[DougHogg]

Originally posted by Koci
The ultimate scoring system would be one that discourages both all-out slaughters by one team, and also collusion.

I think one of the reasons for a Qualifying Point System was so that very dominant teams couldn't just coast through a match where it was obvious after 10 seconds that they were going to win. It then gets boring for everyone to watch.

That is part of the reason why I came up with the idea of basing qualifying points on the scoring gap. Even if you are ahead by 10 points, you would still be trying to improve your score.

True, that encourages "all-out slaughters" by better teams. I think the way to get around that is to give new teams components that makes them competitive. This year, we saw a lot of rookie teams doing very well. That could be enhanced even further.

There is something to be said for "letting the chips fall where they lay", by which I mean allowing teams to see where their robot really stands. True they might feel badly if they lose by a lot, but I doubt if it would be worse than seeing their robot laying on its back for the whole match as sometimes occurred this year.

Let's make it a genuine competition and never mind faking it to try to avoid one team dominating another. If our team gets dominated, then we will be making changes so it doesn't happen the next time.

The drive train is the most critical part of making a robot competitive. If new teams have good drive train components (enhanced versions of this year's gear boxes and motor mounts) with a choice of gearing, they will be competitive. Then if we build multiple levels into the game, they will be able to contribute to their alliance.

Also there are other ways to give an advantage to basic robots. Going under the bar this year was easy for robots that were low, such as those that weren't stacking. That advantage helped the rookie teams.

We were rookies last year, and personally, it would have been an insult to us to know that we were being given points because we were lousy. I would much rather have a team just play their best against us and the score be the real score.

That is the way it is in any competition that I have ever seen. You do your best. And if you lose, you work on improving.

In short, let's get real, and never mind any pretense. And if the rookies have trouble competing, improve the kit and change the basic game elements. But let's have the score be the real score.