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[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by tcjinaz

From Central Valley. How does this alliance even come together, much less win the tournament?
Wow.

A great team chooses the partners needed to play their strategy in the most effective way possible. Ranking doesn't matter when you look at it from this perspective.

There are many ways a low ranked team can be the perfect fit for a strategy or alliance and good scouting is keyed in to identifying these factors that you need to win the game.

[Racer26]

Intra-alliance synergy is paramount in this game.

A significant portion of the points in this game are being scored in auto, and consequently rank probably tracks best with auto scoring ability. 254 had their 3 ball auto, so a reliable scoring machine in auto was not high on their priority list.

Instead, to maximize teleop points, they needed to choose a team they could build a synergy with. For that, 973 makes perfect sense. They've worked together many times before, including winning a world championship together.

[Abhishek R]

Also goes to show that your pick list should not be final after your Friday night meeting. The list is always dynamic, and should only be close to final after the last qualification.

[JosephC]

Good scouting always trumps rank. On Newton in 2012, 68 picked 330 (24th seed) and 639 (89th seed), to form an alliance that could triple balance in less than 5 seconds and went on to be Division Finalists.

[AdamHeard]

Here you go;
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...8&postcount=67

[Pat Fairbank]

Rank does not correlate well at all to desirability for picking, this year, due to the different alliance dynamic required by Aerial Assault. In past years, teams' contributions on an alliance have largely been additive; for example, if your robot scores 20 frisbees per match on average, and you pick a team that typically scores 10, you could count on scoring somewhere around 30 in eliminations.

Not so this year -- you pick robots that fill out a third of the particular cycle type you want to run in eliminations. Rank wasn't a factor at all this year in 254's scouting process. I only discovered 973 was ranked 43rd when I was idly looking at the standings while waiting for alliance selections to start, and I only found out 2135 was ranked 41st when I saw this thread.

Much more important are the ability to not commit fouls, pleasantness of working with your team if we have a qualification match together, and ability to quickly intake and release a ball.