A Cinderella story?

[dtengineering]

I'm going to talk about teams in general, rather than "rookie teams". As Al correctly points out... some rookies are pretty awesome.

The premise of the alliance selection process is that the top eight teams will scout out the top performing robots from amongst the field, and select the robots and teams that will best complement them in their quest to become event champions.

This is an important feature, as it compensates for the randomness of the qualifying rounds.

As much as one could perceive a top seeded team selecting weaker robots as a "kind gesture" to help provide them with the experience of a run through the elimination process and a chance to qualify for Atlanta, it also means that the top seed would be willfully selecting to NOT choose teams that through their wise design choices, hard work, and careful strategy and driving were perhaps more deserving of the reward of playing on Saturday afternoon.

I doubt the teams that were not selected, so that two poorer performing teams could "have a shot" would fully appreciate the intent of this choice.

That said, teams in the top eight get to choose their alliance partners however they darn well please. We have ranked as high as 12th and NOT been picked (as painful as that was, we did make it in, as the #1 replacement bot... our very first trip to the elims), and as low as 66th and HAVE been picked (because an alternative auto mode that we developed when our ball shooter broke down matched a top seed's auto mode... breaking down made us "better"). Ironically, both situations happened in back-to-back regionals for us.

I have also seen teams misread an alliance number and accidentally select a team they never really meant to pick. (Or have I just read about that on CD? My memory is going... it might just be an urban legend that I have incorporated in to my memory bank somehow.)

And I have seen teams pick alliance partners that made no sense to ME, at the time, but made perfect sense to them. Heck... I've seen that in Atlanta... and have to admit that the team made a pretty good choice regardless of what I initially thought.

I have also seen able teams left out of the elimination rounds because they failed to successfully promote their robot's abilities, and "weaker" robots make it in because the team successfully promoted a "niche" ability of their robot.

But I have never heard of a top seed intentionally selecting two alliance partners just because they "thought it would be nice to invite them into the elimination rounds". It might have happened... but while it would certainly be gracious to do it, I have to question how professional it would be.

But in the end... the picks are the top seed's choice to do with as they please.

Jason