[Official 2005 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas

[roboteer49]

I just came up with this in the last 5 seconds, i was just on the first site and saw that pretty blue and red robot(dont know the team). I asked myself, self, wouldn't that be cool if dean kamen and woody each created a robot and challenged the national champions to a match for the super-ultimate-awesome-galaxy championship belt. Wouldn't it be cool to see Dean's robot, a segway with a arm that could hang. I would pay to see that.

[Billfred]

alright, I'll throw out a concept.

What if the top nine teams picked alliances, then had a play-in game between eight and nine? It boosts the number of teams that get to play (and brings in teams that were just on the bubble), but it doesn't mushroom the eliminations into something huge.

Or, if you were really looking for a concept, how about Highlander style? If the eighth seed beats the first, for example, then they can pick any of the robots in the first seed to compete with them in future matches. It makes things hard for deciding who goes to nationals (the winning robots from the finals?), but it's something to think of.

[Ryan Foley]

Originally Posted by roboteer49

I just came up with this in the last 5 seconds, i was just on the first site and saw that pretty blue and red robot(dont know the team).

I believe that robot is Team 233's 2000 robot. That was before they went pink.

[Alex Pelan]

Not exactly radical, but here goes:
At nationals, after the division play is done, the teams are ranked according to their performance in the eliminations only. Then, alliances are picked once again (perhaps there will be some new alliance captains?). I suppose the top 4 seeds would be given the opportunity to keep their alliance from the division, if they like the way their team was...

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Alex Pelan

Not exactly radical, but here goes:
At nationals, after the division play is done, the teams are ranked according to their performance in the eliminations only. Then, alliances are picked once again (perhaps there will be some new alliance captains?). I suppose the top 4 seeds would be given the opportunity to keep their alliance from the division, if they like the way their team was...

Or, to piggyback/simplify the idea...get the top 32 teams across all four divisions (33 if you want a play-in game), and line up all 2XX teams on Einstein. (Alright, so it might be better for divisional fairness if we did the top eight from each with cross-picking)

Not only do all of the teams get their moment in the spotlight, it also forces teams to work together, lest you not even know about that team over on Curie that would be great for you. Of course, given the fun we had with TacOps on Archimedes when we had our alliance selections with just ONE division...(grin)

I'm just trying to make D. Kelly's job more of an annoyance. (double grin)

[ChrisH]

I have to credit Bill Hendry, one of our engineers with this one, but he's not on the Forum so here goes:

Currently the top seed picks first and then on down the line until there are eight alliances and then we start over at the top. But what if instead, the #8 alliance immediately got a second pick and then we worked backwards so that on the second round #1 picked last?

It could certaily even things up a bit

[Andrew]

October: Sign up for competitions. You pick the number of competitions you want to attend (1, 2, 3, ...) but not specific competitions.

December: Entry fees due. You pay for whatever you committed to or you drop an event.

Three weeks into Build Phase: All teams bid on competitions. You make your bid based on your first, second, third, fourth preference. You must indicate more preferences than competition bids, since you might not get your first, second, third, ... preference.

One week later: During the next week, the competition committees at each regional select from their bids. They extend invitations to the number of teams necessary to fill up their regionals. Teams are notified so that they can make travel plans.

Advantages:
1. Gives the regional committees some say in who will attend their regionals. There have been "incidents" where a regional committee might not want to see a team return, at least for a time. This would give them some power of enforcement.

2. Teams which know exactly what they want to do right now get first dibs on most spots. Teams which are less clued in sometimes have to take whatever is left. Everyone would be on an equal footing with this system.

3. If you are having an awesome build phase, you might want to bid for the "tougher" regionals. If you are falling apart, you might want to pick a less prestigious stage to play in. Especially with qualifications for nationals, you probably want to save your energy for a year where you nail the game, rather than one where you're going to waste your time.

4. Regional committees can balance the types of teams attending their regional. If they want to have a "fresh, new look" they can get more 1st and 2nd year teams. If they want to have a "veteran" competition, they can select some lower number teams.

5. Corrections can be made between overly full regionals and lightly attended regionals.


Disadvantages:
The current system is pretty good and works reasonably well. This proposed system would add complexity to the planning process. If the regional planning committees don't want the added responsibility and work, then this would be an unwanted imposition.

[Gabe Salas Jr.]

Originally Posted by Ryan Foley

I believe that robot is Team 233's 2000 robot. That was before they went pink.

Yes, that is our beloved Roccobot 2k. The picture on the FIRST website is a very dark shade of pink, which kinda makes it look like red. But we have been a PINK team ever since we started back in 1999. And here is my proof.

[tkwetzel]

First suggestion...Tag team matches...have 3 team alliances with all 3 robots on the field. However, only allow two to be powered at one time. You could require the non-powered robot to be against your teams wall at all times. You could also say that you can only switch once, so once you depower one of the robots that was powered at the beginning of the match, you can not use that robot again.

Second suggestion...have scoring zones like in several games of the past, but make it so where the robot is at the end of the match determines the alliance it is on and how many points the team gets. So all four robots could end up in the same scoring zone and all get the same amount of points, or it could be 1v3 or 2v2. You could also allow for multipliers for the fewer number of bots on an alliance. So you could get a better multiplier if you play by yourself against the other 3 bots.

[soap108]

Three days of points collection. The average points (total pts divided by # of matches) counts towards qualifying for Championship. Winning awards can add to point total.

The field and the objects are the same each day, but the task of manipulating the objects for points changes.
Example: (based on 2003)
Day 1 put boxes in a stack as high as you can as quick as you can.
Day 2 put boxes into a pyramid. The wider the base the better the score, but multiple pyramids of just 3 boxes gain points too.
Day 3 move boxes from pt A to pt B as fast as you can.

At the end of Day 3 add up all the points and declare gold, silver, and bronze winners.

Since teams can attend multiple regionals, their best average score counts toward attending Championship.


KA-108

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by rachakate

I'm going to go the exact opposite way and say, let's make the coach have to be a student too.

I'll second that.

[dbSparx]

Originally Posted by dlavery

This thread is a spin-off of this discussion, and has been started to focus on radical tournament structure changes. This thread is intended to collect innovative ways to structure tournament play. Using previous years as an example, this might include ideas to add human players to a robot-only format, or to change the three robots playing at once to a two-team alliance format. Like the above thread, this thread is meant to collect creative ideas that can be applied to any game concept.

-dave

I agree with the promotion of offense over defense, especially to control the battle-bots approach to the game. I also agree with the single objective game (and I love the 3 on 3 game format). The conflicts I had this year were (1) the use of penalties of the means of promoting offense and (2) the single objective was clearly out of reach for some teams, creating a huge disparity in the quality of teams and, therefore, game play (while also very frustrating to under-resourced teams who want to put a capable bot on the field but lack the means to do so). I have two thoughts that are attempts to address these areas.

To address (1), I have been working on how to replace penalties with a more progressive form of promoting offense. I wanted to come up with a reward for offense that was very observable, very valuable to a team, and fairly easy to manage. Here is the thought I am working on. At the end of the match, the number of objects scored by the two alliances are totaled. (This year, the number of tetras placed on top of a goal would have been counted). Each team would be awarded the total count for both alliances in points, similar to ranking points, only it is the count of objects instead of score that is considered. Before the start of the match, the average points would be calculated for each alliance. Following autonomous mode (assuming there is an autonomous mode and it remains at the beginning of the match), the team with the greater average number of points gets a five-second head start. The robots on the team with the lesser average are disabled until five seconds of match play have expired (imagine the anxiety it would create for the team sitting and waiting. Talk about incentive). For the first match, as all teams have no points, all teams start at the same time. So long as at least one team has played one match, the average would be calculated by dividing total points by the number of teams considered in that total (excluding those that have not yet played a match). This point average would be considered right through the tournaments, which would mean that the total points for a given team might be worth considering in the draft. This would promote a very offense-oriented tournament and could make it easier for teams to form draft boards (teams that used rankings to form their draft boards were typically crushed in the tournaments, as the rankings have as much to do with luck of the alliance draw as robot ability. The current model favors teams with experience). It would also have the fun side-effect of allowing FIRST to keep track of the total objects scored, a fun statistic to report at the end of each event and compare across regionals and national divisions. Imagine what the sum total might be if you added all the tetras placed for every match played this year.

My thought on addressing (2) while staying with the single objective model is to add an ADA approach to the solution. For people with disabilities, the ADA provides laws that require organizations to provide alternative means of access for a given objective, say, accessing a building normally entered via a stairway. That mechanism is often less efficient than that which is available to people who do not have the physical limitation (long ramps or elevators). Taking this thought and applying it to a game, what if three of this year's goals were replaced by a single-width ramp or platform that would allow a team that did not have the means to construct a safe and efficient lifting mechanism to drive up the ramp and place tetras on top of a goal (it really wouldn't have worked very well for this years game, I merely use this year's game for illustration purposes)? Access to the ramp could be restricted to one robot at a time, which would control the king-of-the-mountain problem and create enough inefficiency to really drive teams to elevate the objects using on-board lift mechanisms, yet give under-resourced teams approachable access to the main objective. It would also lift up the smaller robots during the games so they are more visible to the crowd, creating more visual appeal and excitement for those teams who choose to use it.

I think when all is said and done, the tournaments would favor machines that could elevate the object of the game, just as most people use the stairs, but it would at least make the game approachable and be a great message. Additionally, given the size of some of the smaller regionals, you might find some of the teams who couldn't build a lifting mechanism drafted and competing more effectively. In this year's game, for instance, the under-resourced team could have capped the winning goal. Serious cool points.

[MarkVH]

For the championship, another day should be added for qualification rounds to give teams in each division a more mixed alliance pairings.

This may not be practical, since the practice rounds are on thursday.