[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Richard

Hasn't this been beat to death yet? OK, so low numbered teams don't get to play with each other in qualifying. So what?

So what? Going by team number alone is a lousy way to go about it--the software is making assumptions about their on-field performance that are often erroneous. Consider a qualification match at UCF (Q2, for the record): 61/665/1557 vs. 69/744/1592. On paper, that seems like a pretty balanced match--until you actually consider the robots in question.

Spoiler for Billfred's Pseudo-scientific analysis of the contenders of Q2:

61 and 1557 both finished the event as boxes on wheels (1557 was the whole time; 61 had significant arm problems--like the arm popping off--nearly every match until they took it off), while 69 and 1592 were both pretty good arms with ramps. I don't remember enough of 665 or 744 on the field to make a good call about them, but I know that 665's arm ended up out of commission by Saturday morning because of a burned-out motor.

No good scout would pick an alliance partner for eliminations just because they have a low number, yet the current match pairing algorithm is doing just that. For my money, I'd rather have a mostly-random match pairing algorithm (with the obligatory concessions for some space between rounds) than one that tries to meddle with things. If I wind up with 71, 45, and 111 against my team and two flowerpots, so be it--at least I can write that off to bad luck and have a good laugh about that over dinner.