Scoring system for 2004?

[DougHogg]

Originally posted by Warren Boudreau
The reason FIRST went to a 3x the losers score and 2x loser + winner score for QPs was to dissuade teams from blowing out less experienced opponents in the qualifying rounds.
Using a winner-loser QP score would do the exact opposite. It would motivate teams to blow out their opponents in order to get high QPs.
That doesn't sound very graciously professional. Does it?

I see what you are saying. I think one of the reasons for the Qualifying Points system was to ensure that dominant teams would keep playing hard, as opposed to getting a lead and then coasting through a match. It would not be audience friendly if one team achieved a dominant position in the first 20 seconds and then didn't have to try for the rest of the game.

We have seen the problems that can occur with this year's system. I think tying qualifying points to the gap in scores would encourage teams to do their best and would also prevent any tendency towards colllusion. The problem then is how to prevent new teams from being "blown out". Well, what happens in other sports?

I think one way to prevent "blow out" is to provide the rookie teams with reliable basic drive train components with some choice of gearing. FIRST took a step in that direction this year. Another way to help balance the game is to incorporate elements in the game that favor new teams. This year's midfield bar is an example: basic low robots could go under it, where some of the more elaborate robots couldn't.

Personally I don't like the "let's help the new guys" method of scoring. I find that to be artificial and patronizing. I would rather score what our team deserves to score. Then we can work on improving. I say, let's find other ways to balance the game, starting with reliable basic drive train components. We might then find newer teams beating out some of the veterans who are experimenting with advanced drive systems.

Bottom line: I don't know any other sport where they decide to boost the loser's score so they won't feel bad. And I don't think it really helps. It just creates artificial scores and makes it hard to tell which designs and strategies are the most effective, and that is part of what we want our students to learn.

The truth is, I think being blown out by an opponent is not nearly as bad as tipping early in the game and lying there with your wheels spinning in the air. That happened to a lot of robots this year, including ours on a couple of occasions.

So let's balance the game as above, and have real scores. If our robot needs work to be competitive, I want to know about it.