[Official 2007 Game Design] Radical Tournament Ideas

[Andrew Blair]

How about this:

Consider a three robot alliance, all starting the game under driver control-No autonomous...yet. Throughout the match, one robot on each alliance at a time is put into autonomous mode, while the other two/four play normally. You know what period your robot is going to go auto, so you can line it up appropriately, or code a really cool system that allows you to start anywhere.

Problem is giving auto an incentive.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by JVN

Andy,
I don't think you quite finished your thought.
JV

True... but according to this advice:

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

I would like to suggest a rule for this thread: no criticizing or critically evaluating ideas. Let the weird concepts flow!

I was trying to encourage the weird concepts. Dave wants weird. Rick wants to encourage weird. Viva la weird!

Andy B.

[santosh]

I wouldn't mind seeing an allliance captain in the 1st round to ask to join the alliance of a c ranking above theirs.
For instance:
1st ranked team: team A
2nd ranked team : team B
Random other team: team C

The 1st pick of the draft by team A is Team C. This means that team B is next up. I woudn't mind seeing it possible to allow team B to ask to join team A instead of having to form their own alliance.

That is kinda far fetched I guess, howver I, like Cory would like to see FIRST get rid of the "serpintine" alliance selection.

[Andy Baker]

OK... another idea on alliance selection, as opposed to the boring 1-8,1-8 and the serpentine draft:

1st round: 1-8, just like teams do now
2nd round: Teams draw draft order numbers out of a hat: it could be 5,8,2,3,7,1,4,6

This 2nd round order selection could take place immediately after the 8th alliance captain picked their first partner. No one would know who was picking next. The #1 alliance still has the advantage and benefit of being #1, but now their chances of having a more dominate alliance is less than it would be for a 1-8, 1-8 selection process. Hmmm... this could be interesting.

Andy B.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

OK... another idea on alliance selection, as opposed to the boring 1-8,1-8 and the serpentine draft:

1st round: 1-8, just like teams do now
2nd round: Teams draw draft order numbers out of a hat: it could be 5,8,2,3,7,1,4,6

yada yada

Andy B.

You could draw the alliance draft from the hat like the NBA.

Top qualification seed has 8 chances in the hat, 2nd seed has 7 chances, 3rd = 6 chances, etc.

Then as the numbers are pulled from the hat for the draft order, the alliance seeds are set. i.e., the first number pulled becomes the first alliance, 2nd number becomes alliance 2, etc. (The 8th quals seed has a 1 in 36 chance to become the top playoff alliance.)

To further increase randomness, if the 2nd alliance captain picks the 4th alliance captain, the remaining alliances (5 through 8) do not "move up", but the 9th quals seed replaces the missing captain at the 4th playoff spot. (Yes, the 9th seed will be picking before the other remaining seeds, in this instance.)

This could really throw a monkey wrench into many teams scouting. It will be hilarious to watch them scramble.

Is this radical enough, Dave?

[JackN]

Originally Posted by Bill Moore

You could draw the alliance draft from the hat like the NBA.
Is this radical enough, Dave?

That is cool. It would make it interesting though. What if the #8 seed got first pick, could they pick the 1 seed who has the last pick. it would make things very interesting.

[Tetraman]

Evolution Field

1/3 of matches have a simple field
next 1/3 will add something to the field and another way to score
last 1/3 will include yet another something and another way to score
Elimination matches will also include something new an another way to score
The Finals matches will include one last thing.

And a game that is 4v2 or 5v1

The possibility to do this:

six robots on the field.
Robot 1 vs Robot 2
Robot 3 vs Robot 4
Robot 5 vs Robot 6
All on the same field, all at the same time.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

OK... another idea on alliance selection, as opposed to the boring 1-8,1-8 and the serpentine draft:

1st round: 1-8, just like teams do now
2nd round: Teams draw draft order numbers out of a hat: it could be 5,8,2,3,7,1,4,6

Better than that...

1st round: 1-8, just like now
2nd round: order is determined by the 8 student pairs (the alliance captain and the person who accepted the 1st round pick) participating in a 2 vs 2 dodgeball tournament. The winner gets the 1st pick of the second round.

Oh boy, I wish we had time for this at IRI.


AB

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

Better than that...

1st round: 1-8, just like now
2nd round: order is determined by the 8 student pairs (the alliance captain and the person who accepted the 1st round pick) participating in a 2 vs 2 dodgeball tournament. The winner gets the 1st pick of the second round.

Oh boy, I wish we had time for this at IRI.


AB

Students collapse due to exhaustion from dodgeball tourney. Mentors get to drive robots in eliminations. Chaos ensues.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by T. Hoffman

Students collapse due to exhaustion from dodgeball tourney. Mentors get to drive robots in eliminations. Chaos ensues.

And a mentors-only round at official events would be quite a sight.....

[mjbrauck]

How about in the elimination rounds, instead of the same to alliances playing each other 3 times in a row you rotated teams. so it would go like this…


QF1 1st alliance vs. 4th alliance

QF2 2nd alliance vs. 3rd alliance

QF3 5th alliance vs. 8th alliance

QF4 6th alliance vs. 7th alliance

QF5 Winner QF1 vs. Winner QF2

QF6 Winner QF3 vs. Winner QF4

QF7 Loser QF1 vs. Loser QF2 (loser has lost twice and is eliminated)

QF8 Loser QF3 vs. Loser QF4 (loser has lost twice and is eliminated)

QF9 Loser QF5 vs. Winner QF7 (loser has lost twice and is eliminated)

QF10 Loser QF6 vs. Winner QF8 (loser has lost twice and is eliminated)

this leaves four teams the winners of QF5, QF6, QF9, and QF10 who move on to the semi-finals.

SF1 winner QF5 vs. winner QF6

SF2 winner QF9 vs. winner QF10

SF3 winner SF1 vs. winner SF2

SF4 loser SF1 vs. loser SF2 (loser has lost twice and is eliminated)

SF5 loser SF3 vs. winner SF4 (loser has lost twice and is eliminated)

This leaves two teams the winner of SF3 and SF5 who play in the finals.

Note: you could leave out the semi-finals and finish the tournament with

QF11 winner QF5 vs. winner QF9 (loser has lost twice and is eliminated)

QF12 winner QF6 vs. winner QF10 (loser has lost twice and is eliminated)

QF13 winner QF11 vs. winner QF12 (winner has won the entire tournament)

[Jherbie53]

If there are still three teams on an alliance, then the first round could go 1-8. Then the second round would be a random drawing, either by a computer or the teams drawing from a hat, for the order of the picks. This could also be done twice if there are going to be four robots on an alliance. You could also have a random match list for the finals. After the alliances are selected there would be a drawing, like before, to determine who plays who. It could not only be just for the first round either, the semi's would be random too. Just imagine not knowing who you are playing until after their's or yours match.

If there are three teams on a alliance like this year, at the regionals that are bigger, like the one with two fields in Canada [don't recall the name], you could have four teams on the alliances. Then at the smaller regionals they would have just three on a alliance, instead of four. This would allow more teams to play at the larger regionals, 32 teams, and still allow smaller ones that have trouble getting enough teams, 24 teams, to play.

Last thing right now, On the match lists you could still have what teams are playing in each match, but not who's with who. You would find out the exact teams you are with and playing against at queuing. This would be hard to do strategy, because you just might talk to a team you are facing.

[Tetraman]

Drivers and Human players are allowed to switch places. But the coach still can't touch a thing.

[Billfred]

I suppose that a few ideas can be had from "Aim, well, Kinda High", plus a few other ones:

1) Get rid of the serpentine draft. We used 1-4, 1-4 at Mission Mayhem, and things seemed to work themselves out properly.

2) The use of Tournament Rule #4 accomplished its intended goal quite well. I'm sure that with more than four hours of warning, things could be even better.

Originally Posted by Aim, well, Kinda High, The Tournament, Rule 4

Teams are expressly prohibited from saying “Team XXXX graciously accepts.” Any team representative who says this may be pelted mercilessly with Poof balls by the field crew until he or she accepts using some more creative (while still appropriate) wording.

3) The issue didn't come up at Mayhem, as all of the teams toughed it out, but the timeline process for calling time-outs and replacements in the tournament confused me as a referee. I shudder to think what an alliance captain with a lot on the line has to do in the way of mental gymnastics. Would there be a way to have some sort of countdown timer to allow alliance captains and referees to see exactly how much time they have to make a decision on something?

4) Suppose that Friday morning, teams were given two or three cracks at an autonomous field, like that of FVC. Teams' average scores in these matches would correlate to bonus time at the end of each operator-controlled match, all the way through the end of the event. (This time would be theirs for keeps, regardless of how much or how little bonus time their alliance partners have.) In a game like Aim High, the conversion might be, say, one second for every five points scored, up to ten seconds.

[Jherbie53]

Lets say the alliances have an extra robot, one thats not required for a "full field of robots" for a match, then heres a substitution rule. There are four teams on an alliance. After each match the captain team must sub in the other robot. In 2003 and 2004 you had to do this for you second match, but could play any two robots you wanted in the third match. I'm saying that in every match there would to be a substitution. The alliance captain chooses who's in and who's out. It doesn't matter if its match three, or match one against a new alliance, you sub every match.

I was also thinking that with every substitution the robot that was just put in stays in, meaning that the three robots that were selected would rotate, with the exception of the captain team. But that might make it a little confusing and I don't think that would go over well with teams.