Rookie Teams in Elims

[seg9585]

I made an observation at the Los Angeles regional this past weekend that, despite the fact that 18 out of 66 teams (>27%) were rookies, there was not a single rookie team selected for elimination rounds. In total, only 1 rookie team (who was a picker) out of 24 participated in elimination rounds at all, despite my observation of several rookies who seemed to have robots well qualified for the job.

I'm curious if a member of a veteran team can comment on why this was the case:
Do veteran teams bias their scouting towards veterans due to a concern over lack of driver experience or teamwork in eliminations?
Is there a sense of favoritism between teams that know each other more so than rookies?
Would gracious professionalism have any impact on "inviting" a skilled rookie to join their alliance -- all other considerations being equal?

Or, was this simply a case that the rookie field this year simply did not have robots that met the compatibility and skill level the veteran pickers were looking for?

[pfreivald]

3951 was the second-picked (so third robot) on the winning alliance. They were good at bridges and defense, so complimented 1507 and 191 very well.

4124 did admirably on the second-seed alliance, too.

[seg9585]

Sorry, I need to clarify. There was a reasonably evenly distributed number of rookies vs veterans at most regionals, which I witnessed in San Diego and saw results for at other regionals.
I'm wondering why Los Angeles was an anomaly in this case?

[David Guzman]

Part of the problem is lack of scouting.

Many times the picking lists don't get made until right before the alliance selection ceremony and in the rush of getting it done, unknown team numbers get overlooked if their robot wasn't noted by good scouting.

If you haven't done the proper scouting you are more likely to select teams that you already know rather than new numbers that are new to you. So in a way is not the rookie team's fault but the veteran scouter.

It is important that rookie teams approach those teams in the top 10 and tell them about their robot and why they should keep them in mind. Sometimes you can even ask them to watch you matches on Saturday morning and tell them the match numbers. If you talk to the right person, usually they are more likely to keep you in mind.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by David Guzman

Part of the problem is lack of scouting.

Many times the picking lists don't get made until right before the alliance selection ceremony and in the rush of getting it done, unknown team numbers get overlooked if their robot wasn't noted by good scouting.

If you haven't done the proper scouting you are more likely to select teams that you already know rather than new numbers that are new to you. So in a way is not the rookie team's fault but the veteran scouter.

It is important that rookie teams approach those teams in the top 10 and tell them about their robot and why they should keep them in mind. Sometimes you can even ask them to watch you matches on Saturday morning and tell them the match numbers. If you talk to the right person, usually they are more likely to keep you in mind.

The issue at La wasn't scouting. Many experienced teams were picking.

There simply weren't many good rookies at La, and were enough non-rookies that were better to fill the top 24.

[David Guzman]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

The issue at La wasn't scouting. Many experienced teams were picking.

There simply weren't many good rookies at La, and were enough non-rookies that were better to fill the top 24.

Makes since, I didn't watch the LA Regional and wasn't talking about any specific event.

I was thinking in general at any given event, sometimes this is the case when high number teams ("unknown" teams) with good robots don't get selected.

[aditya29]

Originally Posted by David Guzman

Part of the problem is lack of scouting.

Many times the picking lists don't get made until right before the alliance selection ceremony and in the rush of getting it done, unknown team numbers get overlooked if their robot wasn't noted by good scouting.

If you haven't done the proper scouting you are more likely to select teams that you already know rather than new numbers that are new to you. So in a way is not the rookie team's fault but the veteran scouter.

Totally agree with this. I doubt anyone has an intentional bias against rookies, but in a situation where scouters are hurriedly putting together a pick list, they're likely to favor veteran teams who they know have been successful in previous years. Unless the rookie team has really stood out in the current regional (and the scouters have done a good job of noting this!), rookie teams will probably be ranked lower than other "familiar" teams.

For what it's worth, I think the NYC regional had about 10 or 11 rookie teams, and none of them were picked for elims. In fact, 10/24 teams had team numbers under 1000, and 16/24 were under 2000. Very veteran-heavy.

[DonRotolo]

Having been on the other end of being picked, I too questioned whether there was a bias against "young" teams.

Now that we have veteran experience, I can safely state that there is no such bias.

Experienced teams pick their alliance partners based on their scouting data, and how well a given robot will perform within that team's strategy for winning. The picking team wants to maximize their chances of winning, so they pick the "best" team available. The issue is with the definition of "Best".

For 1676 at Rutgers, "Best" meant a nimble defensive bot with smart drivers that knew how to avoid fouls. They also needed to be able to balance well, again driver skill. Our pick of 1370 had these qualities. Check their rank to see if they were in the top 24 or not...

So if a rookie team fit the criteria, it would be picked, If not, it wouldn't. Simple as that.

(By the way: Having your team lobby us to get picked won't work. We use numbers, not friendships.)

[SenorZ]

In my second year attending the LA Regional I've noticed a veteran team or two that ranked well into the lower half of the table get picked for eliminations over very competent newer teams.
It seems like there is a bit of cronyism mixed in with that idea that a veteran team can handle the pressure better.

Thats life though.

[TeamSpyder1622]

[quote=SenorZ;1146420]In my second year attending the LA Regional I've noticed a veteran team or two that ranked well into the lower half of the table get picked for eliminations over very competent newer teams.
It seems like there is a bit of cronyism mixed in with that idea that a veteran team can handle the pressure better.

Thats life though.[/QUOTE

In my opinion sometimes when alliances are picking their third robot there are so many robots left in the pool of teams who are competent enough to fill that position. Therefore they may pick a team they have worked well with in the past. For example: 1622 has been on an alliance with 1572 in eliminations in San Diego for 3 years in a row because we have experience together and we are good friends, we have also been on an alliance with 2984 in San Diego for 2 years in a row.

When you said veteran teams ranked in the lower half of the table you also have to factor in teams going to their first regional. We didn't score a single point until something like our 6th match because of all the bugs in the code we had to work out so we ended up ranked somewhere around 40 our of 58. But we ended up scoring 25 points on our own in the elimination matches. It would have looked like our team just got picked because we were a veteran.

But I do agree that some teams who do not have scouting tend to have a bias towards teams they know have had good robots in the past. a triple digit team will almost always get picked over a rookie team if the one picking doesn't know anything about their robots and they are ranked about the same.

Thats just my opinion

[seg9585]

Originally Posted by TeamSpyder1622

When you said veteran teams ranked in the lower half of the table you also have to factor in teams going to their first regional. We didn't score a single point until something like our 6th match because of all the bugs in the code we had to work out so we ended up ranked somewhere around 40 our of 58. But we ended up scoring 25 points on our own in the elimination matches. It would have looked like our team just got picked because we were a veteran.

Actually, that shouldn't really factor in. Who can assume a team will be effective in elim matches when they haven't been able to score in qual matches? If a team's bot isn't effective, first regional or not, why should they be ranked higher because of their "potential"?

Everyone has code or mechanical issues in their first regional -- and most teams only go to one regional (especially rookies) so I don't see any correlation.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by seg9585

Actually, that shouldn't really factor in. Who can assume a team will be effective in elim matches when they haven't been able to score in qual matches? If a team's bot isn't effective, first regional or not, why should they be ranked higher because of their "potential"?

Everyone has code or mechanical issues in their first regional -- and most teams only go to one regional (especially rookies) so I don't see any correlation.

You don't necessarily "assume', but you might hope. I could give you numerous examples of robots that finally got the bugs out late, and then won the whole thing (with their alliances help of course). I can think of 2/4 division champion alliances last year that had such a partner.

[seg9585]

Originally Posted by IKE

You don't necessarily "assume', but you might hope. I could give you numerous examples of robots that finally got the bugs out late, and then won the whole thing (with their alliances help of course). I can think of 2/4 division champion alliances last year that had such a partner.

Sure you can hope -- but as many of the posts in this thread indicate, much of the scouting considerations take place on Friday night, and at that point some teams have only played half of their matches and don't have their bugs worked out until Saturday. Based on this logic, the analysis from Friday night would remove those "buggy" teams from the running even if they had potential.

In San Diego, I had our scouts editing picks in real time during the final day to account for performance of the robots, because it doesn't really matter how good/bad a team does in its first few matches, but how well the bot is performed in the last few in prep for the elims. Case in point -- we saw Team 702 have some field connection issues beyond their control in SD (lowering their seed ranking significantly), but after watching them in the second day decided to pick them for our alliance based on their latest performance.
Conversely, in Los Angeles it was my team having all the bad communication issues the first day, and it wasn't until Saturday that we managed to get everything working well. Some other teams I scouted performed great in their first few rounds, then had a mechanical failure or flipped and had to remove a key actuator. That's just the way these things go, so it's hard to tell.

Nevertheless, it's interesting to see teams in this thread post that "7 of the top 24 in our list was a rookie", yet not a single rookie was chosen by anybody.

[JesseK]

We had the (as it turns out) VCU Rookie All-Star team on our very short list, since it was a box on wheels with a very low ballasted c.g., good bridge lowerer, 4 CIMs on a moderately-geared drive train, and decent drivers. They would have pushed around the multitude of fender bots, and I could have helped guide them through overall strategy since they would have been defending right in front of us. Yet as 3rd seed we wound up picking a robot with a variable-consistency mid-goal autonomous that was (amazingly) still available.

So I agree with Adam -- it had everything to do with robot performance vs. our needs rather than the fact they were rookies.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by SenorZ

In my second year attending the LA Regional I've noticed a veteran team or two that ranked well into the lower half of the table get picked for eliminations over very competent newer teams.
It seems like there is a bit of cronyism mixed in with that idea that a veteran team can handle the pressure better.

Thats life though.

I assume you are talking about us (team 589). We seeded at 33rd place, which is 50th percentile. (Surprisingly, spot on with my prediction) We did not have a ball manipulator because we took it off on Thursday due to weight problems. Why we got picked? Not actually too sure. We were a defensive bot, balancing was pretty much a breeze for us. However, I can say that our ranking was pretty bad because of our role. We were a defensive team, there was no other way to score other than by balancing. We were just a supplement to alliances; we are pretty much useless without an alliance. Of course we had issues, like match 19, where a jaguar pwm cable fell out, and match 36 where the battery fell out.

We also had 2 teams of drivers, with 2 drivers each. There was a single match (24) where I got to drive without any technical problems, I never drove after match 36. I then became the "coach" for the eliminations. The general consensus was that I was the best driver on our team, but had been retired due to the foul I committed on the 24th match.

Perhaps, some of you have seen my signature bridge balancing technique demonstrated here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-vYNlwoGRo#t=50s

Trust me, it was more impressive the first time I tried it, this time, I was rather nervous.