Scoring system for 2004?

[Jay Lundy]

I am strongly against the new elimination scoring because of what happened at nationals. In the semifinals of the Newton division, our alliance went up against the hot + rage alliance. It was a tough, high scoring match due to hot's ability to stack and since most of the match was spent with our robots fighting each other rather than descoring the opponent's zone. It was an exciting match, with hot tipping over in autonomous, only to be righted seconds later, gunn getting stuck on a box, us saving gunn only to get stuck on rage (we had run up their robot so far our wheels were off the ground and our robot was at a 60 degree angle). We eventually used our arms to get off rage and make it to the ramp after descoring a few bins. In the final 10 seconds, it looked like we were going to win with our 2 robots on the ramp versus their 1. Hot was still off the ramp building / protecting their stack. In the final seconds, hot was able to push one of our robots off the bridge and get on themselves.

The final score, them: 94, us: 47. EPs, them: 188, us: 47, a deficit of 141. If we had gotten the 2 ramp robots, it would have been 72 for us and 69 for them, a defecit of 141 in the other direction. There is no way to overcome a deficit like that. We had 2 great alliances facing off, and the entire thing was decided in 5 seconds of one match. The second match was basically not even worth playing. We tried our best to stop them from descoring the zones, but I bet we still would have lost even if they had never touched their controls.

Maybe it was the insane amount of points for getting on the ramp that screwed up the scoring, but I doubt it. I think they should just go with the 2 out of 3 method, but I am concerned that they might stick with the current method because it reduced the number of matches teams had to play in the elimination rounds.

By the way, sorry to hot for any damage we may have caused in the second round. We were trying to get our wedge, designed for removing KoH robots, under you to try to get your wheels off the ground and keep you from descoring. It was hard to see though and I think we ended up doing more damage than good with that thing. I hope we weren't the reason your robot shut down in the finals.