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Originally Posted by Coach Doug
1: The yearly challenge needs to allow faster set up and scoring by the judges.
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I absolutely agree. This year's game is okay but definitely not as convenient as the FRC games or FTC games in the past.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach Doug
2: This would be an enabler for more matches. With either bluetooth or samantha being some sort of a hinderance to many teams - there are way too many matches where its 2 robots vs. 1. Most tournaments only have 5 to 7 matches today and there is not enough separation to show good teams vs. lucky teams. More matches also would de-value the RP differentiator. Most alliance captiains are in that position only due to RP values. Remember last years Hot Shot game - was scoring in your opponents goal to raise the RP an act of gracious professionalism?
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If the ranking system is tweaked a bit then it should help differentiate good / lucky teams. I know there're a lot of teams that didn't rank as high as they should at World's because of connection issues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach Doug
3: Limit the alliance selection pool - if only twelve teams will be in the playoffs - selection pool is limited to only top twelve. current system enables the behavior of friends picking friends and de-values any team's record if their not in the top four ( 5th place team is equal to last place team - both have equal chance of making the playoffs). By limiting the selection pool - your scouting is more important as you need to know all the teams.
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I disagree with limiting the selection pool. However I do agree that most teams would pick friends but also there are advantages of picking friends. (know each other, worked together before if is sister teams, etc.) I know many occasions that teams picked very low rank teams (In FTC, FRC and VEX) and end up winning championships. Every captain's goal is to win, and if they know that they are ranked high but don't scout, then it's their loss if they overlooked a strong team.
Our team had never been the 1st seed captain but our team had never loss in eliminations when we're ranked high enough to be captain(2nd seed one time).
Scouting is extremely important but due to the lack of data storage / analysis, unlike FRC which has OPR, DPR, percentile, all thanks to 1114 and many other teams spreadsheet, there's no place where FTC teams can gather all the qualifier / competitions data and make some use of it.
And there are 127 other teams at World's... Some teams have a small team and it's not possible for them to scout all the teams. But with the spreadsheet they can highlight the "potential teams" and scout the ones they think they need to scout.
Nevertheless, scouting is just as important as every other part of the competition, if not the most important part. I've seen many upsets of top seeds because of excellent scouting of lower seeds. (Not even kidding)
Just my 2 cents.