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[joelg236]

Originally Posted by inkling16

If you have good scouts, that number that everyone else calls "rank" is irrelevant (unless that number is <16).

I wouldn't call it irrelevant. As a matter of fact, it roughly correlates with winning potential and assist potential. But if you have the real numbers, it probably doesn't matter too much.

[Owen Makin]

I would go as far as to say that rank is completely irrelevant. At this years san diego regional the alliance captain that ended up choosing the sixth seeded team had a robot that could barely move, but were exceedingly lucky with their match schedule. Note that my team also too had the same thing occur to it in 2009 where we were ranked 4th. Yet for the last four years i can not remember playing more than once with a power house team more than once per year. There is no easy way to fix the problem other than completely changing the ranking structure. Teams that do not scout due to the fact they know they wont be top eight, but end up being lucky leads them to choose solely on rank, and teams that dont have exceptional scouts also pick teams baded solely on rank, or maybe a good match with them. Scouting is extremely difficult due to the amount of time it takes to go through each and every single one of the matches ar least six times to view each robot, there almost isnt enough time to do that. The ranking might never change, but that only rncourages teams to be better scouts.