Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
Not balanced by any other factor? Getting an earlier pick in alliance selection is certainly balancing it via another factor, I'd say.
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I do think that first seed getting an earlier alliance selection is an advantage, but I also think that the serpentine draft is a balancing factor for that. Since the rules have an existing balancing mechanism for getting to pick first, this new rule seems to come without a complementary balancing factor. In fact, I submit that, at some events, there might be a distinct advantage to being the second alliance captain. That design decision seems like a bad idea to me.
I don't think that the draft order completely balances the issue, by the way, but I also don't think that it should balance out perfectly. I believe that the tournament rules should provide incentive to be the first seed. This new rule provides a unique penalty to being first seed; they will never by anything but the red alliance and be at a significant disadvantage in all of the playoffs matches and in the actual finals for an event.
This will also play out very strangely on Einstein this year where teams come from different fields; will four alliances will win the lottery and be assigned the color blue? Actually, I am not sure that they have defined the process for picking alliance colors on Einstein...I can't find that information in the manual.
Edited to add: I do think that there are a variety of equalization strategies that could also be employed as well (as others have mentioned). Robot placement could alternate from game to game: Red-then-Blue in one game and then Blue-then-Red in the next game. You could also just flip a coin before each match to make the advantage less predetermined or less one-sided.