Rookie Teams in Elims

[SenorZ]

In my second year attending the LA Regional I've noticed a veteran team or two that ranked well into the lower half of the table get picked for eliminations over very competent newer teams.
It seems like there is a bit of cronyism mixed in with that idea that a veteran team can handle the pressure better.

Thats life though.

[TeamSpyder1622]

[quote=SenorZ;1146420]In my second year attending the LA Regional I've noticed a veteran team or two that ranked well into the lower half of the table get picked for eliminations over very competent newer teams.
It seems like there is a bit of cronyism mixed in with that idea that a veteran team can handle the pressure better.

Thats life though.[/QUOTE

In my opinion sometimes when alliances are picking their third robot there are so many robots left in the pool of teams who are competent enough to fill that position. Therefore they may pick a team they have worked well with in the past. For example: 1622 has been on an alliance with 1572 in eliminations in San Diego for 3 years in a row because we have experience together and we are good friends, we have also been on an alliance with 2984 in San Diego for 2 years in a row.

When you said veteran teams ranked in the lower half of the table you also have to factor in teams going to their first regional. We didn't score a single point until something like our 6th match because of all the bugs in the code we had to work out so we ended up ranked somewhere around 40 our of 58. But we ended up scoring 25 points on our own in the elimination matches. It would have looked like our team just got picked because we were a veteran.

But I do agree that some teams who do not have scouting tend to have a bias towards teams they know have had good robots in the past. a triple digit team will almost always get picked over a rookie team if the one picking doesn't know anything about their robots and they are ranked about the same.

Thats just my opinion

[seg9585]

Originally Posted by TeamSpyder1622

When you said veteran teams ranked in the lower half of the table you also have to factor in teams going to their first regional. We didn't score a single point until something like our 6th match because of all the bugs in the code we had to work out so we ended up ranked somewhere around 40 our of 58. But we ended up scoring 25 points on our own in the elimination matches. It would have looked like our team just got picked because we were a veteran.

Actually, that shouldn't really factor in. Who can assume a team will be effective in elim matches when they haven't been able to score in qual matches? If a team's bot isn't effective, first regional or not, why should they be ranked higher because of their "potential"?

Everyone has code or mechanical issues in their first regional -- and most teams only go to one regional (especially rookies) so I don't see any correlation.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by seg9585

Actually, that shouldn't really factor in. Who can assume a team will be effective in elim matches when they haven't been able to score in qual matches? If a team's bot isn't effective, first regional or not, why should they be ranked higher because of their "potential"?

Everyone has code or mechanical issues in their first regional -- and most teams only go to one regional (especially rookies) so I don't see any correlation.

You don't necessarily "assume', but you might hope. I could give you numerous examples of robots that finally got the bugs out late, and then won the whole thing (with their alliances help of course). I can think of 2/4 division champion alliances last year that had such a partner.

[seg9585]

Originally Posted by IKE

You don't necessarily "assume', but you might hope. I could give you numerous examples of robots that finally got the bugs out late, and then won the whole thing (with their alliances help of course). I can think of 2/4 division champion alliances last year that had such a partner.

Sure you can hope -- but as many of the posts in this thread indicate, much of the scouting considerations take place on Friday night, and at that point some teams have only played half of their matches and don't have their bugs worked out until Saturday. Based on this logic, the analysis from Friday night would remove those "buggy" teams from the running even if they had potential.

In San Diego, I had our scouts editing picks in real time during the final day to account for performance of the robots, because it doesn't really matter how good/bad a team does in its first few matches, but how well the bot is performed in the last few in prep for the elims. Case in point -- we saw Team 702 have some field connection issues beyond their control in SD (lowering their seed ranking significantly), but after watching them in the second day decided to pick them for our alliance based on their latest performance.
Conversely, in Los Angeles it was my team having all the bad communication issues the first day, and it wasn't until Saturday that we managed to get everything working well. Some other teams I scouted performed great in their first few rounds, then had a mechanical failure or flipped and had to remove a key actuator. That's just the way these things go, so it's hard to tell.

Nevertheless, it's interesting to see teams in this thread post that "7 of the top 24 in our list was a rookie", yet not a single rookie was chosen by anybody.

[JesseK]

We had the (as it turns out) VCU Rookie All-Star team on our very short list, since it was a box on wheels with a very low ballasted c.g., good bridge lowerer, 4 CIMs on a moderately-geared drive train, and decent drivers. They would have pushed around the multitude of fender bots, and I could have helped guide them through overall strategy since they would have been defending right in front of us. Yet as 3rd seed we wound up picking a robot with a variable-consistency mid-goal autonomous that was (amazingly) still available.

So I agree with Adam -- it had everything to do with robot performance vs. our needs rather than the fact they were rookies.

[chmconkling]

Originally Posted by JesseK

We had the (as it turns out) VCU Rookie All-Star team on our very short list, since it was a box on wheels with a very low ballasted c.g., good bridge lowerer, 4 CIMs on a moderately-geared drive train, and decent drivers. They would have pushed around the multitude of fender bots, and I could have helped guide them through overall strategy since they would have been defending right in front of us. Yet as 3rd seed we wound up picking a robot with a variable-consistency mid-goal autonomous that was (amazingly) still available.

So I agree with Adam -- it had everything to do with robot performance vs. our needs rather than the fact they were rookies.

Hey there's always St. Louis!!

[BrendanB]

Last year we were the first pick by the number 5 alliance captain and another rookie was the captain of the 8th alliance.

There sometimes is a bias against a team number but its not deliberate. Some teams who find themselves captains of an alliance with no scouting data will lean towards lower numbers/winners from last year if available because we all have that assumption that the longer a team has been around the better they will be which many times isn't true because we all have good and bad years.

Perform at your best and the teams who scout will notice you!

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by SenorZ

In my second year attending the LA Regional I've noticed a veteran team or two that ranked well into the lower half of the table get picked for eliminations over very competent newer teams.
It seems like there is a bit of cronyism mixed in with that idea that a veteran team can handle the pressure better.

Thats life though.

I assume you are talking about us (team 589). We seeded at 33rd place, which is 50th percentile. (Surprisingly, spot on with my prediction) We did not have a ball manipulator because we took it off on Thursday due to weight problems. Why we got picked? Not actually too sure. We were a defensive bot, balancing was pretty much a breeze for us. However, I can say that our ranking was pretty bad because of our role. We were a defensive team, there was no other way to score other than by balancing. We were just a supplement to alliances; we are pretty much useless without an alliance. Of course we had issues, like match 19, where a jaguar pwm cable fell out, and match 36 where the battery fell out.

We also had 2 teams of drivers, with 2 drivers each. There was a single match (24) where I got to drive without any technical problems, I never drove after match 36. I then became the "coach" for the eliminations. The general consensus was that I was the best driver on our team, but had been retired due to the foul I committed on the 24th match.

Perhaps, some of you have seen my signature bridge balancing technique demonstrated here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-vYNlwoGRo#t=50s

Trust me, it was more impressive the first time I tried it, this time, I was rather nervous.