The Plus-Minus stat in Lunacy

[Brandon Holley]

I like the idea...+/- in hockey is a VERY useful stat that tends to say a lot about the team play of an individual player.

Where this could get confusing in scouting is just the simple act of counting the balls that are being scored. Even with 1 person per robot/trailer, I could see numbers being miscounted. This doesn't mean this stat shouldn't be used (I'm sure most good scouting teams will do this exact thing, not all will call it "plus/minus") I think its just worth noting that the numbers you count for this may not be fully accurate on some occasions.

[Ryan Caldwell]

our scouting team will be taking into acount +/- for sure, i think the team effort (blocking in so partner can score) will be huge as well, and diversity in plan of attack will also be on the top of our lists

So basically you want Dennis Wideman for an alliance partner

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

I like the idea...+/- in hockey is a VERY useful stat that tends to say a lot about the team play of an individual player.

Where this could get confusing in scouting is just the simple act of counting the balls that are being scored. Even with 1 person per robot/trailer, I could see numbers being miscounted. This doesn't mean this stat shouldn't be used (I'm sure most good scouting teams will do this exact thing, not all will call it "plus/minus") I think its just worth noting that the numbers you count for this may not be fully accurate on some occasions.

The way I would envision it is that a scout would look only at the points scored BY a robot during the round. Counting the points in its trailer is probably easiest after the round, when the field reset crew is removing the game pieces.

And yes - there would be some margin of error. The hope is that it will be fairly slim compared to the amount of "good" information.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Abwehr

The way I would envision it is that a scout would look only at the points scored BY a robot during the round. Counting the points in its trailer is probably easiest after the round, when the field reset crew is removing the game pieces.

And yes - there would be some margin of error. The hope is that it will be fairly slim compared to the amount of "good" information.

How do you account for which robots scored which balls into which trailer? Thats going to be the essence of scouting this year.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

How do you account for which robots scored which balls into which trailer? Thats going to be the essence of scouting this year.

DURING the match you watch a robot to see how many balls it scores.

AFTER the match you can watch as the balls are removed to see how many points have been scored in its trailer.

[MrForbes]

also, which Payload Specialists scored which balls in which trailer? I think we're going to see quite a variety in human scoring ability also.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by squirrel

also, which Payload Specialists scored which balls in which trailer? I think we're going to see quite a variety in human scoring ability also.

That would certainly need special consideration if this method is used.

[Tom Line]

A very simplified and perhaps more accurate version of over/under (and closer to the NHL version) would be to simply take your team score and subtract your opponents score.

This would, of course, be subject to issues around teams scoring on themselves to prevent to large a win, but it would certainly still be valid considering how rare that will be.

In NHL, it's not your personal goals vs. how many is scored on you - it all goals scored while you're on the ice by your entire line... very similar to this situation.

So you only need to grab the final scores and the robots involved in each match to calculate it.

[newyorkjr]

Uhh...do you realize how hard that strategy will be to implement? Traking which balls go where and making sure that the ones are shot and picked up and delivered and robots blocked and blocking shots and... . That and there are a bunch more ways to do well in a competition rather than just scoring. What robots that you want on your team will entirely depend on the strategy that your team wants. So its a good idea...but needs some tweaking for each team.

[Rizner]

I think if you have this, you should also have another option or box that says this robot, instead of (or in addition to) shooting or dumping, plays defence, feeds to human player, helps with offensive maneuvers (trapping to help alliance score), and other things like that. If they feed to human player, how effective was their human player and how many balls did they feed them (scored 13/18 balls?). If they help with offensive maneuvers, how long did they hold, and was it long enough? Also, did they have penalties for this or that?

Just some ideas.

[David Brinza]

Want some more complication?

How about (as Tom Line suggests) teams that intentionally score in their own trailer (i.e. for their opponents) to avoid the dreaded 2x or 3x SUPER CELL withholding rule <G14>?

Would you ignore self-inflicted scores or count them as +'s??

Arrhhh...

[Rick Wagner]

As super cells count 7.5 times as much as moon rocks, scouting could be simplified by just reporting empty cells upgraded and super cells scored. Super cells will be match deciders when it comes to the elimination rounds.

[RMiller]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

In NHL, it's not your personal goals vs. how many is scored on you - it all goals scored while you're on the ice by your entire line... very similar to this situation.

Just for the sake of complete accuracy, in the NHL, the +/- is only affected when both teams are at full strength or the scoring team is shorthanded.
The shorthanded part fails a bit because the robots would still expect to score in a 2 v 3 game. I would suggest, if a robot didn't show up for a match, then the difference would not be counted.