How many matches are really needed to determine final rankings?

[zinthorne]

I think this thread brings up some very valid points. I do think this years ranking format separates the true best 8 better than previous years. As said above 254 rose to number #1 because they were the best. The amount of matches that a competition has also plays a bigger role than most would think. For Example in our Shorewood district event (12 qual matches) we had some mechanical and did not field our robot for our first 2 matches. We were ranked 27 out of i believe 31 or so. By the end of quals we were ranked #2 and only 2 average points behind first place.

The other thing about this game is the fact that your qual average varies alot on who your alliance partners are. You could have a middle of the pack team that has 8 matches with top 8 team, as opposed to a team with the same ability that only has 2 matches with top 8 teams. The team with fewer quality alliance partners will rank lower. This shows how valuable scouting is in finding the truly best teams.
Example: In PNW championship this last weekend we were the #6 alliance captain. We picked the 21st seeded team and the 45th seeded teams out of 60. Our alliance was able to make it to semi finals and barely miss finals by .67 of a point with an average of 201.33. This shows that the best teams are not always ranked near the top, and it is scouting which will find them.

The other hard part about this years ranking is the coopertition points. These are a very easy way to raise your ranking or drop it significantly. It also allows for coop specialists to rank very high when they may not be the most suited for playoffs where there is no coop. In my opinion when scouting coop points should be taken out of the amount of points a team scores in a match, because it will usually separate the best teams from the average teams. I know that FRC GAMESENSE had a few graphs set up where they took several competitions and factored out coop points from everybody's rankings and the results were sometimes very drastic. Usually teams shifted a few spots, but sometimes it was the difference between top 5 and out of the top 8.