FRC Blogged-Standard District Point Structure

[Lil' Lavery]

You're evaluating the district ranking system from the completely wrong perspective. The point of the ranking system isn't to assess who's #1. The ranking system is designed to have value at the cut-off for the district championship, and there's where the point allocation matters most. Instead of attempting to further validate your own team's achievements based on what you determine to be important or difficult, how about you review the extensive documentation explaining the logic behind the ranking system?

Penalizing losses in the eliminations, beyond the implicit penalty of not earning +5 points for a win, is silly. It would actually be advantageous for a team about to get blown out to "break" and call in a back-up robot. Likewise, it would remove incentive for teams to remain unbagged to become back-up robots, knowing the odds are they will receive -1 or -2 points.

Rewarding sweeps and increasing bonuses for elimination success will further boost the 2nd round selections of powerhouse alliances, while both explicitly and implicitly penalizing the teams drafted ahead of them to lower seeded alliances. Considering these will be the teams vying for the district championship cutoff, these are the points that matter. You're making it even more difficult for the mid-tier teams to advance, which is the exact opposite of the intended effect of district competitions.

The point about teams "sandbagging" after winning a district is nothing short of ridiculous. If a team has already won a district and drafted high in their elimination tournament at their second event, they're going to be in the hunt for one of the top points spots (and earning a bid to Championship) heading into their district championship. They're going to want as many of the potential 30 elimination advancement points as they can get.

And California has plenty of high schools, no? There will be plenty of venues for 40-team districts.

I'm not saying the current system is perfect, but these suggestions take it in the opposite direction. I doubt you'd find many, if anyone, who's actually played in the district format who'd support them.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

A No. 1 alliance that goes down to No. 8 in two matches deserves to get negative points...

As a member of a team who's been on both sides of a #8 sweeping a #1 at district events, hell no they don't.