Serpentine Draft

[themccannman]

The current draft method is tried and true. There's a reason why we still use it. The #1 pick in elims matters so much I can't imagine any scenario where a team would opt for a lower choosing spot. Strictly going from value added to an alliance by a robot, 1st picks are orders of magnitude more valuable than what's available for 2nd picks.

If you don't take the number one choosing spot then what's to keep the new #1 from picking you, you decline, then they pick your first pick (it's usually pretty obvious who the top 2-3 teams are at an event), they decline, then they pick your second pick, they decline, then you start getting into robots that you don't even want for a first pick. Now You've completely broken up every good alliance and no one gets any good picks since none of the top 4 can pick each other. Was that really worth getting a slightly better second pick? No it probably wasn't.

I'm not sure why you would want a lower choosing spot to get a working robot since every event I've seen as more than 24 working robots, all of which were more than adequate second picks. If your event has fewer than 24 robots that can drive across the field then I think the number one seed would have a pretty easy time winning with one good pick anyways. Robot performance tends to follow a bell curve, it doesn't just suddenly drop off after the 16th best robot. The 17th pick should be just as good as the 16th pick and often the 24th pick is still a good robot.

It seems to me that the only reason someone would pick a lower choosing spot is if they don't make very good second picks. I've been very satisfied with the pool of second picks we get to draft from every time we're first seed. The 24th pick is often a robot that's at the top of my second pick list. I've never ever had to work on a draft list where our second pick list didn't consist of robots that would love to have on our alliance. The situation may be different at districts, but in my experience we've always had a great array of robots available for second picks, and we often get our top picks because other teams over look them. Also the prevalence of teams making very poor second picks seems to support my theory that it's not the robots that are available for second pick that are the issue, it sounds like it's the pickers problem.

tl;dr - make better picks instead of complaining about the robots.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by themccannman

I've been very satisfied with the pool of second picks we get to draft from every time we're first seed. The 24th pick is often a robot that's at the top of my second pick list. I've never ever had to work on a draft list where our second pick list didn't consist of robots that would love to have on our alliance. The situation may be different at districts, but in my experience we've always had a great array of robots available for second picks, and we often get our top picks because other teams over look them.

I'd like to second this point - we were extremely happy to have 4161 available at IER, and 766 at Sacramento, and of course they were each the 24th pick. They fit perfectly into our alliance strategy. And we would have been almost as happy with the next available pick on our draft list at both events. There's another thread from a rookie team wondering why they didn't get picked at an event, and they looked like a perfectly good choice. I don't think the 24th pick is a curse if a top team is well prepared, even this year.

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by themccannman

Strictly going from value added to an alliance by a robot, 1st picks are orders of magnitude more valuable than what's available for 2nd picks.

That's the crux of the argument that you missed - at small/shallow/district events this year, the gap between the #1 pick and the #8 pick is smaller than the gap between the #9 pick and the #16 pick. Pick another robot with a 2 ball autonomous? No purpose, since you can only start with 3 balls. Pick another high goal scorer? No purpose, only 1 robot is going to be the finisher. But the dropoff between the #8 pick (16th overall) and the #16 pick (24th overall) can be the difference between a solid inbounder that can play shutdown defense, and one that can't. That level of dropoff didn't matter the last two years - it does this year. That's where the origin of the thread came from - at small/shallow/district events, the "dropoff" is real, and promotes the possibility of throwing matches to not fall victim to it.

[MisterJ]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Here is the problem with that statistic and the way the ranking is done: a top 3 team at a regional or division may be sitting at 7 or 8. I argue in deep fields like championship divisions you may be better served, if you are a top 3 robot in your division, to pick from 7 or 8. In many cases, you may be considered the favorite even though you are at 7.

#7 was definitely the favorite (end eventual winner) at MAR Champs.

[Lij2015]

At Both competitions we went to this year the number one seed won it, and it can only be because of the lack of scouting, because at both of these events the pick list we had created was correct in the teams that got picked but the order was way wrong leaving some robots that should have gone way earlier to the later picks.
However, I am a HUGE fan of the pick where you want to be thing posted above because it is quite scary when formulating a pick list and you only have 18 or 19 teams on there.

[BethMo]

Pacific Northwest switched to the District model this year, and it seems to me that alliances for the eliminations are the single biggest problem. One of our district events only had 28 teams! In that situation, by the time you get down to the last pick you're lucky if you even get a partner who can drive across the white line for 5 points in autonomous.