Car Nack predicts that in the regional and district events that the number one seed will have a very difficult time winning the event. In fact the number one seed will win in less than 25% of the events.
Car Nack has spoken.
The almighty Car Nack has returned!
Hmm, seems like a 2012 sort of prediction. Considering we were picked by the #2 seed at an event in 2012 and lost in QF, I do not disagree.
This is a big prediction from CarNack !
The #1 seed typically wins more than 25% of the events in previous years.
I am wondering why the all knowing Car Nack has made this prediction.
I would think that a really good breaching robot will probably place in that position and then choose the best shooter.
???
Wow…
It’s a perfectly reasonable prediction. This year a plan executed well will overcome the best individual robots.
The qualifications will do a good job of seeding the best robots high. The best team players and the best strategists may not seed number 1.
I can see Car Nack’s points but I disagree. A team that makes a robot to effectively rank 1 is probably strategic enough to pick really good partners that compliment them as well. Teams still have to win matches to rank 1 in addition to breaching and capturing as well. And since breaching and capturing does not award in game points for qualifying matches, the rank 1 team will likely be a strong scorer on their own. A lower seeded alliance that has an earlier third bot can have a decent chance of working together to take down the top 2 bots but I think they would still be the underdogs. Will have to wait and see I guess :]
Now this is one of the most interesting Car Nack predictions ever, IMO. I need to think this one through…
My thoughts exactly. For reference, the number one seed won 50% of events in 2014 and 70% in 2015, and I’m pretty sure 2014 was a low outlier when compared to prior years, although I would have to look at the older data again.
Regardless, this is quite the claim.
Bouncing off of this, does anyone have the data on the % of #1 seeds that won their events over the past few years?
This prediction boils down to minimizing the advantages of first seed (first pick, playing vs 8th seed in QF’s which allows the alliance to become cohesive before facing tougher opponents) while maximizing the disadvantage of first seed (16th pick).
- No 2nd picks which fill in the gaps for the 1st seed are available as the 16th pick
- Theory that the first seed will likely be a team who did the ‘defense agreement’ too much, therefore no other captains want to be their partner since no one knows what the 1st seed is REALLY capable of
Sure I’m missing others…
Curiously, I wonder if what led to this prediction is the thought that 8th seed (or 4th/5th seed) may have the upper hand in QF’s simply due to variety in selection.
Maybe this is based off of a 3rd robot being more important in this game then others?
I don’t think there is much room for “hold my ramp and don’t move” robots this year. Plus even for the argument on defensive bots as a 3rd bot, the bottom list of teams will be teams that attempted a drivetrain for cross defenses and failed, There drivetrain may be worse off then a kitbot that far down the list.
Just my thoughts on the reasoning.
I’m personally just blown away by such a strong read by someone day 4 of the competition. Everything in it lines up so well. I just feel dumb right now.
I suspect part of this is the assumption that those bonus ranking points are going to shake up the standing more than usual. 1 RP in quals probably is worth more than 25 match points in elims, so Car Nack has a bit of a point. The attributes that make a #1 seed aren’t as well aligned with winning Elims as they usually are.
Based on the fact that even if you lose a match, you can still conceivably get the same ranking points if you had won, will skew the seeding a bit.
The mystery of Car Nack continues…
Hmm, I do wonder how Car Nack has reached this conclusion.
There are a couple ways the #1 alliance can end up not dominating an event:
1.) The #1 seeded team cannot carry a large share of the alliance’s weight in the playoffs, and either that team chooses the “best” robot as its #1 pick but the alliance is still not the best, or a “scorched earth” alliance selection happens and the “best” robots end up on other alliances.
This usually happens when there is some difference between what is required of a robot/strategy to seed high in qualifications, and what is necessary to win the playoffs. We saw this in 2012 with teams whose main goal was to balance the Coopertition bridge. However, even though there are ways of getting ranking points this year besides winning, it seems to me that these extra goals of breaching and capturing are still very valuable in the playoffs.
Another way this happens is if a team gets really lucky and seeds high. However, I cannot imagine this happening in 75% of all regional and district competitions.
2.) The #1 seeded alliance cannot compete with the others even though it has the best 2 robots at the event, because 3 okay robots are better than 2 good ones plus the last pick of the draft.
I’m not sure this one is true for this game. It seems likely that the 2 best robots at the event plus the last pick would be a very, very strong alliance. I would predict these two robots would be able to breach easily (can’t defend breaching well) and perhaps weaken the tower and scale. That is a lot of points, and the third bot just needs to challenge for even more points.
Perhaps this game will have a lot of defense, especially in playoffs. That would make this game a lot like 2007, when many #1 alliances didn’t win. For example, the three Michigan events that year had the #2, #5, and #5 alliances win. However, the defense in this game seems pretty limited since only one robot can defend its alliance’s courtyard and crossing defenses is protected.
3.) The #1 seeded team makes imperfect alliance selection picks.
This one could happen, but probably not at the majority of events. A team that seeds first is likely to have good scouting and strategy.
4.) There are a lot of robots playing at the same level, and therefore the first pick advantage isn’t huge.
This usually happens at high-level competitions. In 2011 MSC and 2012 Galileo, the #8 alliance beat the #1 alliance because there wasn’t a significant enough difference in the playing ability of the robots on both alliances. This is something that can happen in every game, but it is more likely to occur at district champs, worlds, or at strong regionals or districts. A “weak” district or regional usually has 1 or 2 strong teams, even if they had to go out of their way to attend.
That is one bold prediction. Need to think about it for awhile…
The only previous year I thought it was predictable early on was 2007.
That year, a 9th seed won championships.
My interpretation: Car Nack is predicting that the top seed will often be a breacher that is not capable of contributing much towards a capture. Despite picking the best capture-er, they are unable to complete a capture often during playoffs. They will face an alliance that has two shooters/goal-scorers (high or low) who alone are not able to guarantee a breach or a capture (although pretty decent at both). Together, these two shooters will consistently be able to get both breaches and captures in their playoff matches, allowing them to take the event.
I’m not sure this is true. Breachers will seed highly, but there’s further differentiation. Breaching in quals will be common enough for breaching robots that the top seed will be a breacher that can also score a significant number of points (allowing them to win more often). If they’re scoring those points through goals, then they should be able to capture in playoffs if they pick the best shooter.
Point of order. In one of those Michigan events, #1 alliance was extremely likely to win if a certain 3rd pick hadn’t accidentally gone out with a dead battery and then gone out a second time without a bumper that was holding their battery in. So that loss was more on team management of the 3rd pick than their robot capabilities. We’ve gotten better since then.
So do the other alliances. In fact, I would argue that lower seeds (especially teams who are unprepared to seed high) usually make suboptimal picks.
I also believe that the first seed will have a larger advantage than most years, even with the last pick. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a significant dropoff after about 10 teams or so (the best 10 teams will be capturing the tower almost every match and breaching sometimes). It seems likely as well that there will be more teams with basic robots that can contribute (as second picks) that #8’s last pick won’t be much better than #1’s last pick. For that reason, I predict that the #1 seed will fall within their usual winning percentage, 50-75%.