3 Teams Per Side Too Many?

I really think 3 on 3 is a bad idea. I loved it at the beginning of the season and I really liked the element of strategy that it added, but I have since noticed a few things that is has impacted negatively. There were huge lapses in scouting at nationals. I think this had a lot to do with 3 on 3 since it is nearly impossible to keep track of a match with 6 robots in it. You need 6 people watching each match and even then it is difficult to get a perspective on the whole match. Also it is more difficult for an individual well performing team to overcome an unlucky alliance pairing. It wouldn't be so devastating to be seeded lower due to alliance partner mishaps if you could trust that the top seeded teams had watched your performance and would pick you.

[ben281]

hey guys,
i do agree that 3v3 might introduce more interesting games and strategies. This is the first forum that i have seen anyone throwing out the idea of 2v2v2. haha that could get really cool! once again, the previous problems exist with that, since every match you would have 2 wins for ever 4 losses. oh well. i also agree that scouting needs to be more thourough next year to insure that the good teams with bad luck still get picked.
till later
Ben
TEAM 281

[Kit Gerhart]

Originally Posted by ben281

hey guys,
This is the first forum that i have seen anyone throwing out the idea of 2v2v2. haha that could get really cool! once again, the previous problems exist with that, since every match you would have 2 wins for ever 4 losses. oh well. i also agree that scouting needs to be more thourough next year to insure that the good teams with bad luck still get picked.
till later
Ben
TEAM 281

Before '99, the format was 1v1v1 double elimination until the quarter finals, at which time the tournament became 1v1. With the 1v1v1 format, there were definitely cases where a strong robot, real or perceived, was "ganged up on" by the other two. Also, it that format, there were two losers/match in the pre-quarter final part of the tournament, so about a third of the teams only played two "real" matches in an event.

[Carter]

Originally Posted by SharkBite

I really think 3 on 3 is a bad idea. I loved it at the beginning of the season and I really liked the element of strategy that it added, but I have since noticed a few things that is has impacted negatively. There were huge lapses in scouting at nationals. I think this had a lot to do with 3 on 3 since it is nearly impossible to keep track of a match with 6 robots in it. You need 6 people watching each match and even then it is difficult to get a perspective on the whole match. Also it is more difficult for an individual well performing team to overcome an unlucky alliance pairing. It wouldn't be so devastating to be seeded lower due to alliance partner mishaps if you could trust that the top seeded teams had watched your performance and would pick you.

not to keep the neg talk going but you make another good point. that most teams dont have the people to scout that many bots and scout newton ,curie and so on. my team did it all this year but it was hard on all of us and my team has 75 people on it.

[Not2B]

3 vs 3 = good

-More rounds
-More teams
-You get field time with almost everyone
-Broken robots result in 2 vs 3, which isn't the end of the world
-Scouting is different, not harder. (You need to be more creative, and data driven - at least it worked for us.)
-More exciting, IMHO, than 2x2 (but that's not a good reason for or against)

3vs3, 2vs2vs2, or 2vs3 would all be fun.

(2 vs 3... with an uneven field... and you get equal number of matches on 2 as you get on 3. That would be wild.)

[Mike33]

3v3 was good. not as much traffic as i thought because most teams learned to stay in the home side of the field until they had to go make a 'blitz' play and take the opposing home row goal. you did need more scouters because there were more bots on the field. the unussuall two or three didnt work that well when collecting the data. compiling data was fine. and believe it or not, the human player still was valuable even if the team didnt use the manual loader. think about it, if the human wasn't there, the bot wouldnt go. if the driver wasnt there, the bot wouldnt go, and if the operator wasnt there, the bot couldnt score. so believe it or not, the role of each job was evenly split.

p.s. Thanks to all you human players for making our robots go.