and the 7-0 record of 346 which put us into third.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

346 was 6-0-1.

I agree that there should probably be a more individualized ranking, however I don't think there is a feasible way for that to be implemented, especially with such a team-centric game such as Lunacy, perhaps something as simple as an average of the alliance score, as a very basic OPR, however whatever you do will be flawed and will receive complaints.

I do happen to believe that the Qual points should be based off the winning alliance's score, not the opposing alliance's score, however, as that is something you cannot control, assuming you don't start scoring on your own team. It doesn't encourage the teams to compete to the best of their ability. I understand the idea behind it, in that you want to have the high scoring, close matches, but it's really not a good differentiator for ranking when the actual robot the score applies to is not factored in, particularly if the robot is primarily defensive, or something of that nature.

$.02

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

As a third year team, Skunkworks was proud to compete on Curie and had a great time this weekend. Being from so far away (Seattle) we got to compete with and against some great teams.. 217, 399, 68, 341, 254 gosh there are just too many to mention.. just being on the field with you was a treat for us..we hope we always helped our alliances no matter what we were asked to do on the field.

Of course we were disappointed in not being picked from the 12th position but who wouldn't be, no matter what position they ended up in?

The teams that picked earned the right to make whatever choices they wanted to make. As I was looking at our database I was just checking off them right down the line... some were missed.... most weren't. In our regionals this year we were seeded 19th and 34th and were the first pick of the #1 Alliance both times.

I congratulate all of the great teams on Curie for picking great alliances and going out and playing exciting matches. You earned it and we had a great representative on Einstein...

Paul's comments about the serpentine draft should be noted by everyone. With the kind of quality exhibited at CMP, one has to think of the alliance picking more like a "Draft" Do you want the #1 and the #16 pick ? Or do you want the #7 and #10 picks?? This is an excellent bit of knowledge that we all should pay heed to.

Last year we seeded 5th on Galileo and picked our own alliance. We were one of those teams that got lucky and had matches that put us in that position. We didn't fool ourselves into thinking we were the 5th best team that year.

This year we were much better and much more competitive. Next year we will even be better. You will too!!

Thank you everyone for making this a great CMP for us.



hmmm now back to work... the 2010 season has already begun..

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

It's ironic that I, to a certain degree, noticed the exact opposite. While the specific order of the top 8 was not always correct, a majority of the better robots seeded highly at the regional events I paid attention to. The correlation decreased at Championship (especially in one division in particular), but that's to be expected with 87 teams and only 7 matches per.
Granted, they were not as ordered as Championship 2008, but that's because 2008's game was particularly isolated in terms of the performance of single robots. Not that 2008 was perfect in any regard, but at Championship it seeded very well.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Paul Copioli from 217 Thunder Chickens.....

THANKS for your post and explaination of how your Team scouted for the selection of the elimination rounds.

As a mentor for 1983 SKUNKWORKS I would be curious to understand where our Team stood in your findings or other Teams findings, and as a whole where you saw our Teams weaknesses.

THANKS!
Darin (husband of Diana)

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Thats how it goes, 2 points Saturday morning we would have seeded 3rd, instead we seeded 10th. As a rookie team we knew that it was going to be difficult to be selected as a second round team, and having a communication error in our last match on Friday hurt our stats for Friday night. Without that match where we were dead it put us right in with the teams selected in the second round, but we know that with the quality of teams in the hunt as second picks it was going to be tough to get picked.

We were praying that two teams would pick within the top 8 so that we could move up into the 8th seed, and I can tell you we put quite an effort into scouting and would have made a tough 8th alliance. But i've been around long enough to know that this alliance selection went as normally as it could have, and if teams picked and declined properly we shouldn't have moved up. So if anything I applaud the teams in the top 8 for making some solid alliances.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I would have to agree with Paul. The ONLY fair way to make the ranking system more reliable is to complete more matches.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Perhaps you didn't read my post completely. I wasn't talking about championships. The incident in question was at a regional this year.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Well being on the Curie Division Winning Alliance and a scouter for team 247 I have some information on the Alliances.

As i see it our team had been communicating with what teams we wanted, we had managed to make a deal with 217. and got into the 7th seed alliance.

All the teams that made it to Nationals were exellent teams, Lunacy delt 90% skill, and 9% Persperation and 1% luck, as i see it, the amount of matches each team was given means that if a team makes a mistake or does extremelly well doesn't mean its an accurate depiction of the Winning Alliance, Finals at nationals was could not be predicted, it could have turned on a dime, and it did.
With respect to all finalist teams anyone could have won, all teams make mistakes, sometimes the alliance partners compensate for those mistakes sometimes they don't.

It did seem to be an upset with selection and with the final matches of Curie, but alot of teams had their alliance plans set up.

Proof that things can turn on a dime in Nationals is what happend to the ThunderChickens, a great team with a great bot. but with qualifications they unfotunatly lost a few matches, this ranked them really low, and when they rebounded they got to 7th Seed. But in all District Events in Michigan they went to they ended up in 1st or 2nd. Numbers can seem to bring powerhouse teams down, and sometimes the numbers fools the teams.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Can't do it by OPR. Im from 247 and we were the finalists on Einstein this year and played a pure defensive game. High scoring only does not equal a good robot.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

(1) 346 (36) 1771 (48) 1747
(2) 1806 (44) 668 (37) 2039
(3) 175 (34) 254 (49) 2185
(4) 399 (9) 188 (63) 329
(5) 375 (47) 1622 (50) 190
(6) 816 (29) 245 (30) 341
(7) 217 (51) 68 (61) 247
(8) 27 (68) 79 (45) 70

I didn't watch selection, but I got the list afterwards. I know for a fact that the lowest seed that was selected (79 was the 68th seed) was an awesome part of our alliance and I know we wouldn't have been able to get to the SFs without them. I'm frustrated with the seeding system because teams that perform so well get destroyed because of their partners or get a really rough match schedule. The solution more matches, less teams...will it happen? Probably not.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Then I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Paul,

Thanks for explaining your scouting and selection philosophy and posting your scouting data and selection list on the other post. It helps us understand how good teams select their partners.

I must say that I am very surprised you do not take into account how many moon rocks the human players attempted and scored. According to Team 188's scouting database, your human player do not attempt to score very often because your strategy is to have the human player feeds moon rocks into your robot. However we can not say that for other teams. Using your data in the raw data sheet, if you sum column F which is Moon rock scored by robots in all the matches you get 2354. And if you sum column J which is Moon rock in trailer you get 5080. This shows that only 46% of the moon rocks are scored by robots.

If we look at Team 188's database, the human player percentage ranges from 21% to 77% with a mean of about 47 and standard deviation of about 10. Since human players scored 54% of the moon rocks, picking a team that has a 60% shooter rather than a 30% shooter in a 100 point game would mean a difference of 16 points, which is quite significant. In past years the role of human player to scoring is limited. I don't know what percentage the human player should contribute to the score in an ideal game. I feel that this year their contribution to the final score is on the high side and thus scouting data should not ignore them. Another observation I have is robots can be defended but you can not defend against a good human player. They just keep putting moon rocks into trailers.

Ed

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Wouldn't defending against a good human player simply be moving my robot to the side of the field that they weren't able to reach, if that was my concern?

I would be more afraid of a highly mobile, highly effective robot like 217 unleashing a stream of moon rocks anywhere on the field into my trailer than I would be of a good human player taking a low percentage shot halfway across it.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

Ed,

You make a good point, but for our team and our strategy we intended to starve the field of rocks. When a human player was on our alliance, the first thing they were told was to not shoot the moon rocks unless the trailer was stopped generally in front of them.

We prioritized on a high capacity dumper that could human load from the top and could human load in auton. Combined with our human loading in auton, we could keep many of our balls off of the floor and "starve" the field. In essence, almost every ball we were pciking up from the floor was not ours.

There were many ways to wn this year, but this strategy worked for us.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I think that you will notice that the Championship winning alliance used this same strategy. It was also used very succesfully in the Michigan Championship eliminations.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

That strategy also worked very well basically everywhere it was used (so long as robots were capable of being loaded from the human players, either through the airlock or over the wall). In general, the accuracy of a top-tier scoring machine was higher than 99% of human players, resulting in far fewer balls ended up on the floor if robots were used as the primary scoring method.

Re: What happened in Curie???
 

I would have to agree that this year the human player just had too much of a contribution to scoring. FIRST is meant to be a robotics competition, and when only half, or less than half, of the scoring is done by robots, it seems to be deviating from the purpose of the game.

I also feel autonomous mode was very undervalued this year, with the only thing to do in autonomous mode really being to try to get away from a human player! Towards the end of championship, we got autonomous scoring working, but thinking back on it, it may not have been as useful, although it was impressive. Since most teams drive towards their human players, following one in order to shoot on it puts us in range of their human, who has 13 moon rocks to our 7.

It would be nice to see more of an emphasis put on getting things done in autonomous mode (think about last year with the bonus points for running laps, or the year before with the keepers that guarantee you a spot on the rack).

It would also be nice to have something done about no-show and nonfunctional robots. Of course there is no simple solution. Personally, I would like any robot that doesn't show to get a loss, regardless of how the alliance performs. The argument against this is that it encourages teams to put an inoperable bot on the field, or rush repairs too much. However, this could be fixed by having a team who's robot doesn't work at any point in the match to receive a loss also. This might seem harsh, but it goes back to the real world, where you don't get paid for a product that doesn't work.

I would also point out that while this might seem to hurt rookie teams in particular, it is often easy for rookie teams, or any team, to get help while at competition. From the example Martin gave about the team at a regional who was seeded first with 4 no-shows, Sean and myself spent a while working on their drive train until they functioned (and we didn't finish until AFTER the match we played with them, for the match we played against them). I also always go to future alliance partners, and do whatever I can to make sure they work, if there is some sort of problem.