Thoughts on CoOpertition

[Leav]

After an amazing season, I'd like to share some thoughts and points from a discussion we had on our team regarding coopertition.

Premise:

• Coopertition resulted in an unforeseen outcome, ubiquitously known as 6v0.
• The 6v0 strategy is undesirable (i.e. many people, teams and we believe FIRST itself would like to avoid such a strategy)
• Having taken out a patent on the idea, FIRST is unlikely to revert to the win-lose-tie system.

What coopertition sets out to do:

• in concise terms: avoid un-sportsmanlike blowout matches by combining cooperation with the competition.

The problems:

• the 2010 implementation of coopertition to seeding points resulted in teams being rewarded for scoring self goals.
• A quick fix (the +5 to the winning alliance) mitigated the problem but did not eliminated it.

Possible solutions:

1. revert back to win-lose-tie. this is a competition and let's not try to paint it as anything else.
2. penalize self goals. this will eliminate the problem for breakaway, and a similar rule could be adopted for the 2011 game, depending on it's scoring system.

However:

1. choosing this will obviously bring back to the field the possibility of blowout matches.
2. this will also lead to rewarding blowout matches, with the possibility of no defense being played in order to help maximize the opponent's score.

In summary, some ideas FIRST introduced are simply perfect (alliance selection procedure and elimination match order, for example) but some are simply very flawed: coopertition is a nice idea, but applying it to a game like breakaway simply guts the core game mechanic.

In order to involve coopertition a game would have to be designed with it in mind, and not just slap on the seeding score system.

here are some ideas:

1. for breakaway: teams get the same hanging score which is minimum(red hanged robots, blue hanged robots). this would mean it's in the best interest of both teams to have hangs and would virtually eliminate the need for finale-protection. (interesting for having "defend the goal while allowing to hang" scnerios).
2. for 2011: some sort of huge red hocky puck in a blue-robot-only zone, and a blue one in a red-robot-only zone. teams must give the hocky puck to the opposing alliance, which must each score it in their respective zones. points are awarded if both teams scored the puck.

Your thoughts?
-Leav

[delsaner]

Well thought out. I am hoping that FIRST goes back to the win-loss-tie way of seeding as opposed to the seeding score. The only time that this form of seeding score would be used is if 2+ teams have the same W-L-T record. I do not predict this seeding score to last very long, or at least for the major way of seeding. In regards to coopertition, I believe that FIRST is a controlled competition. It has been stated before, cooperation is meant for the pits, and competition is meant for the field.

My two francs.

[Chris is me]

Does everyone but me disagree with the second premise? I disagree with pre-arranged matches, but I thought "6v0 or not?" was pretty interesting. I guess I don't see "why" it's automatically undesirable for the loser to score for the winner but the reverse is okay.

[Leav]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Does everyone but me disagree with the second premise? I disagree with pre-arranged matches, but I thought "6v0 or not?" was pretty interesting. I guess I don't see "why" it's automatically undesirable for the loser to score for the winner but the reverse is okay.

I see both as undesirable.

I neglected to add that in my opinion coopertition is achieving the opposite of it's goal since having the winner scoring for the loser is much more insulting than the blowout scenario.

-Leav

[Chris Hibner]

I'm going to make some arguments here in support of a coopertition seeding method. Please note that I don't necessarily agree with these arguments, I'm just presenting them here.

1) A Coopertition ranking system builds strength-of-schedule into the ranking. If team A wins 15-3 and team B wins 15-12, then team B's win should be rewarded more since their opponent's were most likely better. All wins are not created equal, and the coopertition method helps incorporate this into the rankings.

2) The Coopertition schedule allows better robots to rise to the top of the rankings. Let's say alliance A (a good alliance) plays alliance C, and alliance B (a GREAT world-beater alliance) also plays alliance C. Alliance A wins 15-4, which is a decent qualifying score. Alliance B is so good that by the time they score 15 points (same as alliance A could score), there is enough time left in the match to score 6 balls for alliance C, which significantly raises their qualifying score. If Alliance C is is good enough to do this, they should be handsomely rewarded with a good qualifying score.

3) The Coorpertition system encourages offensively designed robots. Many people in FIRST would rather see the game played with a offense/defense split around 80%/20%. The Coopertition system rewards high scores, so teams are more likely to develop offensive robots.

[David Brinza]

Does awarding the losing alliance the winner's score (without penalties) really make sense??

Somehow, having the losing alliance earn more seeding points than the winning alliance in a match just doesn't seem right. This situation was mostly eliminated in Team Update #16 by awarding a 5-point bonus for win (but not always).

[sgreco]

[speculation] I think the intent of coopertition is to encourage people to talk to their opponents before the match to get the best outcome for both sides. This can relate to the real world because in many cases if two competitive companies work together they might end up producing a better product, or at least reduce bitter tensions between them. I think FIRST is attempting to promote this type of action. [Speculation]

This is what I think, but I have no idea if this is actually the case.

I'm torn on whether I like the coopertition aspect or not. I don't feel as though it hurt competition, and that is good since I had feared that before the season. I'll be honest some 6v0 matches were very fun to watch.

I liked the system overall, awarding seeding points based more or less on goals scored rather than win loss, I think that's fair especially when you don't have a lot of seeding matches. I didn't really like the coopertition bonus, but I could live with it. It didn't turn out as bad as I had feared before the season. I think it could have some tweaks, but its not a bad starting point. The 6v0 didn't ruin anything, but I feel like it could have if it was happening in every match, so in that way the rules had the potential to ruin things, but they didn't

I don't know if I like this but, one way to get rid of a 6v0 but keep coopertition is to give the losers their own raw score, rather than the unpenalized score of their opponents. This way coopertition exists because winning teams gets more of a reward when their opponents score more, but the losers don't benefit from the winners score.


Edit: I realized I accidentally contradicted myself

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

Does awarding the losing alliance the winner's score (without penalties) really make sense??

I think so.

With the exception of Overdrive, every FIRST game has a finite number of game pieces or scoring locations (Triple Play/Rack N Roll) that the alliances are competing for in order to score for their alliance. If I have a good scoring alliance but I'm up against a great scoring alliance, my score will be lower than if I were to play a weak alliance simply because my opponent will have scored more balls/goals/spider legs/whatever for himself, leaving fewer for me. So a strong offensive robot with a nightmare schedule would seed lower than the robot's true ability would indicate.

[M. Mellott]

My main issue with Coopertition is that, similar to Stack Attack in '03, we were playing two different games: one for qualification matches, one for elimination matches. Some will say this makes strategizing more interesting, but some want to see the competition between the alliances, especially the spectators. Let's have just one set of rules...they're hard enough to follow as it is.

As for the inclusion of "strength-of-schedule" into the scoring system, this would be a good idea...if the schedules weren't completely random (or as random as an "algorithm" can make them). Sure, because of the scoring system, I'd love to play against a 469 or an 1114 every match because I know I'll get a lot of points (mostly from their efforts), but that doesn't happen. Sometimes, good teams draw the short straw and get less-than-desirable matches. In this game, it could happen with a bad alliance or with a bad opposing alliance.

Also, I really wasn't too fond of an award created for "earning" the most Coopertition points.

[Tom Line]

The Coopertition system this year was not solely there to reduce blowout scores.

Remember: FIRST is aiming to make this a game that is easier to watch. In that vein, shiny flashy offense and slam dunks are a whole lot more interesting than well-coached defensive teams.

The scoring system encouraged teams to SCORE. Either for themselves, or for the other team.

The really, really shocking part of that is just how many teams seemed to have absolutely no idea how to play the game. Even at championships there was a stunning number of teams that were STILL playing defense. It hurt both their own seeding score, their teammate's, and the other alliance. In point of fact, very few of the third picks I saw at the championships were picked for defensive reasons. They were picked as another scoring robot to complement the other teams.

I guess I've slid more into game strategy than coopertition. I'll get back on track.

In 2008, FIRST made all sorts of rules to try to promote scoring. It was a total nightmare. This year they got a bit more clever: rather than trying to punish 'bad' behavior, they tried to reward the good behavior.

It mostly worked.

There is a very simple very easy way to get rid of the 6v0 issues we saw this year. Have the losing team get THEIR score, and not the winning team's score. Now, the losing team has a reason to score for themselves. The winning team, if it's a blowout, still has motivation to help the other team.

That's my solution.

I can handle playing two different games. Professional teams do it all the time, depending on their opponent.

[Leav]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

The Coopertition system this year was not solely there to reduce blowout scores.

...

The scoring system encouraged teams to SCORE. Either for themselves, or for the other team.

...

I can handle playing two different games. Professional teams do it all the time, depending on their opponent.

This seems reasonable, if you want to create an intensive high scoring game where defense is not always a good option than I agree the seeding system this year is a good idea. but in my opinion it must be supplemented by a rule penalizing self-goals.

also in order to promote cooperation on the competition field I propose that the game be designed with an appropriate challenge, for example (in addition to those proposed earlier) here are some changes to previous game which would serve this purpose well:

1. 2007 seeding score bonus for a red-bot on a blue-bot at end of match (or visa versa ofcourse)
2. 2006: points awarded to both alliances according to minimum of robots on ramp at end-of-match

once you get the basic idea rolling, it is easy to supplament each year's game with such a scoring bonus which would have opposing teams cooperate in order to maximize their score.

-Leav

[AdamHeard]

Even if you disagreed with the removal of win-loss, you do have to admit top performing robots are much more likely to seed. Loosely looking over some events, the only outliers are top robots that weren't reliable in many matches, which explains why they were seeded lower.

I think the way to improve it for both the winners and losers is to give the losers their score. This more or less turns the ranking system into a function of your average score plus a bonus (of a constant plus the losers) if you win. I like that, you get rewarded for high score, regardless of win/loss, and you get rewarded for wins, regardless of score.

[Jon Jack]

I do not see why so many people are opposed to this system. The purpose of a ranking system is to rank teams in order of who's the best. This system does that better than any other system.

In the W-L-T system a team could get an easy schedule and seed 1st because a win was worth 2 points, regardless of if it was an easy win or a tough win. One or two losses and you'd take a huge hit in the rankings. Think about how many fluke #1 seeds we had in the old W-L-T system.

After the addition of the 5 point rule, the top teams were seeded high regardless of Win-Loss-Tie record. Why? Because the new system quantifies your wins and losses instead of making them worth the same. The good teams will be able to routinely get high scores and therefore get higher seeding points, putting them in a higher seed. Meanwhile the teams that cannot consistently put up big numbers won't get the seeding points and won't seed as high.

I hate it when teams like 1114 get flak because they 'gamed the system' when really, they are using the rules to their advantage. They aren't gaming the system. If they are in a position during the course of a match to score for the other alliance to boost their co-opertition score then that supports the fact that they were the BEST team at that competition.

I think the Co-Opertition Ranking System is one of the best things FIRST has done in a long time. Kudos to FIRST, please keep this system around.

[Koko Ed]

I completely HATE the coopertition seeding system even if FIRST did "improve" it in mid season. It didn't stop the 6 vs. 0 junk.
I want the teams to play each other not the system.

[cyberjoek]

The fix, to me at least, is a somewhat simple one. Each team gets their *own* penalized score, winning team gets their opponent's un-penalized score as a coopertition bonus. I do like the idea of a coopertition game piece being built into the game and being worth lots of bonus points to both teams if everyone does what they need to.

If each team gets their own score then it encourages you to score for your team (every point scored goes into your seeding) and encourages you to keep the game close (if you win you also get your opponent's score). If FIRST doesn't want blowouts to be as harsh to seeding perhaps there's a floor of 1/2 the winning alliance's score that the losing team goes away with as seeding points.