What happened in Curie???

[Jonathan Norris]

Thats how it goes, 2 points Saturday morning we would have seeded 3rd, instead we seeded 10th. As a rookie team we knew that it was going to be difficult to be selected as a second round team, and having a communication error in our last match on Friday hurt our stats for Friday night. Without that match where we were dead it put us right in with the teams selected in the second round, but we know that with the quality of teams in the hunt as second picks it was going to be tough to get picked.

We were praying that two teams would pick within the top 8 so that we could move up into the 8th seed, and I can tell you we put quite an effort into scouting and would have made a tough 8th alliance. But i've been around long enough to know that this alliance selection went as normally as it could have, and if teams picked and declined properly we shouldn't have moved up. So if anything I applaud the teams in the top 8 for making some solid alliances.

[Ed Law]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Our division had only 14 teams with a positive "plus/minus". Plus/minus (for our team) is the number of points scored by the robot minus the number of points in the robot's trailer. This year it is the biggest indicator of a team's contribution. Obviously, for pure defensive bots we only look at points scored in their trailer as +/- will, by definition, always be negative.

Paul,

Thanks for explaining your scouting and selection philosophy and posting your scouting data and selection list on the other post. It helps us understand how good teams select their partners.

I must say that I am very surprised you do not take into account how many moon rocks the human players attempted and scored. According to Team 188's scouting database, your human player do not attempt to score very often because your strategy is to have the human player feeds moon rocks into your robot. However we can not say that for other teams. Using your data in the raw data sheet, if you sum column F which is Moon rock scored by robots in all the matches you get 2354. And if you sum column J which is Moon rock in trailer you get 5080. This shows that only 46% of the moon rocks are scored by robots.

If we look at Team 188's database, the human player percentage ranges from 21% to 77% with a mean of about 47 and standard deviation of about 10. Since human players scored 54% of the moon rocks, picking a team that has a 60% shooter rather than a 30% shooter in a 100 point game would mean a difference of 16 points, which is quite significant. In past years the role of human player to scoring is limited. I don't know what percentage the human player should contribute to the score in an ideal game. I feel that this year their contribution to the final score is on the high side and thus scouting data should not ignore them. Another observation I have is robots can be defended but you can not defend against a good human player. They just keep putting moon rocks into trailers.

Ed

[J Flex 188]

Wouldn't defending against a good human player simply be moving my robot to the side of the field that they weren't able to reach, if that was my concern?

I would be more afraid of a highly mobile, highly effective robot like 217 unleashing a stream of moon rocks anywhere on the field into my trailer than I would be of a good human player taking a low percentage shot halfway across it.

Originally Posted by Ed Law

Another observation I have is robots can be defended but you can not defend against a good human player. They just keep putting moon rocks into trailers.

Ed

[ScottOliveira]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

Paul,

Thanks for explaining your scouting and selection philosophy and posting your scouting data and selection list on the other post. It helps us understand how good teams select their partners.

I must say that I am very surprised you do not take into account how many moon rocks the human players attempted and scored. According to Team 188's scouting database, your human player do not attempt to score very often because your strategy is to have the human player feeds moon rocks into your robot. However we can not say that for other teams. Using your data in the raw data sheet, if you sum column F which is Moon rock scored by robots in all the matches you get 2354. And if you sum column J which is Moon rock in trailer you get 5080. This shows that only 46% of the moon rocks are scored by robots.

If we look at Team 188's database, the human player percentage ranges from 21% to 77% with a mean of about 47 and standard deviation of about 10. Since human players scored 54% of the moon rocks, picking a team that has a 60% shooter rather than a 30% shooter in a 100 point game would mean a difference of 16 points, which is quite significant. In past years the role of human player to scoring is limited. I don't know what percentage the human player should contribute to the score in an ideal game. I feel that this year their contribution to the final score is on the high side and thus scouting data should not ignore them. Another observation I have is robots can be defended but you can not defend against a good human player. They just keep putting moon rocks into trailers.

Ed

I would have to agree that this year the human player just had too much of a contribution to scoring. FIRST is meant to be a robotics competition, and when only half, or less than half, of the scoring is done by robots, it seems to be deviating from the purpose of the game.

I also feel autonomous mode was very undervalued this year, with the only thing to do in autonomous mode really being to try to get away from a human player! Towards the end of championship, we got autonomous scoring working, but thinking back on it, it may not have been as useful, although it was impressive. Since most teams drive towards their human players, following one in order to shoot on it puts us in range of their human, who has 13 moon rocks to our 7.

It would be nice to see more of an emphasis put on getting things done in autonomous mode (think about last year with the bonus points for running laps, or the year before with the keepers that guarantee you a spot on the rack).

It would also be nice to have something done about no-show and nonfunctional robots. Of course there is no simple solution. Personally, I would like any robot that doesn't show to get a loss, regardless of how the alliance performs. The argument against this is that it encourages teams to put an inoperable bot on the field, or rush repairs too much. However, this could be fixed by having a team who's robot doesn't work at any point in the match to receive a loss also. This might seem harsh, but it goes back to the real world, where you don't get paid for a product that doesn't work.

I would also point out that while this might seem to hurt rookie teams in particular, it is often easy for rookie teams, or any team, to get help while at competition. From the example Martin gave about the team at a regional who was seeded first with 4 no-shows, Sean and myself spent a while working on their drive train until they functioned (and we didn't finish until AFTER the match we played with them, for the match we played against them). I also always go to future alliance partners, and do whatever I can to make sure they work, if there is some sort of problem.

[rspurlin]

Originally Posted by martin417

How about keeping track of the points scored by each robot, and using that as part of the seeding formula? (maybe instead of the score of the other team?) that way, the teams that score well will get a boost. This may penalize those teams that specialize in defense, but that could be a good thing. As I pointed out after last year, one does not get ahead in life by preventing others from achieving their goal, but being the best at achieving yours.

FIRST games are usually not scored on a robot by robot basis. This year that would have been very difficult to do accurately. The determining factor is the alliance score. Consider the case of three decent scoring robots on one alliance where one is asked to play defense against the opposing alliance's best scorer. Would you do that to win the match for your alliance if that negatively affected your individual team score? I'll agree that FIRST's system is not perfect, but I don't know of a better one.

I'd like to see more events so there can be more matches. Each team got 7 at Championships, usually 9 or maybe 10 at a regional. Still there will be some strange situations. I remember that at Peachtree in 2007, there was a team that was 5-1 after six matches, despite having never moved on the field. Though we were 4-2 at that point, we were still very happy for them.

[dtengineering]

I'm pretty comfortable, overall, with how the qualifying, ranking and selection process works.

What I DID notice this year, however, is that the correlation between robot performance and ranking was lower than in other years. In other words, there was more "luck" involved in your placement after qualifying than in other years. (Note that I am NOT saying that a top placing was all luck... nor that in other years luck has not been involved... just that this year luck, or random draw, was more important.)

I attribute that to the nature of the game... in previous year's, for instance, some matches were essentially over by the time a team ran their auto mode (I mean that in a "positive" way... that a team could WIN in auto, whereas this year a team could really only "lose" the match by not moving in auto and getting a full trailer.) This year, auto really didn't account for much, but a lucky shot of a super cell by a human player did.

Nothing wrong with that, we're all playing by the same rules and the selection process is an effective process to minimize random effects, but it does result in some weird standings and dissapointment for highly ranked teams who aren't selected. Hopefully next year's game will be one where qualifying match results better reflect robot ability.

Jason

[Doug G]

I guess this is one reason why Atlanta is not one of my favorite competitions to go to. I see the opportunity and experience as a phenomenal one, but the odds of getting very far are stacked against most of us. For the past 5 years our team has fielded a very competitive robot, maybe not a hands down winner but good enough to finish in the top 8 most of the time. Then when we go to Atlanta, we seem to do well, but not well enough to break into the top 8. When alliance selections begin, we don't get picked and are surprised by some picks that are made (one pick last year in Arch was an inoperable robot). I know some of the alliances have made their picks by Friday and some simply go with who they are comfortable playing with (maybe from other regionals and such). The alliance selection at Championships is sketchy for most teams (lack of scouts and the shear number of teams are major contributing factors). I don't think it is wrong and don't know of any way it could change - it is what it is, but it is one reason why our experiences from Regionals are often more exciting at least in a robot performance way. However, no Regional can compete with the wrap-up party, VIPs, and Einstein matches in Atlanta. Short of a Blue Banner, our team only tries to attend Atlanta every 2-3 years and instead tries to visit out of state Regionals in the other years.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

What I DID notice this year, however, is that the correlation between robot performance and ranking was lower than in other years. In other words, there was more "luck" involved in your placement after qualifying than in other years. (Note that I am NOT saying that a top placing was all luck... nor that in other years luck has not been involved... just that this year luck, or random draw, was more important.)

It's ironic that I, to a certain degree, noticed the exact opposite. While the specific order of the top 8 was not always correct, a majority of the better robots seeded highly at the regional events I paid attention to. The correlation decreased at Championship (especially in one division in particular), but that's to be expected with 87 teams and only 7 matches per.
Granted, they were not as ordered as Championship 2008, but that's because 2008's game was particularly isolated in terms of the performance of single robots. Not that 2008 was perfect in any regard, but at Championship it seeded very well.

[Zack247]

Can't do it by OPR. Im from 247 and we were the finalists on Einstein this year and played a pure defensive game. High scoring only does not equal a good robot.

[Mike Schreiber]

(1) 346 (36) 1771 (48) 1747
(2) 1806 (44) 668 (37) 2039
(3) 175 (34) 254 (49) 2185
(4) 399 (9) 188 (63) 329
(5) 375 (47) 1622 (50) 190
(6) 816 (29) 245 (30) 341
(7) 217 (51) 68 (61) 247
(8) 27 (68) 79 (45) 70

I didn't watch selection, but I got the list afterwards. I know for a fact that the lowest seed that was selected (79 was the 68th seed) was an awesome part of our alliance and I know we wouldn't have been able to get to the SFs without them. I'm frustrated with the seeding system because teams that perform so well get destroyed because of their partners or get a really rough match schedule. The solution more matches, less teams...will it happen? Probably not.

[LCLARK_175]

[QUOTE
This is my biggest complaint with the seeding system. When a non-functional robot, one that has missed all of its matches is the #1 seed, there is obviously a problem[/quote]

I don't know of which team you're speaking of or of how far into the Qualls you're speaking of, but 175 was first seeded for a good portion of Friday and Saturday until our loss against the thunder chickens and the 7-0 record of 346 which put us into third.

[Cuse]

Originally Posted by LCLARK_175

I don't know of which team you're speaking of or of how far into the Qualls you're speaking of, but 175 was first seeded for a good portion of Friday and Saturday until our loss against the thunder chickens and the 7-0 record of 346 which put us into third.

346 was 6-0-1.

I agree that there should probably be a more individualized ranking, however I don't think there is a feasible way for that to be implemented, especially with such a team-centric game such as Lunacy, perhaps something as simple as an average of the alliance score, as a very basic OPR, however whatever you do will be flawed and will receive complaints.

I do happen to believe that the Qual points should be based off the winning alliance's score, not the opposing alliance's score, however, as that is something you cannot control, assuming you don't start scoring on your own team. It doesn't encourage the teams to compete to the best of their ability. I understand the idea behind it, in that you want to have the high scoring, close matches, but it's really not a good differentiator for ranking when the actual robot the score applies to is not factored in, particularly if the robot is primarily defensive, or something of that nature.

$.02

[martin417]

Originally Posted by LCLARK_175

I don't know of which team you're speaking of or of how far into the Qualls you're speaking of, but 175 was first seeded for a good portion of Friday and Saturday until our loss against the thunder chickens and the 7-0 record of 346 which put us into third.

Perhaps you didn't read my post completely. I wasn't talking about championships. The incident in question was at a regional this year.

[LCLARK_175]

Originally Posted by martin417

Perhaps you didn't read my post completely. I wasn't talking about championships. The incident in question was at a regional this year.

Then I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[Jimmy K]

Originally Posted by Phoenix Spud

And how come the top 8 teams did not pick each other? I know that there were two declines, but it seems really weird!

Same thing happened in Archimedes except only one decline. We were stuck playing the #1 Alliance, and we got owned.