Match Ranking Points

[Daniel Bathgate]

I was looking through the tournament manual and saw this:

Originally Posted by 9.3.5 Match Ranking Points

All teams on the winning ALLIANCE will receive a number of ranking points equal to the un-penalized score (the score without any assessed penalties) of the losing ALLIANCE. All teams on the losing ALLIANCE will receive a number of ranking points equal to their final score (with any assessed penalties). In the case of a tie, all participating teams will receive a number of ranking points equal to their ALLIANCE score (with any assessed penalties).

Originally Posted by 9.3.8 Ranking Score

The total number of ranking points earned by a team throughout their qualification matches, divided by the number of matches played (excluding any SURROGATE matches), then truncated to two decimal places, will be their ranking score.

Note: because your ranking score is derived directly from the match scores of your opponent ALLIANCES, it is in your interest that both your ALLIANCE and the ALLIANCES you “defeat” obtain a high score. The most valuable “WIN” results from a close, high-score match.

Originally Posted by 9.3.10 Qualification Seeding

All teams in attendance will be seeded during the qualification matches. If the number of teams in attendance is 'n', they will be seeded '1' through 'n', with '1' being the highest seeded team and 'n' being the lowest seeded team.
The scoring system will use the following seeding method:

• Teams will be broken into tiers based on their qualifying score. A tier is made up of all teams with the same qualifying score. Tiers will be seeded in decreasing order by qualifying score.
• Within each tier, teams will be seeded in decreasing order by their ranking score.
• If any teams within a tier have the same ranking score, they will then be seeded in decreasing order by their highest match score.
• If any teams within a tier have the same ranking score and the same highest match score, then the scoring system will seed those teams based on a random electronic coin toss.

Anyone trying to think of a way of defending (granted, I don't see how one could in this game) might want to pay attention to these rules. Of course, just winning a match is still far more important, but still something to think about.

It might even be in your favor to help your opposing alliance if you are winning by a landslide. Maybe knock down the opposing trackball if you are matched against an alliance of all rookie bots (hey, rookies could still do great! we were once rookies... ok, so we didn't end up having a working arm...) or robots with broken manipulators / trackball knocking devices. We could see some interesting gameplay this year.

(I can dream of this coming into play for us, can't I? )