Official FIRST Stronghold Teaser!

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

For Recycle Rush, I think that you're totally right - qualification average as the 1st order sort was one of Recycle Rush's greatest successes. If defense is permitted, though, I don't think this would quite work. Match schedule would begin to matter more, because the placement of strong defensive robots could make or break a team's rank. Also, it would hurt strategies that are perfectly valid for simply winning the game, say something like game piece starvation, or anything else that would intentionally keep both scores low, but put you on the winning side.

Furthermore, it could open up a can of worms or six, like: "we know we're outgunned in this match, but let's tell the other alliance that we will play a totally defensive match to deflate their ranking unless they let us take the win by a small margin." ...or something like that.

Of course this is all speculation. I admit, I'd expect that FIRSTliness would help us get over the "can of worms" scenarios as a community, and there may be games where that method of ranking is appropriate - say, there are no strategies that would intentionally keep both alliances at a low (or lower than possible) score. But for most FRC games that I've seen or read about, I don't think that qualification average would be the most appropriate order sort.

The thing is, going for a defensive strategy is a perfectly valid way to play, and in fact it gives a weak alliance something to actually attempt, don't forget that while the strong alliances qual average may not be as high as it could be, by going strictly defensive the weak alliance is probably hurting their own qual average by more.

No matter what, the best strategy for a high qualification average over a series of matches is to concentrate on getting the highest score possible in each match never to try to hold the other alliance down.

Plus, if their average is 100 and your average is 60, bringing them down isn't going to put you ahead of them, at best, you're acting on behalf of the team that has a qual average of 98.