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

[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.

[Austin2046]

Originally Posted by Hallry

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

Still, something feels not completely right to me about this. Maybe it’s because teams using this strategy are giving the appearance of wanting to have a team join their alliance, when that’s not their actual objective. (Ever been invited to a party when you know the host doesn’t really want you there?) Maybe it’s because this strategy gives an individual team great power in being able to break up several other potential alliances. Maybe it’s just because the community often calls this strategy ‘Scorched Earth’, which sounds, at the very least, unfriendly.

I really think it's the opposite. I've seen a lot of scorched earth in my day, and it seems to usually happen because the top teams don't want to be with the higher seeded team. They've gone to the top teams and they've said they'll decline if invited. So they work their way down to a lower seeded team that will accept. Imagine hosting a party where everyone says that they don't want to come... because you'll be there . I understand that sometimes high seeded teams make a deal with a lower seeded team to do scorched earth to give their alliance a better chance at winning, but I think that's perfectly fine. Every team that decides to decline is taking a risk, and the team inviting is taking a risk... I think scorched earth is a perfectly legitimate strategy that requires teams to use better strategy and scouting in order to win rather than relying simply on the strength of their top two robots.

[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.

[apalrd]

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.

There is one expo tournament we've played several times (the IGVC invitational) with exactly 24 teams, where teams are assigned alliances (1-9-17, 2-10-18... 8-16-24). Saturday morning there is sometimes a strong incentive for a team thats 7th or 8th to lose a match to drop to 9th-12th and get a better overall alliance.

If you disallow picking within the top 8, teams will do the same thing to get below 8th to allow themselves to be picked first.

OCCRA does a similar thing (no picking within the top 6). There was a team this year who was 4th going into their last match and planned on throwing it to drop below 6th. Another team (I don't remember their exact placing) who was opposing them in this match knew this and decided to play for the opposing alliance to prevent them from throwing the match and dropping below the cutoff to be pickable (the outcome did not affect this team enough for them to be concerned). In the match, both teams in question scored points for the opposing alliance, so they were literally both trying their hardest to increase their opponents score. The fans were shouting "YOURE BLUE YOUR BLUE" and "NO YOUR RED" and it was really strange. You would see the same exact thing happen in FIRST if picking within the top 8 was forbidden.


I have no issue with scorched earth plays as far as the rules or GP is concerned. The 1st seed has earned their spot by the rules of the game. If we want the best alliances possible (which I think we do), we just need to play more matches so the 1st seed is really the best (or very good) and the lower seeds would have little reason to decline. Changing the rules in any way I can think of would just make everything worse.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

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).

The 2010 seeding system was quite good when everyone played to win IMHO, but I think a lot of people still remember the 6v0 plays and scoring for opponents to increase your seeding and dislike it for that reason. And before the +5 in a team update there was no reason to score if you knew you had no hope of winning (this was hotly debated, but we did play a 6v0 once successfully, and talked it about at least two other times).

[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.

[PVCpirate]

I thought it was great that 4 teams declined 1678 on Curie, who responded by winning the division. Alliance selection drama is something I always find myself talking about after an event. I really don't think the rules should be changed, and I think any attempt to do so would make selections needlessly complicated.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by FRC Blogged

Still, something feels not completely right to me about this. Maybe it’s because teams using this strategy are giving the appearance of wanting to have a team join their alliance, when that’s not their actual objective.

Maybe, much more likely, the #1 team would very much like to work with the teams they are picking, but they suspect those teams don't feel the same about working with them. Lovely. Well #1 has zero obligation to let "high-powered" teams form the alliances they want to form.

I see nothing wrong with putting lower-ranked alliance captains on the spot and forcing them to make a choice, even if some of those captains have explicitly asked the #1 team to not pick them or tried the reverse psychology "we'll decline if you pick us" ploy (it happens). That's almost a guarantee of a scorched-earth pick if I were in #1's shoes - if you play any kind of thinly-veiled condescension card, you is gonna get burned!

What I'd like to know is whether Frank decided to bring up this topic by himself, or if others shared with him their disdain for "Scorched Earth" strategies, and that prompted this blog post.

[mwmac]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

What I'd like to know is whether Frank decided to bring up this topic by himself, or if others shared with him their disdain for "Scorched Earth" strategies, and that prompted this blog post.

I was wondering the same thing, i.e. if this is some kind of feeler to gauge sentiment in advance of a contemplated selection process rule change. My .02, leave the current process as is, it isn't perfect but it isn't broken either...

[DampRobot]

I've come to believe that the current alliance selection system is just like democracy. It's the worst system possible, aside from all the other ones.

[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.

[Caleb Sykes]

I actually think that a 1-8, 1-8 selection would help to discourage scorched earth. 1-8, 1-8 helps captains 1-3, has no effect on captains 4-5, and hurts captains 6-8 when compared against the serpentine draft.

In a serpentine draft, seeds 6-8 are hesitant to accept the invitation of a mediocre #1 seed because the remaining partner will be the 16th pick. (Using seed 7 as an example) If the 7 seed declines, they still get the 7th and 10th picks.
In a 1-8, 1-8 draft however, if the 1 seed invites 7, 7 is much more likely to accept. 1's&7's second pick will be #9. If 7 declines, in contrast, they are stuck with the 7th and 15th pick. Assuming minimal difference between pick 7 and 9, 1 only needs to be marginally better than the 15th pick (could be as low as 23rd overall robot) for them to accept. Not to mention an easier schedule in eliminations.

Since scorched earth strategies rarely (if ever) come from a seed lower than 3, this would definitely limit the occurrences of scorched earth.