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Originally Posted by Ninja_Bait
This sounds kind of weird to me; when a team is only going to one or two regionals a year, having their robot "always playing in the elims" is a silly kind of statement.
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First of all, I didn't say "always" I said, "virtually always" and then I went on to explain in my caveats, the most appropriate one I quote below:
Quote:
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Of course there are competitive robots that fall through the cracks. But I am talking about a statistical idea, a sort of thought experiment: imagine that the same regional were run 100 times in 100 parallel universes, a competitive robot would be drafted or drafting 95+% of the time and, if not a drafting team, drafted in the top 8 50+% of the time.
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This comes from the idea that a competitive robot should be competing to do something. What? Well, for me that means to win the competition. How do you do that? You have to be playing after lunch on Saturday. If you don't make it to the elims, your robot was likely not competitive (or you were unlucky, or your team had a reputation for being jerks, or ... which I cover in another caveat).
As to whether two drafts will tell me more about the competitiveness of at team (and their robot) than W-L-T record with 24 matches, of course it does!
Karthik and kin, back me up here!
So... ...among the goals I have set for my rookie team is to build a competitive robot. Yes, there are larger goals and we are working on those as well. But I do think that there is a minimum capability robot that meets my definition.
Great drivers can do a lot, great planning can do a lot, great scouting can do a lot... ...but a box-o-rox is just not going to get make it to the Elims better than 95% of the times they compete (again, in a thought experiment sense not literally).
Bottom line: I am trying to gauge what I should budget for this activity.
Joe J.