9.3.4 Match Seeding Points

[martin417]

Wow, someone just pointed out this post I made almost a year ago.

At every regional I attended, including championships, The seedings did not reflect the ability of the robots or the teams. If FIRST wants this to be a "sport", and be as popular as football, they need to come up with a better way to rank teams prior to alliance pairings....... I do have a problem with some of the best teams not even being in the top 8. Throughout the season, I saw teams that could not score at all ranked as the number one seed, while top scoring bots were not even in the top 10. Perhaps the seeding should be done based on the scoring of the bots rather than a win-loss record.

(emphasis added) Prophetic isn't it?

[kirtar]

Originally Posted by leafy

I don't understand. Who do you think is getting the seeding points? Only the winning alliance gets the coopertition bonus. How about one alliance gets 12 and the other gets 11. Losing alliance gets 12 seeding points, winning alliance gets 34. No matter what the losing alliance does, if they lose, then it doesn't matter how much they lose by, except for a tie. In fact, they have an incentive to score, if they know they are going to lose, as little as possible in order to minimize the effects of increasing the opposing alliance's coopertition bonus.


No, read 9.3.4 and 9.3.5 again, noting the bolded phrases. Losing alliance does not get points based on the losing alliance's score:


The scenario you mention only occurs in the case of a tie. How many ties were there in a random regional? I found one in that regional I linked; ties are infrequent and shouldn't be expected.


No, it doesn't. See above. Coopertition bonus is only awarded to the winning alliance.


Again, please read the rules. The losing alliance does not get the Coopertition bonus.

You also failed to address my point that in a shutout, the number of potential maximum points is increased, possibly doubling or more.

Maybe I should explain this again from the beginning since you obviously don't even reread the posts that I'm responding to. First of all, you yourself said that:

I don't see how the losing team has any benefit to scoring higher in a tie; only the winning alliance does. You could say it increases their chance of winning, but that's not what we're talking about.

In a tie there is no "winner" or "loser". In every single case that you quoted, I was using the case of a tie, so go back and read the rules. Besides, the first part that you quoted from me, while not correct is not actually how the rest of my post was worked out. In every case that I mention the "losing team" it means a team that may have lost by say 1 point in a different situation. My proof remains valid since I was under the assumption that the entire match was fixed as much discussion beforehand had been about. Learn to read not only the rules but at least the thread that you're replying to. While I did make a few errors in what I said, my calculations were according to the rules. No matter what, given total score 2n, the most beneficial to each alliance with respect to maximizing seeding points and precluding a certain number of penalties, the best score is n-n.

Say for an example that the total in one case is 30 (no penalties). If the score is 17-13, then the winning team gets 43 points for seeding and the losing gets 17. Given the same total, if the score is 15-15, both teams get 45 (15+2*15=45) and 45>43. If it is a shutout, both teams get 30 exactly, which is 33% lower than 45. If you read the second half of 9.3.5, you'll see why the above is the case.

As for your last point. The doubled part is that if both teams are cooperating for a tie, the scoring capability is still theoretically doubled, thus addressing your point, but you have not addressed mine. The rules have nothing to do with this point. Coopertition bonus is as above. If it is a tie both alliances get the coopertition bonus.

If you had actually worked out the math, you would have realized this. In the case of a forced shutout (defend against yourself), your scoring output is only increased by a theoretical value of 33%. Even otherwise, you still will probably bottleneck on the return. On a organized tie, you have a doubled rate of return since there is scoring in both. In either case, scoring ability is increased, but for a given total score, a tie will yield 50% more seeding points for both teams.

[engunneer]

Originally Posted by martin417

Wow, someone just pointed out this post I made almost a year ago.

This was certainly true. Our team makes a good example on that for 2009.
In Portland, we were the stongest scoring robot and won all of our quals, so 1st seed made sense.
In Seattle, we lost a few matches, but were still a strong robot, but ended up on the #8 alliance
On Galileo, we were nowhere near the strongest robot, since we had Wildstang, HOT, Exploding Bacon, and many other top teams in our division. We did have a very favorable match schedule, and OPR analysis said we'd be in the top 3. We ended up seeding 2nd. We were 3rd most of the time, with 111 and 67 both having the same W/L/T record, but the Qual points were much higher than ours. The only reason we hit 2nd was because HOT lost a match at the very end.
We had a slight chance at Finals on Galileo (except for sudden technical difficulties and a match stuck on another robot's bumper), but 111's alliance would have thoroughly thrashed us if we had made it that far.

Basically what I'm saying is that I agree with you. The new (to most people) system rewards the strongest scorers that win by the slightest margin possible.

That being said, I would have preferred that the coopertition bonus not be twice the loser's score (just 1x), and the loser's seeding points should have been their own score plus half (or some other fraction) of the winner's score. Then it would never be /more/ beneficial to score for your opponent, but only equally beneficial at best. Then a ball in either goal benefits the winner, but the losing team only wants to score for themselves.

For example (under the 'engunneer rules' just described), if the match is currently R20-B15, Blue wants to score a point the normal way (20-16), because it adds 1 to both seeding scores (R36-B26), whereas if they scored against themselves (21-15), Blue would only get 0.5 of a seeding point, while Red still gets the whole point. (R36-B25.5)
Red /could/ score in either goal, since both give them a seeding point, but they would prefer to score (21-15) because of two reasons: It blocks Blue from 0.5 seeding points, and increases the Spread that Blue needs to score to catch up by 1.
Unfortunately, that removes the incentive for the winner to win by as close a margin as possible. To correct that would probably make the rules pretty complicated (while still making each team want to score the normal way instead of against themselves). Without that incentive, the matches will be blow-outs, which is somehow seems like it would be less exciting to watch.

engunneer rules also include 1 point for a robot entirely within the tunnel at the end of the match

One other scoring thing in the official rules that I agree with - hanging scores just enough to break close games in an exciting fashion, but not so much that you want a robot that only hangs (as opposed to ramp robots as in 2007, which often decided the match no matter what was hanging on the rack.) There are also no crazy multipliers in the game, which always confuses the general public. There is no analogous sport that they can take that experience from. At least now we can describe the hanging as being like an extra point, and suspending as a two point conversion.

That rambled more than expected, sorry.