What happened in Curie???

[mikelowry]

Well think about it a different way then. Im about to apply to college in November. I am going to get in over somebody else because I am more qualified/suited/prepared than they are, not because I stop them from being as qualified/suited/prepared as they could be.

[Shankar M]

These posts often pop up at the end of events, but the answers to the questions never really change. Randomised ranking is part of the FIRST qualification system and it is something that every single team has to deal with.

While it is indeed unfortunate, and often frustrating, to get paired with robots that, are in your view, weak or, worse yet, don't show up (particularly this year), good teams are always able to find ways to win. This weekend, some of FIRST's best teams found ways to seed extremely well (111 and 1114, for example, went undefeated). If you look over their schedules, I'm sure you will find not easy matches; these teams worked extremely hard with what they had and they came out on top.

As for Curie specifically, defense dominated the qualification rounds as teams learned very early that the best way to stop some of the talented scorers in the division was to play a very tough shut down game. This type of strategy saw numerous powerful scorers stymied and left many of them with losses.

We all know that rankings do not really reflect robot performance. Scouting is the only way to discern how well a robot is accomplishing various tasks that your team desires from an alliance partner. I am sure that the teams that seeded in the top 8 were aware of this and chose to select the numerous talented teams that seeded not just outside the top 8, but the top 28 (254 at 34, 1771 at 36, 68 at 51 just to name a few). With such talent available outside the top 28, compared to the robots that ranked from 10 to 28, it is not surprising at all that the alliances ended up as they did.

[martin417]

Originally Posted by Tottanka

You are comparing it the wrong way. It's not compared to an employee who disables another employee at the same company and thus gets promoted, but to an employee who disables a big part of a rival company, and thus gets a promotion.
FIRST is supposed to be a sport, look at any sport in the world (well, almost any) and you see defense. Basketball, Football, Soccer, Tennis...Whatever you want - defense is there, and is a big part of it.

Disabling a rival company? I can't think of a legal (not to mention ethical) way to do that other than being better at what you do.

Yes, some sports stress defense, some have none (look at golf) I am not saying that defense has no part in first, but I do believe that it shouldn't be the only function of a team.

[ehcualp]

I'm not going to go in the ranking of the robots picked. I would rant on for a whole page on how bad half the decisions were...

Besides the quality of the robots, if anyone else noticed, only 6 of the robots were 4 digit number teams. 18 teams were either double or triple digits. No rookies were picked, 2 2000 teams were picked, and 4 1000 teams were picked. It seemed that the captains didn't even look at younger teams. Experience is no excuse. Some of young teams that were not picked won regionals, or made it to the finals at their regional. These teams obviously know what it takes to win something, and have just as much experience in this game as a lot of veteran teams. And not mention, older teams are replaced every 4 years. Mentors are the only thing to remain a constant in any team, for the most part. A lot of the young teams that made it to championships have mentors that have been on teams before. In this sense, these teams have the same experience as veterans.

I'm disappointed in what Curie turned into. I would hope that it will change for next year, but I doubt it will change at all.

[Tottanka]

Originally Posted by martin417

Disabling a rival company? I can't think of a legal (not to mention ethical) way to do that other than being better at what you do.

Yes, some sports stress defense, some have none (look at golf) I am not saying that defense has no part in first, but I do believe that it shouldn't be the only function of a team.

Golf is an individual sports. The whole comparison to companies/collages doesn't work here...i can go on comparing it to survivor of the fittest (those who go to caves survive better than those who hunt lions) or to any other thing that suits my goal.

FIRST should be compared to a sport, and in FIRST a better and more offensive robot is not always a better alliance partner.

Many of the teams can't afford to build good offensive robots, does that mean they are not deserving to play and rank high, even if they have good mechanisms to stop others? Think of the 07' game - ramp bots did'nt score by themselves, they defended and than used others to get points, and still they were a huge part of the game. 08 had 2 balls for 3 teams, the third one chose between laps and D....

I think defense should stay here. If it was about building the best offensive robot it wouldn't have been FIRST.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ehcualp

No rookies were picked, 2 2000 teams were picked, and 4 1000 teams were picked. It seemed that the captains didn't even look at younger teams. Experience is no excuse. Some of young teams that were not picked won regionals, or made it to the finals at their regional. These teams obviously know what it takes to win something, and have just as much experience in this game as a lot of veteran teams.

Having what it takes to win at a regional does not translate into having what it takes to win at the Championship. Sorry, but them's the facts. Think back to last year's NFL playoffs. The Baltimore Ravens had a young team that had what it took to get into the lower-level playoffs. Then they met up with a team that had what it took to get to the Super Bowl. When a bunch of teams that have what it takes to get to the regional finals come up against a bunch of teams that have what it takes to get to the divisional finals (where there are twice as many teams in the division), the teams that have what it takes to get into the divisional finals will win out, every time.

[sdcantrell56]

Originally Posted by ehcualp

I'm not going to go in the ranking of the robots picked. I would rant on for a whole page on how bad half the decisions were...

Besides the quality of the robots, if anyone else noticed, only 6 of the robots were 4 digit number teams. 18 teams were either double or triple digits. No rookies were picked, 2 2000 teams were picked, and 4 1000 teams were picked. It seemed that the captains didn't even look at younger teams. Experience is no excuse. Some of young teams that were not picked won regionals, or made it to the finals at their regional. These teams obviously know what it takes to win something, and have just as much experience in this game as a lot of veteran teams. And not mention, older teams are replaced every 4 years. Mentors are the only thing to remain a constant in any team, for the most part. A lot of the young teams that made it to championships have mentors that have been on teams before. In this sense, these teams have the same experience as veterans.

I'm disappointed in what Curie turned into. I would hope that it will change for next year, but I doubt it will change at all.

What rookie teams would you suggest should have been picked? As far as I am concerned, the alliance selection seemed very well done. Obviously there were a couple teams left that I thought could have been strong second picks, but overall I was very happy with all of the alliances. If a captain is picking there alliance based off of rankings alone, they will lose. Especially at the championship when you only play 7 matches, your ranking will be very driven by your alliance pairings in qualifications. I know we were ranked 36, but were top 3 or 4 in opr and that was even with 2 matches we had in which one robot either did not show up or was disabled the entire match, thus drawing constant defense from 2 robots in those matches.

Scouting is what wins regionals and championships, and all of the truly top teams have not achieved the success they have without very careful statistical scouting of every team. Although our alliance ended up losing in the quarterfinals, and we definitely had our chances to win the matches, I feel that the winning alliance out of Curie was incredibly strong and I was proud to have them representing our division.

I do completely agree that something needs to be changed about the game and how a purely defensive robot or even worse a no show team can end up as an alliance captain. Of course if there is a robot so incredibly awesome at defense then they should seed very high but the idea of a team that is not particularly good at anything can seed in the top 8 is wrong. This year, 247 was one of those teams that were just so incredibly good at pinning other robots that you just had to be impressed and I thought that that was an incredible pick for the 217/68 alliance, as 68 definitely was able to score more with another robot setting pins for them.
There also needs to be some type of filler line or something for no show teams, as particularly this year, having a non functioning robot or a no show was essentially a death sentence. Perhaps what needs to be done is to cut down the number of teams at the Championship event. I feel that too many teams have the opportunity to buy in without actually demonstrating that they can win. With less teams at the event, FIRST could increase the number of qualification matches resulting in less of an influence from luck. Maybe instead of so many teams buying in, FIRST should add an award at regionals for the highest scoring or best performing robot.

Obviously these ideas are not completely refined, but I think there is a serious flaw in the system when teams that do not run for multiple matches are becoming alliance captains, and there are still no shows at the championship event.

As with any sport, the championship should be the absolute best teams competing. I dont think we really saw truly exciting matches until the elimination matches at the championship.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by martin417

Disabling a rival company? I can't think of a legal (not to mention ethical) way to do that other than being better at what you do.

Disabling a rival company:
1> Such as beating them to the patent office (ala Alexander Graham Bell?)
2> Orgainizing a corporate buyout of a company that has a new product that will out-do your product
etc,etc...

Such things are legal and (usually) ethical.

Originally Posted by martin417

Yes, some sports stress defense, some have none (look at golf) I am not saying that defense has no part in first, but I do believe that it shouldn't be the only function of a team.

Most sports have defense. Defense creates a challange that may not have been accounted for in the design process, and thus requires strategy to overcome. Good teams overcome defense or account for it in their design process.

[Paul Copioli]

I thought Curie had the most "normal" alliance selection of any of the divisions. Let me share some things I observed.

First, our team agrees that 7 matches is really not eough to statistically determine who the top 8 really is. Unfortunately, teams that are clearly not top 8 caliber will get into the top 8. This is one of the reasons the FIRST in Michigan district model had 12 matches at each of the district events.

In our team's opinion, there were 4 teams in the top 8 that were not really top 8 caliber. Such is life at the Championship.

Our team scouts every match and takes the best statistical data we can for each and every team. Scouting the actual matches is the best way to definitely determine if a team will make a good partner in the elimination rounds. On Friday, we have a 3 to 4 hour strategy meeting where we make a pick list of the top 24 teams based on our scouting data and feedback from the drive team. We use feedback from the drive team to help determine if a team is hard or easy to work with. Our scouting team then focuses on the teams that are very close in performance on Friday to see how they are doing on Saturday morning matches. We really focus on teams that are performing better as the weekend moves along.

OPR and other indicators are really only needed when you can't actually watch the matches in person. We do not use OPR because OPR will not get you to Einstein. Period.

Here are some other things we do not use:

- Record in the division
- Ranking in the division
- Performance at Regional events
- Team number
- Where a team is from

I can't even tell you what 68 or 247 records or rankings were because we didn't care.

For the last 5 years, I have witnessed the strangest picks by teams in the top 8. Teams that would have been our 4th or 5th pick slipped all the way to the bottom of the draft. This year in Curie was the first time that I can remember that the teams selecting partners during the draft basically picked how we would have picked (except 68 as they should not have been around for us). With 87 teams in the division some good teams will be overlooked and there is no way aroud it.

I want to make one more point. The serpentine draft has caused a lot more teams to decline. I can tell you that our team prefers not to decline, but will if we feel that it gives us a strategic advantage. We declined 1806 (the #2 seed) not becasue we didn't think they were a good team (they were very high on our list), but simply because of the serpentine. If the serpentine did not exist, then we would have definitely accepted their invitation. Team 1806 knew prior to alliance selections that we were going to decline as I told their team that we would decline. They used a very good strategy picking us anyway so no one else could select us. They basically forced 217 and 399 to form their own alliances (they asked 399 to be their partner too and 399 declined).

Our division had only 14 teams with a positive "plus/minus". Plus/minus (for our team) is the number of points scored by the robot minus the number of points in the robot's trailer. This year it is the biggest indicator of a team's contribution. Obviously, for pure defensive bots we only look at points scored in their trailer as +/- will, by definition, always be negative. As the #7 seed, we knew we could get two very good robots to complement our playing style. We felt we could build a better alliance from #7 than from #2. And for those of you wondering, I didn't realize we had an all Michigan alliance until about 10 minutes after selection. It is just the way things worked out.

Someone made a comment about high number teams not getting picked. We had a few high number teams on our list (I was suprised no one picked 3115), but we had the #7 and #10 picks in the draft.

[sdcantrell56]

That is a great post and I will probably be saving it to help us with scouting in the future. I too could not believe that 68 was till around for you guys. On my list I had them at least in the top 5 including your team.

One other rookie team that I was slightly suprised not to see selected was 2815, but given the teams that were picked I dont see what team they could have been selected in place of. Overall I thought the selections went very well and all of the matches were fairly close as a result.

I am still disappointed that we did not have the opportunity to play with 188, 217, or 68 at all at the championship, but that is just the way the matches go. There is always next year to get the chance to play with these incredible teams.

[Noeen Kashif]

Originally Posted by sdcantrell56

That is a great post and I will probably be saving it to help us with scouting in the future. I too could not believe that 68 was till around for you guys. On my list I had them at least in the top 5 including your team.

One other rookie team that I was slightly suprised not to see selected was 2815, but given the teams that were picked I dont see what team they could have been selected in place of. Overall I thought the selections went very well and all of the matches were fairly close as a result.

I am still disappointed that we did not have the opportunity to play with 188, 217, or 68 at all at the championship, but that is just the way the matches go. There is always next year to get the chance to play with these incredible teams.

Yo guys, were really great at Atlanta as well, you guys had an amazing alliance, and put up a great and enjoyable show. We would like to work with you guys as well in the future. Like you said, there is always next year!

[Lil' Lavery]

I have to just chip in a couple points about the earlier discussion involving defense.

I don't like overly defensive games, they tend to be boring, but defense has a definite role in FIRST, in my opinion. It's a very very large part of what separates FRC from just being an "engineering competition," "race," or "skills contest."

Secondly, where do you draw the line between "defense" and "strategy?" Is pinning a robot to aid your alliance partner's scoring effort defense? Is reserving your balls until the end of the match to ensure the other team doesn't get additional ammo defense? Is swerving your trailer out of the way of your opponent's best scoring machine defense?


As for rankings, the only real solution is to play more matches. How you accomplish that has been debated and contemplated for years, but no clear solution has emerged.

[Mr. Lim]

Team 188 had one of our most concerted scouting efforts in our team's history this year. We individually tracked every ball shot and missed/scored by every team, separated by both their robot and human players. Here are a few interesting numbers they found on Friday night. These are stats up to Friday night only, and reflects what teams use to construct their preliminary pick lists. Of course things often change Saturday morning, but here goes:

Actual Team Points Scored per Match (Robot and HP Combined)
(teams in bold were involved in the eliminations)

175	45.8
1622	42.8
1771	39.9
188	39.4
79	37.1
254	37
341	36.4
217	35.6
1806	33.2
27	33.2
816	32.5
287	32
329	31.6
399	31.55
141	31.4
68	31.2
190	31
346	31
245	30.8
1	30.4
2039	29.6
271	29
75	28.8
70	27.4

19/24 is by no means cause for panic...

Here are the robots that were selected outside of the top 24 and some notes as to why I would have put them into the eliminations:

1747 - last pick made during alliance selections, shot and scored 10 balls in last match on Friday showing big improvement, exceptional drive team, strategy, and scouting - I asked our own scouts to make note of this team - an absolute pleasure to work with - demonstrated excellent teamwork and communication in our match with them

375 - ranked 5th in standings at end of qualifications

668 - robot scored 27 balls in their first qualifier match, heavy defense played on them the rest of the qualifiers

247 - stats couldn't capture the effectiveness with which 247 pinned other teams and allowed alliance partners to score while pinning the opponent, deadly effective alliance partner

2185 - never shot a single time and never preloaded once and that was a GOOD thing, human player shot 55%, played some of the most impressive defense I've personally come across this year, stopped us from winning GTR a few weeks ago, pinned us for 1:50 during our 2nd qualification match, shut down several of the biggest gunners in Curie during the eliminations, won two regionals this year doing exactly the above

If you want my personal opinion, I thought the teams that participated in the eliminations were top notch. I could make an argument for any of the teams that were not bolded and left out in my list above, but the reasons why the robots below them were chosen are compelling enough. Unfortunately, some of the top scorers will get left out. It's happened to us plenty of times in the past, but you play the game as hard as you can, and hope that the teams in picking positions do their scouting, and if you're doing something that won't show up on the stats, make sure you let the decision-maker on the top teams know exactly what you're doing.

[rspurlin]

Originally Posted by martin417

How about keeping track of the points scored by each robot, and using that as part of the seeding formula? (maybe instead of the score of the other team?) that way, the teams that score well will get a boost. This may penalize those teams that specialize in defense, but that could be a good thing. As I pointed out after last year, one does not get ahead in life by preventing others from achieving their goal, but being the best at achieving yours.

FIRST games are usually not scored on a robot by robot basis. This year that would have been very difficult to do accurately. The determining factor is the alliance score. Consider the case of three decent scoring robots on one alliance where one is asked to play defense against the opposing alliance's best scorer. Would you do that to win the match for your alliance if that negatively affected your individual team score? I'll agree that FIRST's system is not perfect, but I don't know of a better one.

I'd like to see more events so there can be more matches. Each team got 7 at Championships, usually 9 or maybe 10 at a regional. Still there will be some strange situations. I remember that at Peachtree in 2007, there was a team that was 5-1 after six matches, despite having never moved on the field. Though we were 4-2 at that point, we were still very happy for them.

[Jimmy K]

Originally Posted by Phoenix Spud

And how come the top 8 teams did not pick each other? I know that there were two declines, but it seems really weird!

Same thing happened in Archimedes except only one decline. We were stuck playing the #1 Alliance, and we got owned.