Highest ranked team not picked?

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by wjordan

4/8 (686, 1137, 1262, 5279) are CHS teams... that's a bit odd.

1137, 1262, and 5279 are all effective low goal bots. 836, another CHS Low goal bot was a 4th pick. In Chesapeake low goals were enough to seed high and win. At Champs, at least in our Case, we were able to capture because we could put 6 balls in the low goal, this lead to more ranking points. However in eliminations teams could capture with only high goal shooters, diminishing the value of the low goalers.

Basically we were very valuable as a qualifying bot since when partnered with a single bot that could score 4 balls we would capture regardless of who the third bot was. However in elims teams were able to select two high goal bots who could score 10 balls between the two of them or 3 high goalers who could score 10+ combined. It is something we were aware would happen eventually.

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Rank =/ robot abilities

Good teams scout and rank doesn't factor in picking teams.

Originally Posted by AquaMorph

Rankings are not a good indicator for skill. Sometimes, good teams have a lower ranking because they had a tough schedule. Other times, the reverse happens and a team gets a higher ranking than they deserve.

This is certainly true, however there is another factor that plays into it, and it is the way the game changes between qualifications and eliminations. 5279 is a good example, I suspect if you replayed the weekend with other random schedules over and over again I suspect we would seed in the same area as we did on average. In this game, low bar bots that could score 6+ balls did well in qualifications, but were less valuable in eliminations because their were enough high goal shooters that could combine for 10+ balls to capture. I suspect that if they had not raised the tower strength to 10 then these low goal bots would have seeded lower, as more high goal bots would have been able to capture in qualifying with out them. On the other hand if they raised it to 12 then the low goal bots would have seeded higher and would have been more valuable to elimination alliances.

It is entirely possible for a robot to both deserve to seed where they did, and not get picked. In our case, while we were very valuable to the average alliance, we were less valuable as a complimentary part of a designed alliance. On the other hand a robot like 1662 could not contribute as much to an average alliance in qualifying as they were a defensive robot designed to beat very good shooters so they were not able to contribute to damaging the tower, however once an alliance had two robots that could capture without contribution from a third partners, a robot like 1662 jumped in value. Us ranking 19th, and 1662 ranking 65th both reflected (to at least some degree) our value to random alliances, also, 1662 being picked in the second round, and us missing eliminations also reflects our value to the alliances as designed by the alliance captains.