Alliance Selection Strategy

[themccannman]

Originally Posted by EricH

Offensive Power Ranking.
The biggest problem with using solely OPR is that 1) it virtually ignores defensive players, and 2) it takes a bit of setup to run the numbers properly. (It also doesn't distinguish between how points are scored--if you're a 50-point climber and you pick a 50-point climber because they have a high OPR, you'll probably be blanked by the 50-point climber that picked a pair of shooter/defense robots that combined for 50 points.)

It doesn't virtually ignore defensive robots, it completely does. Offensive Power Ranking is just that, a measure of a robots offensive contribution to their alliance. There is also a DPR (defensive power ranking) however it's wildly inaccurate and should be ignored. The main reason (aside form accuracy) why scouting is vastly more valuable than OPR is that it tells you why a robot performs the way it does which is absolutely necessary when considering a robot to fit a specific strategy. People should stop hating on OPR so much though, it does exactly what it's designed to do. It's not designed to replace your scouting system, so don't expect good results when you do rely on it for scouting.