|
Re: Is the qualification match robot randomizer really "random"
Im not exactly sure what you are seeing in that, we were actually fairly impressed that when we sat down to do our strategy on thursday night, that we played in matches with all but 3 of the teams at the regional, and many of the teams that we played multiple times, we were with in one match and against in the next or one later in qualifications.
And as seen with Sean's examples, Im not sure how you can think too many big name teams had "easy" schedules. I think part of it was that there were some really good teams at Philadelphia, and then there were some that struggled with design as well. We found from our scouting that the divide was really odd this year as opposed to prior years. We normally see a pretty bell shaped curve distribution. This year, it was actually relatively flat in terms of team performance,possibly even curved up on the low end. I think one of the biggest things is that strategy this year isnt anywhere near as simple as past years, and it shows in the teams that have competed already and those that havent. Look at our record from Finger Lakes - while we felt we had some tough matches, we were ranked 27th, we hadnt yet nailed the game strategy. It wasnt due to us fixing our robot, our improvement in Philly was due to us figuring out the strategy. By week 5, many of the big name teams have already competed in other regionals, while many of the other teams havent had the chance. And if they havent been doing strategy off the blue alliance or havent gone to see other regionals, my guess is that they struggled similar to what we did in our first regional.
The other thing too is Im not sure how you can "define" the top-tier teams anymore, and how a match algorithm can know the difference. There are several low number teams that have struggled with building the robot or maintaining sponsors, while there are more and more high number or mid range teams that are really pulling together and becoming better and better. Even some of the rookie or second year teams seem to be more and more impressive.
|