Cheesecake: How far is too far?

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

Great, so we'll see you all at regionals next year with our 2016 robot, "Tabula Rasa". Here's to the shortest build season ever!

So long as the GDC doesn't make the same fundamental mistake that they made this year, we shouldn't see anything like what occurred this year.

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

In my opinion, this is a big part of it...but the bigger part is when a team makes some kind of deal with an "alliance captaining team" that removes other, arguably more qualified teams, from consideration. Alliance selection should be based upon the performance of a team throughout qualification rounds...not upon what kind of "backroom" deal can be made. In this "now infamous" case, no one has mentioned the other 44 teams on Curie who all started packing up after alliance selection ended. One of them lost an opportunity.

In general alliance captains do not choose teams in order of their qualification rankings, or even with regard to the rankings at all. The alliances are put to together through a combination of strategic (which team is a bigger threat?) and functional (which team has best kiss passer or trusser?) assessment. Please don't expect that your qualification ranking will be rewarded with a high alliance pick unless you're an alliance captain.