Petition: Change Elimination Rounds

[Gope]

Originally posted by Gadget470
A champion should be reliable and able to follow the structure of the game. (Ammendment to a previous comment).

The game's objective is to have the closest score possible between the alliances to achieve the greatest score. The team able to have the score be 50 v 49 should be crowned champion of the matches because it's completing the objective and not being 100% dominant.

As much as I hate to admit it, you have a good point.

[roboticscom13]

I say keep the rule. The rule was made for a reason... in the real world there will be situations that you don't like your just gonna have to design your strategy with this rule driving it. As far as the superior alliance....the best alliances sometimes don't win just because your alliance has two or more good robots doesn't't ensure that you will win the match. I have seen the best robot pairings lose to pairings that i never would have thought would win...... It's all in the game , its all part of this 6 weeks...Strategy is as important as having a robot that is reliable.

[tatsak42]

For all you know, last year, many 'superior' teams may have been bumped just cuz one of their motors died in a freak accident. The whole strategy of "beating, but not too badly" makes you think and the 2 of 3 idea gets rid of that smoothly. Reliability is great.

And besides, it adds a bit of entertainment here

[Jim Meyer]

Sounds like if you know you can't win the first match you want to get as few points as possible. Also if you win the first match and get a lot of QP's you may be able to easily tolerate a loss in the second round as long as you have very few points yourself. (one robots makes sure you have 0 points and the other plays defense)

Veeerrrry interesting....

[Jay Lundy]

Imagine this:

The game starts. The 2 robots on one alliance don't move at all at the beginning of the match. They both have "damaged drive trains." The other 2 robots set up the field in such a way that they are going to win 100 to 99. With 30 seconds left, they both move up onto the ramp and wait. Suddenly, with 2 seconds left, both of the "disabled" robots dart out and knock over a stack or knock 2 tubs out of scoring position. The other robots can't do anything about it because they are relying on the 50 points from the ramp. The team that did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING all match wins 99-98.

Is this strategy, or is it a loophole? Sure this would only work one time, but I can see some modified version of this where one alliance does all the work only to be beaten by a misjudgement.

There are several factors involved in winning a game:
- Robot functionality
- Robot reliability
- Pre-game strategy
- In-game strategy

This year the focus in the EPs is mostly on in-game strategy whereas previous years it was robot functionality/reliability and pre-game strategy. I can see how this can work to level the playing field for rookies who tend to not build as good a robot as veteran teams, but I agree there is too much luck involved in in-game strategy to make it a good way of determining a winner.

Sure, it isn't about winning, but it sure does feel good when you do win, and even better when you know you won because you drove better, built a better robot, and strategized better, and not because your opponent forgot to count 2 of the bins when they counted up the number of bins in scoring position.

[Jay Lundy]

Originally posted by tatsak42
For all you know, last year, many 'superior' teams may have been bumped just cuz one of their motors died in a freak accident. The whole strategy of "beating, but not too badly" makes you think and the 2 of 3 idea gets rid of that smoothly. Reliability is great.

And besides, it adds a bit of entertainment here

Yeah I can see how it makes it more entertaining. Rather than watching a match between the #1 seeded alliance of ChiefDelphi, Kingman, and Beatty and the #8 seeded alliance of rookie teams 1555, 1666, and 1777 and knowing who is gonna win, now there is a chance for the rookies to advance (I'm assuming here that under previous year rules the #1 seeded alliance would have slaughtered. We've all seen elim matches like this.)

I guess I'm torn on this. There are reasons to have it both ways.

[Ken Leung]

Originally posted by Gope
...
teamB gets 148 points (total 158)

although in match one teamA completly dominated and in match 2 teamA only lost by 1 point(compare that to the 40 points teamB lost by) teamA does not advance.

I must say, put my name on the petition list, any rule which alows an inferior alliance to advance over a superior alliance is one I will not and cannot agree with.

If you are in the competition long enough, you would remember the reason for winners getting multiple of loser's score. Dean thinks it is a much better idea of everyone get more points than just 1 team beating the other by a lot of points to zero. That's why he made it part of the scoring.

And besides, knowing this is the rules of scoring, team A deserve to be the losing team simply because they didn't let the other teams to get more points to build up their base points. I would say its a poor strategy they are playing, by not taking advantage of the scoring rule. Team B was the smarter team because they let team A get 49 points, and thus get 50 + 2*49. So, in this case, the "inferior" alliance didn't advance over a superior alliance into the next round.

[EStokely]

I'm not torn at all. I see no reason to decide this is SO bad it must be changed.

Its the rule on scoring.

Don't slaughter your opponants. Thier score is part of the total. If you know this going in then its not a surprize.
OK the 100-99 set up with the team with "two bad drives" "could" happen.
But thats only one match. Its takes two matches to determine a win.

And now that you suspect this plan by those sneaky opponants you can counter it.

I really like the scoring. Its consistant through out the game.

[IVIaxor]

I think this is better than last year. Last year you had to play the complex strategy through all the qualifying round, but as soon as you got to the elimination rounds the strategy totally changed. All you had to do was brute force your score as high as you could. Some robots that did well in the qualifying rounds faired poorly once they got to the elimination rounds.

This way the strategy is consistent throughout the game, it does not change in the elimination rounds. I think that is definitely a good thing.

[Jason Morrella]

I don't get this debate at all.

2 points:

1. FIRST clearly listened to team input more than ever this year, and much of that input from teams was to keep the game scoring the same in the qualifying and the eliminations? They did that - so a petition by teams to change it would be a little hypocritical at this point. Maybe this will fall into the category of "be careful what you wish for" - but we won't know until March.

2. Both alliances have the same scoring issues before them - luck is not an issue here any more than it is any year.

If you win 2 matches, you win - that simple. If you win one and lose one, then whoever managed the points better wins. If an alliance is clearly superior to their opponent, they'll win both matches. If not, they may split 1-1, in which case the points determine the winner - both alliances know this going into the round, so if someone wins on points than they played the two matches better than the other alliance....seems that simple to me.

Like Dean & Woodie said - this is a game: unfair is kids without opportunity, education, food, water, peace, and so on. If both alliances are playing with the same rules and both know the scoring and how a winner is determined - that is fair.

Heck - we have a president who didn't even get more votes than the other guy - so if our country can't even get "scoring" down, maybe we should hold off on a petition to change something which hasn't even been proved flawed yet?

Should be a fun year - can't wait for March!