Don't count goals scored for the opposition - Yes or No?

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

Travis:

The scoring rules this year allow a team who has not even fielded a robot to captain the alliance who wins the competition. Quite simply, if noone on your alliance shows up with a robot, it is very likely that you will receive more points for the match than the other alliance, since you will get their total points scored while they will get those same points MINUS their penalty points, plus twice your score which is likely zero (since you can't score any points yourself without a robot on the field). If you continue like this, you could possibly make it into the top 8 teams, pick an alliance, and then declare that your robot is not able to proceed so someone needs to substitute for you while you still get to be the captain. That way you can have 3 teams on the field when it's only a win-lose problem.

The team next to our pit finally passed inspection at about noon on Saturday, made it to their last match but sat dead because they couldn't establish com's, and finished 8th seed (they were 5-4-1). They moved up to 6th during alliance selection, picked us (of course), then proceeded to sit dead on the field for eliminations (they actually established com's prior to each match starting but lost them immediately).

Your proposed rule change makes this even more of a certainty. Fix the root problem - make winning count something.

My proposal was based on the assumption that a certain individual would not permit the GDC to toss his entire patented scoring structure out the window this season. A compromise would be more likely if enough people discussed it publicly and it became large enough of an issue - I think it HAS.

You gotta start somewhere - keep up the discussion and suggestions.

Like Greg, I also like the aspect of retaining the basic structure of this ranking/seeding method. You still have the ability to vault yourself up the rankings if you have a really good match, and that having one match with less than ideal partners (or has been our history, multiple matches - so far, we've been the "less than ideal" partner this season! ) won't harpoon your chances of making the playoffs.

I still advocate not scoring for the opposition at any time, because it does no one any favors in the long term. Leaving balls in their zone or tossing balls into their zone to help them score the balls themselves is a much more preferable course of action, which is still in the spirit of "coopertition". But I suppose there are too many people who believe it's ok to provide virtual "scoring welfare" to the opposition because it betters their own positions and makes them all warm and squishy inside....

I also still advocate defense in qualifying, but only against those great scoring teams where you would be demonstrating something useful for the elimination rounds - a tight, close fought match where you need to suppress the opposition to pull out the win for the most likely immense coopertition bonus. Again, let the less-capable teams show off and score whenever they can. But let THEM score.

Now that I've read some other posts, I really don't like the loser getting any of the winner's points - this is along the same lines as my previous arguments - they've not EARNED those points - instead those points are like "scoring welfare" for the inept.

New Proposal

Winner = Winner Penalized + 2 * Loser Penalized
Loser = Loser Penalized

Get rid of any hint of receiving any UNPENALIZED points in this game. Penalties are there for a reason and should be factored into all aspects of the seeding and coopertition bonus scores.

If the loser is sooooo inept that they are penalty machines that erase all coopertition bonus incentive for the winner, then I suppose the winner should do a better job behind the curtain of making sure their opponents can score and avoid penalties. Nyah.

This also eliminates all loser scoring for the opposition scenarios. The loser only gets what the loser earns. The winner gets what they earn plus a bonus for whatever they (hopefully) let the loser earn on their own, without (hopefully) any artificially "fake" score boosting.