[dtengineering]

I'm pretty comfortable, overall, with how the qualifying, ranking and selection process works.

What I DID notice this year, however, is that the correlation between robot performance and ranking was lower than in other years. In other words, there was more "luck" involved in your placement after qualifying than in other years. (Note that I am NOT saying that a top placing was all luck... nor that in other years luck has not been involved... just that this year luck, or random draw, was more important.)

I attribute that to the nature of the game... in previous year's, for instance, some matches were essentially over by the time a team ran their auto mode (I mean that in a "positive" way... that a team could WIN in auto, whereas this year a team could really only "lose" the match by not moving in auto and getting a full trailer.) This year, auto really didn't account for much, but a lucky shot of a super cell by a human player did.

Nothing wrong with that, we're all playing by the same rules and the selection process is an effective process to minimize random effects, but it does result in some weird standings and dissapointment for highly ranked teams who aren't selected. Hopefully next year's game will be one where qualifying match results better reflect robot ability.

Jason