The issue I'm addressing is not boosting the rating of the teams that extend the round, but rather penalizing the teams that fail to sweep it quickly. If you look at the "rankings" recently posted, they're crowded at the top. Yet teams that swept through the eliminations (yes, we were one of those) get no bonus for avoiding all losses, while teams that might have gone to 3 matches in every round get the same number of points. That doesn't reflect the relative strengths of the different alliances within their regionals. An alternative solution would be to give the total points for the wins in that round (e.g., 5 points each for a total of 10) but divide it by the number of matches played in the round, so a sweep would be worth 10 points, and 2 out of 3 would be worth only 6.7 points.
I think that winning the elimination rounds should be worth MUCH more than a high qualifying position. The point of the Regionals/Districts is to win the overall competition. The top qualifier does not go to Championships for a reason--those are only preliminary matches. In fact with the current weighting I can see how a team that might have won a District one week might find it advantageous to play through the qualifying round to get sufficient points and then just sandbag the eliminations to save their robot. In addition, but awarding so many points for just being drafted high, this makes the situation even more likely. You need to include the draft position points under "qualifying rounds", not in "elimination rounds." The points need to be set up to encourage competition throughout by given the lions share of points at the end, not midway through. An Alliance captain can get 47 points at the end of the draft. Why should they earn more than a No. 8 seed that goes through and wins the District? Thinking about this, I think the elimination rounds need even higher point scores than what I proposed originally--probably should target an additional 100 points for winning the whole thing. That could be 6 points for quarter wins, 12 points for semis, and 32 points for finals.
I was commenting in the context of regionals. However, I'm not sure that there's a guarantee that all districts will have the same format. That may have to change depending on geography. For example, California may not have enough venues to run such small district competitions.
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Originally Posted by PVCpirate
For the elims losses, I think a similar effect could be obtained by allowing alliances that take their opponents to 3 matches but lose to get the 5 points for winning one match. It's still in an alliance's best interest to sweep, but no negative points to worry about.
Draft points mean that the alliance captain and first pick of an alliance score between 39 and 46 points from winning an elimination tournament. Knowing that, I don't agree that there needs to be more points for advancing in the tournament.
For your last point, are you talking about eliminations or qualification? Every team gets 12 qualification matches at a district event, regardless of number of teams.
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