Quote:
Originally Posted by Jared Russell
Given that who you are competing "against" doesn't matter this year, why would the match making algorithm possibly come up with a schedule with this quirk?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ether
Makes me wonder: Has anyone out there tried writing a better scheduling app? Were you successful?
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FMS uses the same scheduling algorithm this year it has in the past:
MatchMaker. The output of the algorithm shows the number of unique partners and "opponents" (which doesn't matter this year), and the scorekeeper makes sure they're all the same. This is harder to ensure at small events, especially when the algorithm also prioritizes a gap between teams' consecutive matches. It's typically common for a few different schedules be generated until the output is even, again especially with smaller events. Or, a schedule could be selected to try and have the teams who haven't passed inspection play their first match as late as possible, to make sure they can pass. So there are a lot of variables that go into generating a schedule, and sometimes these anomalies sneak through while selecting for other things.
While FIRST probably could have had IdleLoop update MatchMaker for this year and treat "opposing" robots the same as different matches, it probably wasn't worth the time/money/testing and they instead went with what was already known to work pretty well. Go figure.