FRC Blogged-Standard District Point Structure

FIRST General Forum
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http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog-New-FRC-Standard-District-Points-Ranking-System-2014

As some of you are aware, we have had a team working on developing a standard points ranking system for use in all four of the Districts we will have in 2014. Members of the team in addition to me included:

Jessica Boucher – New England District Representative, FRC Chief Volunteer Coordinator, Team 237 “Black Magic” Student Alumna
Patrick Felty – Regional Director for Central and South Texas (Alamo Region)
Chris Fultz – Woodie Flowers Award Winner, Team 234 “Cyber Blue” Mentor
Jon Jack – Chairman’s Award winning Team 1538 “The Holy Cows” Mentor, Woodie Flowers Finalist Award Winner
Ed Petrillo – Mid-Atlantic Robotics District Representative, Woodie Flowers Finalist Award Winner, Team 293 “S.P.I.K.E.” Mentor
Kevin Ross – Pacific Northwest District Representative, Founder of Washington FIRST Robotics, Woodie Flowers Finalist Award Winner, Team 4089 “Stealth Robotics” Mentor
Jim Zondag – Michigan District Representative, Woodie Flowers Finalist Award Winner, Team 33 “Killer Bees” Mentor

I want to thank this team for the many hours of work they’ve put in over the last few months to develop this new system. Our discussions weren’t always easy; but they were always honest, and every team member came to the table with the intention to work together to develop the best possible system for FRC. It was a wonderful experience – individuals with sometimes strongly differing views listening carefully to each other and eventually coming to consensus – a great example of Gracious Professionalism in action.

While this system will be used by all Districts in 2014, it is not set in stone. Our intention is to periodically review the system, making improvements for later years as we see the need. It’s our additional intent that every year, all Districts will use the standard points ranking system that is in place for that year. This will help facilitate the potential introduction of inter-District play, which we intend to develop for the 2015 season.

You may find the details of the system, along with some explanation of the various components, here.

I recognize this system may generate some feedback. Please put your comments below, or if you prefer, you may email them to [email protected] . If we get a sufficient number of common questions or comments, We’ll address them at a later time.

I’ll blog again soon.

Frank

Points system here

Some changes from MAR/FiM of year’s past:
The way Elim points are given out; it’s basically the same as the past, however it seems to be worded differently so that if a backup is called in, you get points for what you play. Also, IIRC 2nd picks/backups got different points based off finish; this is now eliminated
10 points for Chairmans, 8 for EI/RAS, 5 for judged awards. Interestingly with this, Chairman’s still grants auto-bid
Age-based points, 10 for Rookies, 5 for second-years

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I would love to hear Jim Zondag (or any of the Michigan district folks) chime in on the merit of the Rookie and 2nd year team points. I know they have done a lot of work in showing what makes the point structure good, and am curious how that moves things. I would imagine this probably has its largest effect in teams near the make-it cut off.

EDIT: Or perhaps there is a “valley of death” in rookie and 2nd year team goodness where they either have already made it on their own merit or are out of contention.

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Wow, rookies get extra points for being rookies. I understand the desire to get rookies into district championships, but there already was a mechanism to give rookies extra help in rookie awards. Being a rookie is now just as important as winning the Chairman’s Award, winning 5 qualifying matches, or winning an extra round in elims; at least in terms of qualifying for DCMP.

Does anyone know where this idea came from? I’ve never seen it suggested or implemented at any particular region before. I’m interested in hearing the rationale, I imagine it will make more sense to me then.

I’m also a little bugged by this line:

if a District Team does earn a slot at the FIRST Championship while attending a Regional event, that slot does count against the total Championship allocation the District is receiving for the season

Thus, any regional won by a team in a District system results in a Championship qualification spot that just disappears. The team then takes two slots for Champs, both the regional winner slot and one of the district slots.

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  1. The justification for Rookie/2nd year points is:

Extra points are awarded to Rookie and second year Teams in recognition of the special challenges Teams face in those
early years, and to increase the chance that they will make it to the District Championship to compete with their robots.
Like our dedicated Rookie awards, these additional points are intended to recognize and motivate newer participants in
FRC

I’m kinda undecided how I feel about that/Chairman’s now getting points; on one hand, Chairman’s still gives an autobid(so being a rookie isn’t exactly equal to a Chairman’s), but I think it’s kind of a stretch to give that many points…Something like 5 for Rookies/3 for 2nd year sounds a little better.

  1. Wow. I missed that in my initial skim. On one hand, it seems kind of wrong for it to count against the district in the case of a team not going to the District Championship, and still technically getting one of that District’s spots. On the other hand, I’m sure the FIRST justification for that is to at least somewhat mitigate the “more bids than spots” issues.
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I knew that they were going to value all awards the same. FIRST values culture change as much as they do robot performance.

I was also pretty sure that they would give the same points to all teams in the elimination alliance. Honestly I don’t know how I feel about that.

EDIT: my math was wrong (I was so excited that I read through it too fast!)

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Check your math on that one…

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I’m mostly okay with this system, and glad to see we have a uniformed system. I’m still going through and analyzing, however there is one thing I am strongly against that did pop out.

 Regional Participation
District Teams do not earn points for their actions at any Regionals they may attend, but are still eligible for Team
awards at those events, and any benefits that may go along with winning those awards, such as earning their way to the
FIRST Championship. However, if a District Team does earn a slot at the FIRST Championship while attending a Regional
event, that slot does count against the total Championship allocation the District is receiving for the season.

(Emphasis Mine.)

I don’t think this is exactly a fair system. I personally believe that a District’s allotment of teams should not be affected by it’s teams earning slots at events outside of that District’s competition structure.

I hope FIRST might consider changing that policy going forward.

Edit: Chris most of wrote his post while I was working on mine as I didn’t see it before posting. Never the less I hope me brining this up adds to the point that this particular policy should be revisited.

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  1. Wow. I missed that in my initial skim. On one hand, it seems kind of wrong for it to count against the district in the case of a team not going to the District Championship, and still technically getting one of that District’s spots. On the other hand, I’m sure the FIRST justification for that is to at least somewhat mitigate the “more bids than spots” issues.

We also have to remember that many of the district teams that travel to regionals and qualify for Champs there are almost certainly going to qualify for Champs in their home region anyway, so this statement really desn’t change anything for them. The only way it would come into play is if a team qualifies in a regional but does not qualify via the point system in their home region.

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However, if a District Team does earn a slot at the FIRST Championship while attending a Regional event, that slot does count against the total Championship allocation the District is receiving for the season.

This is extremely disappointing. Until FIRST allows cross-district registration, this vilifies successful district teams that want to travel. The teams at the regional they attend will be upset with them for eating up a spot, and the teams in their district will be upset with them for eating up a spot. This just seems like a lose-lose way of limiting the number of teams per district that qualify for champs.

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This will just encourage teams to skip their district CMPs if they’ve qualified elsewhere. Watering down district championships is not the way to go, for outside qualifications or HoF teams or whatever qualification method.

Edit: I’m not wild about the large bonus for rookies and 2nd year teams, but I can see where it’s coming from. Allotting points for the Chairman’s Award is also questionable, but I definitely approve. It doesn’t make a difference in district CMP qualification, but it does grant District (but not district cmp) Chairman’s Awardees a preference in FRC Championship qualification. If a team has a better shot at going to the Championship if they won a team spirit award at a district, the same should be true for district Chairman’s Awardees.

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From an initial reading of the system this seems a good compromise on some of the change proposals I’d heard.
Congratulations to all the people who worked on this and to FIRST for identifying and heading off the risk that different point systems could have on the coherence of FRC. I’m looking forward to seeing how the unified points system plays out in 2014 and to opportunities for inter-district play in future seasons.

Now on to my quibbles:
I am a little disappointed that points in Elimination matches only go to the winning Alliance for each series. One idea originating on CD was to reward alliances that push a series to a third match. It’s a small benefit but would help a strong alliance that meets the ultimate winning alliance in the quarter finals.

But the issue that concerns me most is that it seems there are no further points for a team that withdraws during elimination matches. This would mean that there are potentially divergent motives between individual teams within an alliance. Does team X continue with a barely functional robot and possibly keep scoring points or call for backup and get nothing?

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Last year, four MAR teams eligible for MAR CMP did not go due to competing at outside regionals. One of these was due to having won a slot via Chairman’s at an outside regional, and they did not (primarily due to not competing at MAR CMP) win a MAR point slot. This would have taken one slot away in MAR last year. The other two teams competed Week 6 (logistics prevented competing Week 7/they had Championship slots anyway) and the other was competing Week 7(and already had a Championship slot). Let’s say the team competing Week 7 (365 at Chesapeake, HoF team) won that weekend, would this have taken a MAR slot away?

On one hand, I think this is a negative change. On the other, I completely understand FIRST’s intentions (at least, what I’m assuming to be their intentions), of trying to mitigate the “more bids than slots” issue as much as possible, but on the other hand, I’m sure this would affect <10 teams, meaning the only real impact this would have is in regards to less waitlist teams being able to go to Championships, something which is already extremely limited.

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Regardless of the inevitable merits or faults of a points system (let’s face it, nothing is going to make everyone happy), I’m particularly encouraged by the promise of inter-district play. The concept of teams like 469, 67, 341, 195, and the rest playing on the same field, pre-Champs, is absolutely thrilling.

Just about as thrilling as Waterloo 2014…

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^^ This!

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I noticed that they did not state the number of championship slots that would be allocated at each of the regionals. Did I miss that somewhere else?

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While this may not be the best system to some people, thank you to the individuals who worked long and hard on this project to bring together so many ideas regarding a standard point system! I can’t wait to see where this leads with inter-district play!

I too am confused as to why Rookies are held point wise on the same level as a Chairman’s award winning team. I agree there are challenges and hurdles to jump through but considering some rookies bring home 1-2 rookie awards before even considering their robot performance, standing, and elimination results the system does seem uneven. Only time will tell, let’s give it a season and see how it goes.

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Ah, but we have a time machine! It’s called…last year’s results from Michigan and MAR! All we need is to apply the new system to last year’s results and we can see how it might affect things. It won’t be perfect but could be close.

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What I heard (though this doesnt appear to be documented in this post & writeup) is that Legacy & HoF teams don’t count towards the number of teams a District can send. Now I don’t know exactly what that means (or if it is the final word) in the case that a District HoF team wins an outside regional. Are they considered prequalified and thus don’t affect this particular case? or does their win still take away a slot (thus deincentivizing HoF teams to win outside regionals??)

As it is, I know many Legacy & HoF teams decide not to attend their DCMP because it would eat up one of the spots for a cusp team allowed at that event in the current model. Im not sure this new model does anything to change that.

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I would imagine the discussion around giving rookie and second year a “bonus” is to give them a little better opportunity to see, smell, taste, feel the “Wow!” factor of FIRST and get to the “Big Dance”.

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While I appreciate the motivation of FIRST to inspire rookie teams, I feel that the Rookie awards already in place are sufficient. Making rookie status the equivalent value of points that a Chairman’s award carries is sending the wrong message. Rookies need to be inspired, yes, but do they not also need to have a goal to work toward? The biggest fall off of rookie teams is not in year one or two, but in year 3 or 4. Something needs to be done to MAINTAIN teams, not simply bring in new teams that will only dwindle and drop out after all the initial “rookie status” benefits go away.