[Boltman]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

I think this is a noble goal, but the devil will be in the implementation details. Done poorly, we'll be even worse off then we are today. People old enough will remember the 2007 "Algorithm of Doom", which selected teams from three buckets like you're proposing (although those buckets were populated by team age).

The biggest issue will be correctly populating the buckets - this thread discusses many of the same ideas. You'll also have to account for buckets that aren't of equal size (by whatever metric you choose), especially when the number of teams attending is not a multiple of 3. Would this cause more surrogates to be used, or something else?

Are you proposing using previous year's data, because that runs into trouble with fast team turnover and the potential for powerhouse teams to have down years, only to be paired with other powerhouses more often the following year. Plus, what do you do with rookies? They have no data to rely on yet, and there are always exceptional rookie teams, which would cause the same kind of inconsistency.

If you use current season data, what would you do for early events? You wouldn't have any data available for the early weeks, so you'd have to resort to a randomness-based algorithm again. This approach would only work for District Champs/World Champs, where all teams are already guaranteed to have played already.

Plus, Ed Law made a great point in the other thread I linked:


So overall, I'll concede that random selection isn't perfect, but I'm not totally convinced a team strength based algorithm is better.

I think you simply never allow repeats and treat world champions that got there "as captains or strong world class second bots" or those that won say 4 regionals in past 6 years slightly different from the remaining pool. I think you let teams like 5136 slide and remain in the greater non-powerhouse pool.

Those "powerhouse" teams should not be paired as a "dream alliance" in Quals at all and possibly face each other to provide more entertainment than just running up the score against three way younger teams scratching and clawing for the worlds only to likely get slaughtered (and drop 2 RP each )

Lets say an event such as CVR there are SIX teams that meet that criteria (with four wildcards not a stretch) so you put SIX fake teams in the algorithm as placeholders...you then analyze each fake entry if it look fair balance with other fake entries you then replace the real powerhouse teams randomly in...for the others you check other fake team place holders if you see a discrepancy shift a pool team in and make their games placeholders...rinse repeat. Until all six teams are more evenly sorted. Then randomly assign powerhouses to each fake entry.

-OR_

Re-run the algorithm until the fake placeholders look balanced is another way. Then enter the real teams again randomly for each fake placeholder.

Look at CVR.. #1 really took it to #5 in Finals ...no surprise to anyone there and #5 was very strong offensively but younger and not as many creds. I'm fairly certain we would have been a similar story as #2...that is how good #1 was.
It really can be like NE always getting to play Cleveland due to lack of young teams at #1 close but not quite at least in stacked regionals. In SD yes a rookie was #1 and got beat in QF SD only had 1 super class bot 399. Our alliance #8 took them out in 2 games because we were ranked low #19 due to missing RP's for breaches not credited. (Should have been rank 10 or 11 and captain) fine with us worked out not so fine for rookie #1 alliance (although they rightfully earned RAS)


Would treating powerhouses slightly different change the end result?
Who knows but it may have. Same with valid RP sorts.

FRC can do better IMO..lots of brains there figure it out.

You are never going to get truly random but you can try to get more balanced at the top tier dream team pairings and facing repeat low win probability having to face the same powerhouse team that beat you more than once especially when paired with another.