Ranking

[beachmom561]

I understand that they want to find a better way of ranking seeding points but this just seems too full of political correctness of trying to make everyone feel good. Kind of the new scoring rules of t-ball. Everyone wins so no one feels bad.
A better way can surely be found.
Believe me, our team has had years when our bot did great but the alliances we were in just didn't do well. So, even though we did well individually we have been seeded low on the list. We ended up getting picked for alliances in the quarter finals anyway most of the time. Because of profiling, this happens quite often.

[jspatz1]

I'm afraid this was a case a fixing something that wasn't broken.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

I can guarantee this: I will push like crazy to have IRI be based on wins & losses in qualifying!!!

I think any off season event entertaining the thought of using this ranking system runs the risk of having a very very hard time attracting teams.

[Jim Meyer]

I'll side with the game committee on this one, at least for the time being. I think if it were the win based system we'd see far too many of these matches end 0 - 0. I think that ballances out these odd everyone score on the same goals matches.

The BCS calculation for College Football definitely isn't simple. I don't think a complicated ranking system makes the sport any less interesting or entertaining. It's the odd strategies that develop from this particular complicated ranking system that make it confusing. I'd be in favor of an even more complicated system that didn't encourage this strange behavior.

I really don't get these "everyone score in the same side" matches. Lets say the blue alliance decides to score in the red goals. Why wouldn't the red alliance get a comfortable lead then start scoring in the blue goals? It'd be like getting two points for every goal scored, points that can't be taken away by penalties.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Jim Meyer

I really don't get these "everyone score in the same side" matches. Lets say the blue alliance decides to score in the red goals. Why wouldn't the red alliance get a comfortable lead then start scoring in the blue goals? It'd be like getting two points for every goal scored, points that can't be taken away by penalties.

If Blue was really smart about it, they'd park their two least effective robots in front of their own goals to guarantee that Red couldn't score. Alternately, you can just have an agreement between teams at the start of the match that you'll only score in one goal.

If you agree to score in Red goals, then there are pluses and minuses for both teams:
Red: Certainty of a win, easy to tell if Blue isn't following through
Blue: As long as Red follows through, you'll get at least as many points as they do. If Red takes penalties (or even if you take penalties), they don't count against you in seeding points.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by beachmom561

I understand that they want to find a better way of ranking seeding points but this just seems too full of political correctness of trying to make everyone feel good. Kind of the new scoring rules of t-ball. Everyone wins so no one feels bad.
.

We are high school students and it is not the end of the world when we lose. "everybody wins" is a concept that I don't like. When losing matches, I usually am mad and feel as though we should win. Then I realize that the teams we faced won fair and square and we are not as good as them and I gain a respect for those teams.

I agree with something Travis Hoffman said in another thread,

Cooperate BEHIND the curtain; compete IN FRONT OF it. Merge the two to get your "coopertition". That formula has worked for years.

[Tanner]

I agree with what BrendanB and a few others have said.

On the point of the general public seeing this, yeah its not entirely evident, but it really is when the team wins a match by a few points, returns to the pit cheering, and then the cheering goes away when we find our rank moved down.

'Course I'm probably overstating something here, but we kinda got the feeling that is was "ok" to lose (as we moved up), but it kinda pushed us away from playing the game the best that we could, not that we didn't try to anyway.

-Tanner

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by Bongle

If Blue was really smart about it, they'd park their two least effective robots in front of their own goals to guarantee that Red couldn't score.

That wouldn't be legal.

G29

Defending ROBOT Restriction - Only one opposing ALLIANCE ROBOT is allowed in the opponent’s ZONE. A ROBOT is considered in this ZONE if any part of the ROBOT is in contact with the ZONE's green carpet. Violation: PENALTY; plus a RED CARD if effort to remedy is not immediate.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by sgreco

That wouldn't be legal.

G29

Nope, Bongle is right. They are defending their own goals and thus 2 bots are allowed to hang out at home.

Yep, it is wierd, but correct.

[Tanner]

Originally Posted by IKE

Nope, Bongle is right. They are defending their own goals and thus 2 bots are allowed to hang out at home.

Yep, it is wierd, but correct.

Our team was considering that once for one of our matches, but decided against it as we hoped that our new and improved suction device would work better. Results? We lost with a score of zero anyway.

-Tanner

[s_forbes]

I'm a little surprised at how much of an uproar this is causing. I'm looking at the final standings for all the week 1 regionals, and the top bots are still at the top where they belong. In the cases where a non-elite robot makes it into the top 8: that happened with the wins/losses ranking format too.

Here are some numbers from week 1 results that some people might find interesting.

Week 1	(Avg. Match pts)	(Avg. Seed pts/match)	(#1 Seed pts/match)	(#8 Seed pts/match)
SDC	2.2	5.8	10.2	8.3
DC	1.9	5.0	8.3	6.1
GA	1.7	4.3	8.2	5.0
KC	2.6	6.6	12.4	8.9
NH	2.9	7.4	12.6	9.0
ROC	2.8	7.1	11.8	9.4
OR	2.6	6.3	11.4	8.2
NJ	2.8	6.8	14.3	8.4
GT	2.2	5.7	9.1	6.3
GG	3.1	7.7	15.3	9.8

[mariak37]

Actually, this was what our alliance did for our last qualification match, at the KC regional. We'd noticed the system didn't seem fair (why should the losing team get the points that the winning team scored?) so our alliance scored in the other alliance's goals. It ended up 13-0 with one penalty, so they had 13 QPs and we had 14. It was interesting, because we actually ended up playing defense in front of our own goals.

I agree that the system at least needs to be revised, to place more emphasis on wins and losses and less on the scores. Another problem that you could run into is that a blowout gives both alliances more QPs than a hard-fought match with well-played defense, where the score ends up, say, 2-3. It is also probably better for a losing team to lose by a lot-not a way to encourage continued scoring even if you're down.

A final problem is that all the hullaballoo about ranking points means that teams may have to entirely change their strategies between qualification matches and finals.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Tanner

Our team was considering that once for one of our matches, but decided against it as we hoped that our new and improved suction device would work better. Results? We lost with a score of zero anyway.

-Tanner

Hahaha, we changed our strategy three times. The first plan was to purposefully take the loss, then we decided to play, thirty seconds into the match we decided to back off and just take the loss.

- Sunny

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by sgreco

That wouldn't be legal.

G29

Poor wording on my part:

Blue would put two robots in front of Blue's goals (that Blue would normally be trying to score on) to guarantee that Red couldn't score for the Blue alliance.

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by IKE

Nope, Bongle is right. They are defending their own goals and thus 2 bots are allowed to hang out at home.

Yep, it is wierd, but correct.

I see. I misread it, but honestly I hope nobody ever does any of this. Regardless of how poorly written the rules are, or what the intent is for cooperating, I hope teams don't manipulate the rules to this extreme. My team has yet to decide on exactly how to play, but we're probably just going to try to win, avoid penalties, and make sure our opponent doesn't get shut out. We're going to play to win straight up, but gear our strategy slightly more offensively rather than defensively.

"working together" in quals isn't something I want to do; it eliminates the competitive fire from both sides, and frankly it just takes the fun out of it. Limiting competition limits the leaning experience. It's a shame that the rules are aimed at preventing a hard fought competition, because that's what's fun, and realistically, that's what the real world is like. Fluffing things over to help the losers feel better doesn't benefit anyone in the long run. I'll be honest, my team's performance left much to be desired last year. I didn't need people saying "oh well at least you tried" or have a skewed ranking system to help us. The best way to deal with it is to come in last. You can't learn unless you fail first.