FRC Auction Draft

FIRST General Forum
1

I had an idea for an interesting draft process instead of the normal snake, instead use an auction draft. This was inspired by fantasy football drafting, but modified for FRC.

At the end of the qualifying matches teams are ranked just like they are today, but instead of getting a draft pick, they are given draft points to bid on teams.

First: 20 draft points
Second:19 draft points
Third: 18 draft points, ect.

The draft then begins by asking the first ranked team to put up a team number and an initial bid. The other top 8 ranked teams can then choose to raise the bid on the team up for auction until no team is willing to go higher. (Still trying to figure out how teams would enter bids). Next the second ranked team would put a team up for nomination and the process would repeat until all alliances are formed.

Rules:
1)Teams in the top 8 can be put up for auction, but the minimum price is the draft points they earned (second seed must be bought for 19 draft points or more, third for 18 or more ect.)

2)Teams can refuse to go up for auction (Top 8 may want to form their own alliance or teams may hope to get bumped into the top 8), but can not be nominated later if they refused once

3)Teams give up their earned draft points by accepting a bid nomination

4)Teams move up an earn more draft points if a team ahead of them is selected (If a team ranked first, buys the second ranked team for 19 points, the third ranked team receives a total of 19 points (one additional from their 18), fourth rank 18 points, and down the line)

5)Teams can put up an initial bid of 0 points, if no one raises the bid they receive that team for free (allows for teams to spend all their points on 1 team)

6)Full Alliances can not nominate or bid on teams

8)The nomination process is in snake form (1-8, 8-1, 1-8, ect) until all alliances are filled (skipping full alliances)

Advantages:
1)Deeper level of strategy for alliance captains

2)Allows alliance captains to get a team they wanted, if they are willing to pay

3)Balances Alliances?
-The cost of obtaining a partner is closer to their worth
-Currently picking “The best” robot available might only be marginally better than the next 5, but costs a much higher pick. In the new alliance selection, all 6 robots can go for the same or similar prices

Disadvantages:

  1. Will take a lot longer
    -A nomination could have it’s price raised 18 times

  2. Confusing and complicated
    -Unprepared teams may struggle to evaluate the worth of a robot

I doubt we will ever see this type of draft happening, but it is interesting to think of the strategies that could form:
-First ranked team getting two 10 point robotics instead of a 19 and 1
-Nominating teams you don’t want so others will use up their draft points
-Nominating your “second” pick equivalent before your “first” pick
-If it is four team alliances, do you save points for a better back up?

2

The current snake model is good because of a couple of reasons:

  • in most games/seasons, first and second seed are the best performers
  • highest seed gets to invite their best match for a winning alliance

This leads to, on average, the top two teams winning the regional/district.

Note: when I participated in fantasy football we did a snake draft… it was time consuming enough!

3

As someone who went down that rabbit hole before I would suggest to not do it or put aside a whole lot of time to do it!

4

I think this would lead to abuse by the #1 seed.

Pick a team that is ~#15-20, that would be a good pick by alliance captain #7 or 8. Not much sense in any team driving up the price, team is bought for cheap.

Then #1 seed has huge number of points to bully, can purchase the next best team.

Instead of forming an alliance of #1+#2+#24, they now have #1+#3+#17, which is approximately what they’d get in a standard draft.

5

I’m a little confused how the first seed can get both the 3 (which costs a minimum 18 of their 20 points) and the #17 best robot (for only 2 points).

6

For many teams, alliance selection is already too complicated to properly understand/take part in effectively. Many teams don’t have scouting data, aren’t prepared to go up there for alliance selection, and I have seen countless teams do crazy stuff during alliance selection. I love strategy stuff (and fantasy football) and I didn’t even have the patience to read through this entire post. The snake system is nice because the announcer can manage picks, and the worst that happens is a team doesn’t know who they want to pick. This system seems really complex, hard to manage in practice, and difficult to explain at competitions/to rookies trying to understand whats going on.

7

Try it at an off-season and tell us how it works out.

Also, how does this system handle inter-picking among the top 8?

How does this system handle declines?

8

When they pick up #17 for 0 or 1 points, they can get 3 for 19 or 20 points.

9

If Number 1 seed picks up the number 17 seed team as their first pick, why would the number 3 seed still be around by the time its number 1 seed’s turn to pick their second pick? By that point, number 3 will either have been picked by number 2, or be an alliance captain themselves.

10

Because it is a bidding process. The team isn’t picked in the traditional sense but is “picked” to be the team up for bid. So if 1 choose 17 to be up for bid first and manages to squeak by with a bit of 1 they would join the alliance. 2 would need to put 3 up for bid. However, it would inherently be a bad strategy to do so as auction drafts drive a different type of

This format would more or less require the top 8 to be locked in. In fantasy formats you usually don’t have players already assigned to an “alliance” (to use FRC language), unless you are playing dynastic formats which is a whole other ball of wax…

Honestly, the current draft format is difficult enough for teams to do. With fantasy sports there is a lot longer time frame to prep, along with historical stats for each player that is playing the same game, and “expert” analysis of the situation. FRC has much different constraints and changes that happen from year to year than other fantasy sports that this style is being ripped from.

11

Having saving a number of teams from disaster in their first time role as an alliance captain, I can attest to this difficulty. At least a third of the alliance captains would have no idea of how this system would work.

That said, it looks like a lot of fun for other reasons, but its probably not germane to promoting robotics competition.

12

Having been an alliance captain for the first time, especially when not expecting to be after seeding 12th Chezy Champs 2015, it’s an incredibly scary process, especially when you’re one of the robots being scratched off other’s third and fourths lists. With 973, 254, (and later) 604 as opponents in the first round I had absolutely no clue what to do, and while we planned this out the night before picklist attempts ended up in jokes and games, and I ended up picking our friends on 696 cause they have an awesome robot and we love working with them.

Scary stuff though…