FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy

[BrendanB]

I have no problem with the rules as is. What I find interesting about the analogy of being invited to a party you know the host doesn't want you at is exactly the opposite in the scorched earth strategy. Its not that the host doesn't want you, its that the party goer doesn't want the invitation.

I think we rarely see the scorched earth strategy played out like we think it is. Most of the time it is genuinely a team that has seeded high and they are just going down their pick list of top teams until they get a yes. That is them doing their job. Anyone in their shoes would do the exact same thing, pick the top teams.

In the cases where it really is scorched earth, it is still playing smart. FIRST will never come up with a ranking system that is completely fair and ranks teams properly. More qualification matches or grading different metrics will fix that. Until then there will still be teams who sneak into the top 8 or powerful teams who don't perform on their game and seed low.

[Racer26]

I see a lot of talk about so-called "scorched earth" strategies.

I've never really seen one in practice.

About the closest I've seen was 1815's selections at GTREast 2012. Due to the coop bridge, and some lucky scheduling, 1815 ended up ranked significantly higher than their robot performance should have put them, but they were still not #1. They were declined by 4 or 5 teams before someone agreed to play with them. Their initial strategy had they seeded #1 was to break up 1114/2056/610/188.

[connor.worley]

I've never heard of this being called a "scorched earth" strategy. Maybe it's an east coast thing? I've just heard it as "splitting the powerhouses" or something similar.

[apalrd]

I've seen this happen, and remember at least one time on the receiving end of a definite strategic play.

The easiest solution is to try to make the rankings accurately affect how good a team actually is. So if a, say, #2 team tries to pick #4, #2 is actually better than #4 and #4 will just accept.

The easiest way is to do that play more qualification matches so the randomness of random partners (on both sides) has less effect on the rankings, and keep the primary sorting based on metrics that actually reflect how good a team is (win/loss/tie does this, auton points is a good secondary, the coopertition bonus from 2012 was really bad for this).

[TheMadCADer]

My reply on the blog post is pasted below.

"Scorched Earth" is much more a side effect than it is a strategy that teams pursue. Assuming the top ranked team only ever attempts to pick the best robot available for them, there is no possible outcome that is inherently 'bad' for them. Either they get the best team available, or the best team available declines and becomes less likely to pose a threat by nature of being a lower seed and not being able to accept later. I see nothing wrong with the top seeded team wanting to pick the best team available, though doing so may sometimes result in a Scorched Earth.

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by Racer26

I see a lot of talk about so-called "scorched earth" strategies.

I've never really seen one in practice.

See Curie 2013.

Post 142 You are correct that we had planned for those teams to decline us in order to break up the power team alliances that would have otherwise been formed.

Post 145 We gamed out the draft with the "power" teams declining

It's a part of the game, and I have no yearning for it change. What I do hope for is a seeding system and enough qualification matches to allow the top robots to be the top seeds.

[Lil' Lavery]

Even if you accept the notion that the "scorced earth" draft is a negative thing, I feel it's clearly the lesser of two evils. While it certainly happens, it happens only a couple times per season. It's a rare occurance that may be unavoidable in particular situations unless you want teams to jump down their picklist to the first team who will accept them and leave everyone else on the table. It's definitely the better option than allowing declines, in my mind.

[Chris Fultz]

I like it as-is.

More matches will help sort out the rankings.

Teams that employ this strategy only to break up other alliances run the risk of someone saying "yes" when they don't expect it, so if you start doing this, you should actually want to play with the team you are inviting.

I don't like the idea of being able to decline and later say yes. If we go that way, allinaces could just be formed in the pits and you could go tell the scoring table who your partners are.

I also think sometimes a team will decline not because they don't want to play with the #1 or #2 team, but because they can put together a more balanced and competetive alliance by having an earlier pick in Round 2 if the overall field is not deep. Some events having pick 8 & 9 or 7 & 10 is way better than pick 1 & 16.

[Wayne Doenges]

About the only way you could stop the Scorched Earth strategy is to not allow the top 8 team to pick any of the other top 8 teams
Now that would make some interesting alliances.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Wayne Doenges

About the only way you could stop the Scorched Earth strategy is to not allow the top 8 team to pick any of the other top 8 teams
Now that would make some interesting alliances.

But then you would have teams "fighting" for 9th place.

[nicholsjj]

Originally Posted by Wayne Doenges

About the only way you could stop the Scorched Earth strategy is to not allow the top 8 team to pick any of the other top 8 teams
Now that would make some interesting alliances.

This is what the offseason event in Kansas City does. It makes for an interesting alliance selection in that teams pick based on knowing who they have to play. This year it might be neat with the cttd having two division finalists and another frc top 25 team competing.

[Chris is me]

There's no way to prevent this strategy while still preserving the right to decline.

That said, I haven't the slightest of problems with it. It makes eliminations far more interesting every single time it happens. It provides the top seeds with an important additional incentive that compensates for the disadvantage given to them by the serpentine draft. Perhaps the only thing that bothers me about it is that it's a little awkward.

If you've seeded in the top 8, you should have the right to form your own alliance. Imagine if this wasn't the case. Imagine 6-7 FIRST teams openly lying to the first seed about the state of their robot to try and avoid getting picked. Imagine the off-field deals this would incentivise ("if you don't pick us, we won't pick team xxx that you want on the back half of the draft"). Even more teams would more actively hope to not be on an alliance with someone.

I mean, I guess scorched earth should be avoided, in the sense that we shouldn't have a seeding system and number of qual matches that commonly allows carried teams to seed first / second / third. However, to at least some small extent this is unavoidable. Even in 2010 there were teams with better schedules than others (and, as good at ranking teams as it was, not a ton of people want to go back to 2010 for some reason).

It's also worth noting that not all declines are because the chosen team thinks the top seed sucks or whatever. The serpentine allows for better alliances at lower seeds sometimes. In addition, almost every decline in Canada last year was done in order to play at a seed that faces #1 in the finals, in order to earn wild card slots.

[BrendanB]

Even if you add more matches it will "help" but it won't solve the problem. That's if you would even call it a problem. Over the years we have been given more matches but even then there are still teams who slip into the top 8 who aren't the best and top teams who have rough matches.

Rankings is mainly determined by performance. I'll use our team as an example. Our team had the same record as team 2648 at the Pine Tree Regional (12-1) the difference came down to our autonomous points. Our team had two matches we missed all of our shots due to different reasons. One match we had an air tank pushing down on our plate causing all shots to go low. Another we had a driver station error that prevented us from selecting the proper speed before a match. In the one match we lost we had one partner who was struggling with shooter problems and another who lost all controls to their drivebase.

In the end we would have selected 2648 if we seeded higher but the story holds true in that it didn't matter who had the better robot, it mattered in who could pull it off every match. 2648's autonomous and teleop game were dead on the entire weekend which gave them the number 1 spot. Similarly 125 also had one of the best robots at the event but seeded #20 after a tough match schedule. 1114 was one of the best in the Archimedes division last year but they finished 66th after some issues and were the second pick.

If anything I wished we had less qualification matches. Friday we had 9 matches some with only a 4 match turnaround leaving no time to fix problems.

Unless you have a panel of judges who strictly make the rankings based on robot performance, you will never go into alliance selections with teams ranked where they "should" be.

I like the system the way it is. No 1-8, 1-8, no picking in the top 8, etc.

[Woolly]

Originally Posted by nicholsjj

This is what the offseason event in Kansas City does. It makes for an interesting alliance selection in that teams pick based on knowing who they have to play. This year it might be neat with the cttd having two division finalists and another frc top 25 team competing.

Let's not forget 3928 who has shown to be quite capable at being a game changer for an alliance. If any one of these 4 teams gets a hard schedule or (unfortunately) decides to throw a match or two, you could end up with alliance partners that look like:
3928-1986
3928-1806
3928-3284
3284-1986
3284-1806
Or even the feared and well practiced combination of 1986-1806.

That's not counting other high-scoring bots being in the mix like 1939, 3528, etc.

But even so, throwing a match is harder than it sounds. If it's the last match of the day and you're paired up with someone who's decent at scoring and has a vested interest in making sure you don't fall outside the top 8 and are suddenly allowed to form a super-alliance, you more than likely aren't going to be able to throw it unless you're playing against the team you want to be with in the first place.

[Kevin Leonard]

I honestly love thinking about alliance selections.
"If they pick them, then they need to have a full-court blocker, so they'll pick XXXX, but they also have a ______ autonomous, and XXXX needs to counter that sooo..."
And then:
"But if that match goes that way instead, then XXXX will seed first, and XXXX will decline them, then they can pick 20 later in the draft!"

Not that that scenario happened to us or anything. Nah.