Veteran Teams have No Advantage

[Petey]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

[b][u]
2) Veteran teams do have an advantage, but something is being done to prevent that advantage from helping them to win matches. It is possible that a scheduling system that pits veterans against veterans removes the legitimate advantage that comes from years of hard work and development.

Or, it is possible that if you have two veteran teams and a younger team, the strength of that veteran team may be able to overcome the weakness of the younger team.

Perhaps a better statement would be that won/loss records mean nearly nothing when it comes to evaluating the strength of any robot. WPI had a much stronger robot than us this year and yet finished nearly 10 spots lower. Why? Because they had weak alliance partners and faced Buzz four times.

Why do you think you see so many teams keeping spreadsheets of individual robots performances? Why do you suppose that, after the usual top-8 incest (after all, if you're ranked #1, chances are you are dominant enough to carry both of your partners on your backs), we often see teams picking from the 20's or 30's instead of the teens?

It's because alliances, throughout which the strength and weakness is divided, =! teams.

Of course veteran teams have an advantage. They have infrastructure. They have institutional expertise. They have tried and failed and thus come out with more knowledge. You can have rookie teams that do quite well, but how often do you see a rookie team come out of the blue and dominate the field? A second year team? Even a third? If you could find the data, try seeing how many younger teams really dominate in any of the game components. I don't think it happens.

Your analysis isn't wrongheaded, it's just that the data is deceptive.