Suggestion for a new overall approach

[Pault]

Originally Posted by RallyJeff

The stronger the teams, the more meaningful the competition.

If all you're after is a trophy, you can get a very fancy one at any engraving shop for way less money and effort than it takes to compete in FRC. It's having as many excellent teams as possible - and the pursuit of excellence - that makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Your taking my quote out of context. I absolutely agree that helping other teams is a huge part of FIRST. I just don't agree that including coopertition as part of the game incentives teams to do so.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Pault

I absolutely agree that helping other teams is a huge part of FIRST. I just don't agree that including coopertition as part of the game incentives teams to do so.

How does it not? If you think having to rely on your alliance partners in order to win a match isn't a good incentive to help them do well, I don't know what you'd suggest as a better one.

[A Dog IRL]

I don't think that we need to have FIRST announce what the game will be way ahead of time, even if it's a minor detail. As the founder of a rookie team, I really enjoyed the game this year as it put a lot of our minds to work on the team in the design and testing processes.

I do, however, love this game over past years. The game actually feels like a sporting event, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time at Einstein. I hope next year the game is something similar. I kinda wish it was the same game so we could build an even better robot, but that wouldn't be very fair.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by A Dog IRL

I don't think that we need to have FIRST announce what the game will be way ahead of time, even if it's a minor detail.

Don't you think that it would be great to have teams like 254 working with rookie and newer teams in the fall? Again, listen to EJ's talk--they stepped up their involvement with other teams (which was already extensive) because of the incentives in the game. Why not extend that incentive to early in the year when those teams have more available time and resources? Please don't say that they already do this--EJ's comments prove that these teams can step up even more with the right changes.

[A Dog IRL]

They're supposed to anyways! We don't need FIRST forcing everyone to work together. I'm not going to sit around and expect 254 to come around and help us. We can ask for help from them, sure, but it's in the spirit of FIRST that they help us. Not because the game requires it.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by A Dog IRL

They're supposed to anyways! We don't need FIRST forcing everyone to work together. I'm not going to sit around and expect 254 to come around and help us. We can ask for help from them, sure, but it's in the spirit of FIRST that they help us. Not because the game requires it.

As I posted earlier in this thread, what people SHOULD do, and what they ACTUALLY do are two different things. I'm a professional economist who works on policies to close the gap between SHOULD and ACTUALLY. Incentives matter, and I can show you the research that proves this incontrovertibly. Rather than just sit back and passively extol teams to act, the teams need more of a push to act. (And note that I am not saying FIRST is "forcing" them together--the teams still have a choice, but now they get a more explicit reward.) The GDC apparently decided this was the case when they designed this year's game. I am suggesting a couple steps further to accomplish the GDC's goal.

You're rookie team made it to the World Champs because it is unusual. Most teams do not have that wherewithal. Look back at how other teams performed at the South Florida Regional. There were almost certainly robots that could not effectively interact with other robots on the field. They had problems in conceptual design or in quality of manufacture. In past games, these problems were of little consequence. This year, it could cost an alliance up to a 100 points. These teams, especially rookies, may not have thought to ask, or may not have known who to ask. They don't have enough experience to know which other teams have the resources and knowledge to help them. So why not have FIRST proactively solve this problem?

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

As I posted earlier in this thread, what people SHOULD do, and what they ACTUALLY do are two different things. I'm a professional economist who works on policies to close the gap between SHOULD and ACTUALLY. Incentives matter, and I can show you the research that proves this incontrovertibly. Rather than just sit back and passively extol teams to act, the teams need more of a push to act. (And note that I am not saying FIRST is "forcing" them together--the teams still have a choice, but now they get a more explicit reward.) The GDC apparently decided this was the case when they designed this year's game. I am suggesting a couple steps further to accomplish the GDC's goal.

Can't it be argued that the same thing would happen even if there was some form of presesason announcement?

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

Can't it be argued that the same thing would happen even if there was some form of presesason announcement?

There are no guarantees about human behavior. And "making the perfect the enemy of the better" is not a productive argument. But from economics we know that providing incentives is likely to change behavior. And the substantial research and analysis from that discipline is the basis for making this proposal. I will tell you that the same thing is HIGHLY likely to occur WITHOUT the pre season announcement. If you want to change behavior (which the GDC apparently wants to do) then you need to change the incentives and structure. It's unlikely to change on a wide scale without these types of changes.

Plus 254 (and 1678) stepped up their assistance in the pits responding to the incentives provided in January. I can tell you that our team would have reached out much earlier if we had known about the game structure in the fall. January was too late to reach out effectively.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Don't you think that it would be great to have teams like 254 working with rookie and newer teams in the fall? Again, listen to EJ's talk--they stepped up their involvement with other teams (which was already extensive) because of the incentives in the game. Why not extend that incentive to early in the year when those teams have more available time and resources? Please don't say that they already do this--EJ's comments prove that these teams can step up even more with the right changes.

I'm trying to understand why you think that FIRST announcing a cooperation aspect of the game in the fall will incentivize teams to help neighboring teams before competition even begins.

I listened to the GameSense show, and 254 was incentivized by this game to help their own alliance partners before their matches. While this is advantageous to do every year, the "multiplier effect" of having 3 good robots on your alliance made this even more crucial this year. Thus, I agree that Aerial Assist probably caused more support of lower-caliber partner teams than was seen in other years (although I would need more than one anecdote to be confident about this).

However, let's think about the opponents of 254. I have in the past heard stories of teams helping out the very team that they will be competing against in the next match. While I am certain that these situations happen, I am also certain that teams help out their partners for upcoming matches far more than they ever help their opponents.

So we come to your "fall announcement" idea. What about this game specifically would have incentivized 254 to go out of their way to help local teams in the fall? There are already some very good reasons to help out other teams, but this game, even had it been fully announced in September would not have been one of them in my mind. The reason why this game causes no additional incentive to help out teams in the fall comes from the way FRC matches are currently structured. Since, in any given qual match, you are partnered with 2 random robots, and against 3 random robots, you are 50% more likely to be helping out an eventual opponent than you are an eventual partner when you help out a random team in the fall. This is the same as any other year, thus, I don't see how FIRST doing anything like what you have suggested in the fall would cause additional incentive to help local teams.

I suppose an argument could be made that 254 could stand to gain a little from reducing the variance induced by the randomly generated schedule, but it doesn't seem that you are making this argument.

Again, I'm just trying to understand why you think announcing a "cooperation aspect" of the game will cause any additional incentive to help teams before the match schedule is even generated, please enlighten me.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by inkling16

I'm trying to understand why you think that FIRST announcing a cooperation aspect of the game in the fall will incentivize teams to help neighboring teams before competition even begins.

I listened to the GameSense show, and 254 was incentivized by this game to help their own alliance partners before their matches. While this is advantageous to do every year, the "multiplier effect" of having 3 good robots on your alliance made this even more crucial this year. Thus, I agree that Aerial Assist probably caused more support of lower-caliber partner teams than was seen in other years (although I would need more than one anecdote to be confident about this).

Let's make that two teams: We did exactly the same thing as 254, independently. Our team also went to help teams that we were going to play with on the Newton field. We went to their pits on Wed and worked with them so that they could play at a higher level for the ENTIRE competition. (We helped 1114 who also was teamed with them in a match.) We continued to help them after they played with us. (And it was a ton of fun! ) Notably, both 254 and us were the alliance captains in the Einstein final.

Originally Posted by inkling16

However, let's think about the opponents of 254. I have in the past heard stories of teams helping out the very team that they will be competing against in the next match. While I am certain that these situations happen, I am also certain that teams help out their partners for upcoming matches far more than they ever help their opponents.

So we come to your "fall announcement" idea. What about this game specifically would have incentivized 254 to go out of their way to help local teams in the fall? There are already some very good reasons to help out other teams, but this game, even had it been fully announced in September would not have been one of them in my mind. The reason why this game causes no additional incentive to help out teams in the fall comes from the way FRC matches are currently structured. Since, in any given qual match, you are partnered with 2 random robots, and against 3 random robots, you are 50% more likely to be helping out an eventual opponent than you are an eventual partner when you help out a random team in the fall. This is the same as any other year, thus, I don't see how FIRST doing anything like what you have suggested in the fall would cause additional incentive to help local teams.

I suppose an argument could be made that 254 could stand to gain a little from reducing the variance induced by the randomly generated schedule, but it doesn't seem that you are making this argument.

Again, I'm just trying to understand why you think announcing a "cooperation aspect" of the game will cause any additional incentive to help teams before the match schedule is even generated, please enlighten me.

The issue you're discussing about whether robots are opponents or alliance mates was discussed extensively earlier in the thread, so I'll refer you there in part. However, I'll tell you as the lead scouting mentor that having poor performing alliance mates was a bigger penalty than the gain of competing against poor performing robots. The fact is that you can have more control over how your alliance mates perform than over your opponents. Our drive coach was most frustrated by poor performing robots and felt is job was easier with those that were up to snuff. So you can't look at this as simple probability problem--it's actually a weighted expected outcome gain. The value of added performance by your allies is greater than the risk of loss from your opponents. I think most of the stronger teams recognize this situation.

One additional factor you haven't mentioned--it provides a deeper pool of prospects for the elimination rounds. The top teams are more likely to be choosing among the lower quality robots given the snake draft. Having a larger pool of better robots, especially at districts and smaller regionals, makes that job much easier (speaking for experience). We took a rookie team to Einstein, so we have a pretty broad scope of who we are looking at. So you need to look at more than just the quals rounds.