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Originally Posted by BBnum3
Teams would often be seeded inaccurately. I'll use 217 as an example. They were seeded 17th in Archimedes, and were clearly not the 17th best robot in the division. Now they did end up winning the Championship, so this is not to say that good robots don't get rewarded. I want to know what ideas people have for increasing the number of matches at the Championship. I know the logistics are crazy with so many teams at the event, but there's got to be some way to get more matches in.
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I disagree with your assessment that seven matches are not enough for accurate seeding at the Championship.
For those teams who perform consistently at the same level, seven matches are plenty to accurately determine their ranking. For teams who don't perform consistently due to periodic mechanical breakdowns or driver inexperience or lack of testing time, perhaps seven are not enough to allow them to "find their groove". But at the Championships, the pinnacle of the FIRST competition season, it only makes sense that the teams that can perform consistently well by that point should be rewarded accordingly in the rankings, as opposed to holding more matches as an equalizer. There are five tough levels of elimination rounds to get through in order to win the Championship, and for a team prone to inconsistent performance, that's a lot of time in which something could go wrong.
That's not to say that teams who performed inconsistently in the qualifiers
can't perform well in the eliminations, and that's where scouting becomes tantamount to seeding, as Richard said.
As far as the example of team 217 is concerned, the ThunderChickens deserved a seeding of 17th or thereabouts, as they were having trouble with their shooter and their autonomous mode throughout the qualification rounds. In the eyes of scouting teams, to choose them would be a bit risky as compared to some of the more consistent performers in Archimedes. But luckily for both our teams, after the conclusion of the qualifiers 217's personnel were successful in convincing 296's scouts that the bugs had been ironed out and that they were once again shooting 10 for 10 in autonomous.