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Unread 16-04-2012, 20:50
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Re: Alliance Selection System

You would think this is another one of those topics beaten to death around here (role of mentors anyone?), but I haven't seen a good thread on this for a long long time. That's surprising, because every time I watch a livestream, the people in the chat constantly complain about the serpentine draft.

To be honest, I quite like it. Let's examine the prior actions of FIRST and their goals, as well as a few other things that support serpentine besides the competitive aspect.

First, a couple things must be understood about Serpentine Draft. As Bob Steele said above, the goal of it is to average the quality of each alliance (1+2+24 and 8+9+10 both equal 27, or an average power of 9). Of course, this isn't 100% true. If you take a look at some events, in many cases, you will see a defined tiering of the ranks. To take Fingerlakes as an example because I attended, the first seed there, 1507 was 8 QS higher than the second. At others, we see tiers of the top two or three teams being 4-6 QS higher than the rest of the top 8 cohort. Below that you see a tier of the 'upper middle class', which in my opinion has grown heavily this year. Below that you see teams that are clearly not going to be in elims.

The effect this has on the serpentine is that based on how each regionals tiering happens defines how the draft plays out. In an event with highly dominant team (Fingerlakes), the first seeded alliance will have a heavy advantage. In a very deep field (IRI, MSC, CMP), where the 8th can still be drawing from the tier directly below it, they have the huge advantage of getting two selections in a row. This was shown at Queen City where the 8th picked a triple balance alliance and won the regional with it. The point must me made, though, that the affects serpentine method changes based on regional and there is no one size fits all analysis of it. However, in general, the goal is to level the playing field, give all teams a chance, and make the eliminations more suspenseful.

The question is, are these the goals that FIRST intends? I would argue that they do. Consider this: You spend thousands of dollars to register. Thousands more to transport a team, feed the team, board the team. If there was literally no chance of winning unless you were in the top 5%, very many people would lose hope, lose fun, and fail to be inspired. There's already enough of that with the Canadian teams and 1114/2056 dominance, but that's a completely different can of worms that I don't want to take a position on.

By leveling the playing field, the serpentine draft makes eliminations more exciting. That's what packs stadiums. That's what gets FIRST noticed. The GDC has gone out of their way in previous years to make games that are good for crowds. To ruin it by ending the rankings after qualifications would be a major setback in the changing culture to celebrate STEM arena.

Looking at what FIRST has done in the past, the goal of a regional is clearly not to send the best three teams to Championships. There are six slots per event: Two go to the best two robots. One goes to a good robot. Three go to outstanding team acheivments (RAS, EI and Chairmans). Without even counting open registration, that's 60% of the teams per regional are not going based on robot performance.

To anyone who says that the draft should be 1-8,1-8, you are essentially ending it after qualifications. There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with that, to be honest. The eliminations are fun to watch, no doubt. But I think that District systems are solving this issue. By allowing the top 5 teams at MAR to go beyond those who already qualified, they solve the issue. Teams that don't win but still have outstanding robots (1218) still get to go. You still have fun an exciting elimination matches. And the other deserving teams (RAS, Chairmans, EI) still get to go.

Just to stir up the discussion (and I don't like this idea myself): What if the top 4 teams were randomized for order of pick? The same with the next 4.