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5) Four teams to an alliance in the elimination round does not work. I understand the inclusive part of it. This has been discussed many times on CD. Do you want the best robots in the elimination round to make it an exciting sporting event like the Michigan State Championship to attract more good teams to come like IRI or do you want to let everybody plays? The qualifying rounds served no purpose.
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I don’t think MARC wants to become IRI_in_Michigan. Nor do I think they expect to become a rematch of the State Championship. I have the impression that they’re delighted to have us check our egos at the door.
The MARC organizers have the ear of FiM, and vise versa. FiM is encouraging the off season events to experiment with the alliance selection process, which is why the IGVC Invitational went with fixed seeding (I.E. no draft) and a double elimination finals and why MARC tried the 32 team eliminations with a 1-8, 1-8, 8-1 draft.
In my opinion, both the IGVC and MARC processes made the eliminations even more exciting than the usual, which usually has the two best in the building (with a third) blowing away the rest. The excitement at MARC came from seeing how well the alliance captains used that third and fourth robot. I don’t agree that the qualifying rounds served no purpose at MARC, but if they did, then I prefer that to having the eliminations serve no purpose.
The reason for the experiments is that the current FIRST alliance selection process makes a mess out of the FiM team rankings. The serpentine draft assures that the 16th pick ends up on the #1 alliance and the 15th on #2, which gives either of them an excellent chance to get carried into a ranking point bonanza.
As IKE has noted, the top and bottom of the rankings are not important; it’s the cut line that matters. No offence to the all the 15th and 16th picks, we know they tried their best, but their best under different circumstances probably would not get them into the State Championship. If we really want to have the best robots earn their way into the championship event, then something needs to change.