Chief Delphi - Am I the only one who LOVED the seeding system this year?

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Re: Am I the only one who LOVED the seeding system this year?

Id say you might be the only one who liked it. :p

Re: Am I the only one who LOVED the seeding system this year?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dmentor (Post 956470)

<snip>

And while I'm on my soapbox... I really dislike using pre-penalty scores for anything. No one should benefit from a penalty. Then again a penalty should be reserved for behavior that you really want to inhibit and even then should be proportional to the damage incurred. I'm not much for calling penalties on robots that happened to be dragging chains as I saw multiple times this year. Sure it is against the letter of the rules but where is the advantage? Besides it seems to me that the team is already being penalized.

I think that the idea of using pre-penalty points for seeding came from some strange cases that can come up when you allow one team's bad behavior (intended or accidental) to impact another's seeding score.

I can't think of a particularly onerous case in this year's formula (I mean more onerous than the fact that you had incentives to score for your opponents), but I suppose there were some cases they were trying a dis-incentivize.

It is possible that this may be a case where the cure is worse than the decease.

Joe J.

Re: Am I the only one who LOVED the seeding system this year?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson (Post 956817)

It is possible that this may be a case where the cure is worse than the decease.

I agree.

Consider the following matches that I grabbed from FRC-Spy. I don't really know the details behind these matches but I think they illustrate my point about penalties and the use of pre-penalty scores (and if not there are plenty out there that do):

Code:

Event    Match   Red Alliance    Blue Alliance   Score      Goals       Penalties

Arch.    Q-142    45 25 2751     3411  155 2062   0 10    11 2   8 2    14 0  0 0

Galileo  Q-122  3006 230 3381    3352 2468 2429  12  5    10 2  10 0     0 0  4 1

In Archimedes Q-142, the Red alliance is penalized 14 points which turns a nominal 13-10 win with 38 seeding points into a 0-10 loss with 10 seeding points. Okay, that is a pretty big penalty, but it gets worse. The Blue alliance instead of getting 18 seeding points for a 10-0 win gets 41 seeding points (mostly due to the pre-penalty contribution). So the Red alliance gets penalized again with a huge difference in seeding points that I will submit aren't earned. I will further speculate that the penalty was most likely due to DOGMA penalties induced by a ball that missed the return sensor. If indeed this was the case then was a 56 point seeding swing an appropriate response?

The second example is a more typical case. The Red alliance wins 12-5 post-penalties but is effectively given a 2xPenalty bonus for Blue's mistakes which for all I know could have been as innocuous as having a piece of overhanging polycarbonate film or running up on a ball and continuing to move towards the goal. As Joe pointed out the bonus could be warranted if Blue (1) knew they were going to lose and (2) intentionally caused the penalties in order to reduce Red's seeding score. Personally, I think very highly of all the FIRST community teams and would like to think that this behavior is beneath our consideration (in the particular example I've used, the match would have effectively been 12-10 except for the penalties so what is the likelihood that Blue caused these penalties intentionally?).

Re: Am I the only one who LOVED the seeding system this year?

You're right regarding the DOGMA causing Red to win the match on Archimedes. We (2062 and the rest of the alliance) were overjoyed at the win but dissapointed how it resulted with seeding points.

Re: Am I the only one who LOVED the seeding system this year?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dmentor (Post 957221)

In Archimedes Q-142,...I will further speculate that the penalty was most likely due to DOGMA penalties induced by a ball that missed the return sensor.

It was very likely either that or a double-counted ball in the goal (which happened in the last qualification match at the Boilermaker regional, with an even larger number of automatic penalty points). The other option is that someone "helpfully" tossed a ball past the alliance station wall, but nobody would have done that, right?

A few matches later, another mass of DOGMA penalties happened. People who were paying attention at the time decided it was because two balls went down the rails effectively in contact with one another and got counted as a single ball in the return sensor. That match was replayed.

Quote:

The second example is a more typical case. The Red alliance wins 12-5 post-penalties but is effectively given a 2xPenalty bonus for Blue's mistakes...

I have no idea what you mean. Penalties against the losing alliance do not affect the winning alliance's seeding points, just as penalties against the winning alliance do not affect the losing alliance's seeding points.

Re: Am I the only one who LOVED the seeding system this year?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson (Post 957240)

Alan, I'm not sure whether my interpretation of the effect, my bookkeeping, or a little of both is confusing so please forgive me as I start from the obvious. The manual says that the winner's seeding points will result from:

Quote:

All teams on the winning ALLIANCE will receive a number of seeding points equal to the penalized score (the score with any assessed penalties) of the winning ALLIANCE plus 5 additional points for winning the match.

... PLUS ...

All teams on the winning ALLIANCE will receive a coopertition bonus: a number of seeding points equal to twice the un-penalized score (the score without any assessed penalties) of the losing ALLIANCE.

Since the coopertition bonus is based on the losing alliance's pre-penalized score, I am choosing to represent this (in the second example given) as:

RedSeedingPoints = RedFinalScore+2*(BlueFinalScore+Penalties)+5

Hence the effective 2*Penalties statement. I realize that strictly speaking there is a max(BluePrePenaltyScore-Penalties,0) operation that isn't quite captured in this interpretation.