[gburlison]

Originally Posted by jpsaul7usa

I agree with Cory. Last year was my team's rookie year and our drive system was absolutely horrible (trust me, I built it and drove the bot). We were incredibly lucky during the qualifying rounds at had excellent allies and placed 5th out of 37 teams at the AZ Regionals by the time the elimation rounds began. I want to call it a fluke because we hardly could do anything on the field because our bot could barely drive anywhere. We never even made it on top of the ramp or stacked boxes when we needed to. In my opinion we coasted by last year because of some lucky rounds (77-76 point win) in which our allies almost completely won by themselves. When it came time for finals we got creamed by out higher-quality opponents.

Do you really think it was a fluke? I have not spent much time researching the match listings, however, I think part of the alliance pairing algorithm that FIRST uses intentionally pairs newer teams with older teams. This increases the chance that a new team will rank highly based on getting lucky and being paired with good teams. It also prevents veteran teams from being paired with other veteran teams and running away with the entire competition as they overpower the newer teams. In your case last year I think that the game worked as FIRST intended. It allowed you the chance to compete and during the finals the better teams beat your inferior bot. You may have coasted to a higher rank than you deserved, but did you win the regional? No, did you deserve to? No. I think the system worked just like FIRST expected. I think that there is too much emphasis on the overall rank. With the alliance selection process a good robot that does not rank highly will get selected by one of the top seeds and end up on one of the top alliances.