New Qualification and seed method.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Duke461

it will simply be luck as to whether or not you play against an opponent that can balance on the bridge, and plans on balancing on the bridge.

It's simply luck if your alliance members can score balls, or if they're boxes on wheels that can't move.

Every team out there has been affected by luck in qualification matches. Our rookie year we were the 7th seed... not because we were good (I think we put up 2 tubes in Rack 'n roll the entire competition), but because we ended up on awesome alliances again and again. Fast forward to some other years, where we had a good robot but ended up lower in the seeding - in a particular game, our robot may have out-performed every other individual robot on the field, but we lost because our alliance, as a whole, was weaker than the other alliance.

The coopertition bridge isn't about luck - if your robot can manipulate the bridge, you can drive up it, lower it for the other alliance, and have them drive up as well. All a team needs to balance on the coopertition bridge is a drive train and some patience. Now, if no one on the field can manipulate the bridge, then you have a problem... but that's as much your fault as anyone else.

[Nemo]

I generally like this system. They wanted to make coopertition really important, and they have succeeded in doing it in a really fun way.

It is a little unfortunate that teams with good allies (hybrid scorers) get a tiebreaker boost in addition to the wins they are likely to get by having good allies. But I prefer this to basing tiebreakers on opponents' scores, which creates incentives to score on oneself. This way, a team has the ability to directly impact their own tiebreakers by having a good Hybrid mode, which is great.

Teams with tough schedules have the significant benefit of good teams to balance with on the coopertition bridge. It is great that there are seeding benefits for easy OR hard schedules.

[Jaxom]

We understood the importance of the Coopertition bridge ahead of time & were ready to deal with it. It obviously helped; we had 26 qualification points (with 1 loss) as compared to the undefeated #2 seed with 22 QPs.

I like having the 2-alliance interaction requirement; I think that adds significantly to the game. It's a huge factor, but I personally would like to have seen the importance be a bit lower than it is. Maybe have wins be 3 points (or even 4) and keep the coopertition points where they are at 2 for a balance and 1 for a fully-supported attempt.

[mott]

I agree 100% with Jaxom...this aspect of the game and "coopertition" with the opposing alliance is interesting and adds to the game but the importance is just too high in my opinion. Maybe I'm just too competative but I still like to see winning be the most influential factor in the ranking systems. Jaxom's suggestion of 3 points for a win and only 2 for a coopertition might be the right mix...There's always IRI!