With separated sides and many robots scoring in isolation, could OPR be a really good method of judging teams’ strengths?
Not to say that alliance members will not cooperate, but many teams, especially during qualifiers, will not be able to support each other except for staying out of each other’s way.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Linear (non exponential) scoring, no defense, and a low chance of game piece starvation, I think OPR will be more useful this year than ever before. (including 2012)
We wont know for sure until week 1 events however.
Possibly not:
-Recycling bins act as triplers, which means a robot that is strong at sticking them on top will probably be weaker in qualifying than it would be with an alliance of stackers. It might spend all of prelims getting 8pts per bin, then start getting 20pts apiece in playoffs once paired with good stackers.
-Heavy human-player involvement means that a team with a good noodle-tosser will score significantly higher than their robot might warrant. And again, such a team might not be useful in playoffs because you’d be facing stronger opposition that might be able to organize getting the noodles into their landfill, thus negating the tossers advantage.
This is different than:
2008: Linear scoring and limited (any? my memory is fuzzy) human-player scoring
2012: Linear scoring and unlikely human-player scoring
2013: Linear scoring and unlikely human-player scoring
I definitely think OPR will be useful this year. The only things that could get in the way are things such as Noodle Agreements or Coopertition Stacks. A team that specializes in Coopertition stacking may have a very inflated score and score high in OPR, however they may not truly be the fastest stacker and not the best pick for eliminations when Coopertition disappears. I think OPR is a great quick sort this year, but as usual no substitute for great scouting!
I don’t think many human players will be able to consistently throw the noodles far enough to score points for their team, no more than three noodles across per match.
+1 for scouting. If you assign each person to a robot each match and take comments, it’s a lot better than just relying on OPR.
EDIT: It is not hard to throw the noodles far. A strongish human player could do it consistently and quickly with practice.
I don’t think OPR will be useful. The yellow totes skew the scoring distribution enough such that OPR is not representative of what a team is fully capable of.
If your human player spends 2 months practicing 15-30 minutes a day throwing noodles (a fraction of an average meeting), you’ll be able to get them wherever you want them all match long. Especially if your opponent’s HP is poor, you might get more than 40 points from noodles.
Plus, there’s the noodle agreement to consider. OPR won’t have knowledge of whether 40pts came from voluntary dumping of noodles.
Great, all we need is another year where the human player scores more points than the average robot can.
Isn’t there an official coopertition score for tiebreakers? Couldn’t you just eliminate everyone’s coopertition score from their total scores to calculate opr?
Not saying I agree with it, but it is certainly do-able. The person-hours time investment (1 person focusing entirely on tossing noodles accurately) is much less than it takes to add 40pts/match to your robot’s scoring capabilities.
Yup, I didn’t mean to say that you were, sorry. I just don’t like that possibility, because 40 points is such a sizable value.
I would be skeptical of OPR this year. While the game appears ‘separable’ (as is needed for good OPR correlation to manual scouting), it really isn’t very much, if at all.
For starters, lets look at auton. Assuming most* teams will not be able to take all three containers or totes with them into the Auto zone, then getting any score at all in auton relies on your partner’s help completely.
Onto teleop, lets say you’re a robot that just stacks totes. Some matches you have not much help, and pretty much just stack totes. You get X amount of points for that match. Now you happen to be paired with a robot that tops all of your stacks with containers and effectively triples their value to 3X. The score for that match was completely dependent on the combination of having a robot that could make tote stacks and a robot that could top them with containers. So does that mean that other robot is twice as valuable as you?
The effect if much easier to see on the container stacking bot. When he was with you, he had very tall stacks to top off, effectively adding BIG points to the match score. But what if he isn’t paired with any tote stacking robots? He probably contributes close to 0 points.
In a good OPR game, the score an alliance can produce should be the same if they all compete together on one field or if they all compete separately on three different fields by themselves and then total their individual scores up. As apposed to something more like 2013, this game is not like that in the slightest.
*This is really anyone’s guess now, as it is every year.
Assuming the field gives us access to such data, can’t we just run OPR w/o co-op?
Many people ran OPR in 2012 counting the co-op as a 10 point balance for other reasons.
If you’re doing good, well-rounded scouting, good capping robots will be noted in your data. (qualitative and quantitative data are both very important!) I think you might be overestimating the human player’s individual scoring ability. Excluding human-robot interaction, the human player can score up to 40 points, but they are rather difficult to score because pool noodles arent really designed to be thrown 30-40 feet. However, i think co-op points could mess with OPR, and a good scouting team should make sure OPRs are calculated excluding co-op.
Still waiting for the day when an excel genius far beyond my capabilities makes an OPR calculator that pulls data off TBA 
In 2014, the seeding tiebreakers were (after QS) Assist points, Auto points, T&C points, and Teleop+Foul points. These were each explicitly provided in the standings.
In 2015, the seeding tiebreakers are (after QA) Coopertition, Auto, Container, Tote, and Litter points. I’m hoping based on last year’s precedent that we have each of those in this year’s standings. That would allow calculating Container OPR, Tote OPR, etc.
What does OPR mean?
Offensive Power Rating. It’s how many points a given team contributes to their alliance’s score, on average.
It’s sort of like average score. It uses complex algebra where each team is assigned a variable, and for each alliance score you have something like A+B+C=48, D+F+B=26 etc. Then, it’s like solving a really, really big system of equations.
We’re having no issues getting newer noodles 45-50 feet every throw. Our concern is how they fly after they’ve been battered a bit.