How should the format of the championship be changed?
How should teams qualify for the championship?
Old thread. I figured that one was old enough to start a new one.
Oooh boy…
Let me start by saying that while I do want the Championship to be a qual-to-attend event, I understand that it’s a lot more inspirational to attend than to not, even if you get your behind handed to you every match. So, can’t be solely on robot merit. I’m also going to utterly ignore FLL and FTC, other than assuming that they’ll be taking up roughly the amount of space used now.
Let’s start by cutting the number of teams/division. Let’s arbitrarily make it 70 (for now), with an absolute cap at 80. 704=280 slots. 804=320 slots. Not enough with only 4 divisions to get even all of the qualifiers.
So… We add a pair of divisions. Let’s call them Watt (after James Watt) and Tesla, just for grins. 6 divisions, each with 70 teams, that’s 420 teams max, with potential to grow to 480. Eliminations within each division play like normal; Einstein is TBD (leaning towards a round-robin where the top two play each other in best-of-three). I’m assuming that space can be worked out, either in the current venue or in another one.
Here’s the fun part, though. Of those 420 spots, a minimum of 20 are open only to teams who have not been to the Championship in more than 4 years. Registration is offered by FIRST when the teams sign up, on the basis of maximum time since attendance (veteran teams returning as rookies excepted), and can be accepted or declined by the team. Another X slots are opened in a similar way, but on the waitlist.
The remainder of the slots (in this example, 400) are open only to qualifiers–the standard winners, RCA, EI, RAS system, or the District-model qualifications. Each district system can qualify a number of teams determined by their percentage of the whole FRC competition–1% sends 4 teams, for example. Wild Cards are in force anywhere the district system is not, and INCLUDE slots taken by a district team competing outside their area.
Eventually, with the district model taking over entirely, it’ll all be district/district championship qualification–but I’d still want to hold 20 or so slots for teams needing an injection of inspiration. How to hand them out? That’s a tough one.
Without reading the back story:
If more matches are added requiring another day (Tuesday evening/all day on Wednesday vs Wednesday evening/Thursday), I don’t mind flying in on Tuesday morning and paying for another night in the hotel. However, it is possible that not everyone (students/mentors/volunteers/staff/etc.) will be able to support this schedule. FIRST may not be able to support this schedule either as an extra day costs additional money.
FIRST is growing. Adding two FRC Divisions with 66.667 to 100 robots per division is not a bad idea, but is there enough room to accommodate another practice field in the convention center and two more fields in the dome?
Which brings up the other option to move Jr. FLL, FLL, and FTC to their own Championship events to gain back the floor space, but where does that leave these future FRC students?
Can the store be moved to a different location to gain back the floor space?
World Congress Center in Atlanta seemed bigger to me (unused floor space).
This is from last year but I think that it fits in pretty nicely with the discussion:
His second paragraph mentions the percentage of FRC, FTC, and FLL teams that make it to their respective World Championship/Festival. I don’t know where he got his information on number of FLL teams, but last year (when he wrote it) there was around 19-20,000 FLL teams. This year there were about 21,000 teams, with about 84 spots at World Festival. (To my knowledge.)
My opinion is that all programs should remain in the same venue together, at the same time. This lets students (and others!) to see the other programs and what they do.
From what I remember from last year I tried to find a more exact FLL number but since FIRST doesn’t(didn’t) have that information on their website I ended up just estimating a lowish number.
If your numbers are correct than 0.4% of FLL teams qualify for the World Festival.
Some day I would like to see the Einstein Field at championships to be renamed The Kamen Field.
Adding more divisions makes a lot of sense to me. It would allow for more qualifier matches and still allow room for those teams to go that should be allowed to experience champs for inspiration.
The district model has one major drawback where we live - distance. For example: San Antonio and El Paso has 550 miles of nearly nothing between them. This is the same distance as going from Philadelphia, PA to Myrtle Beach, SC. You can cross seven states with many teams in the same distance that one of the El Paso teams would have to travel just to get to the next major city. Granted this is an extreme example; however, it does highlight my concern.
I’d love to see almost like a ticker-like box on the website that has the current count of teams in each program.
*If I rememeber later tonight (my work computer has IE7 and won’t load the page I need) I will give the exact number for Jr. FLL. Today should be the last day you can register a team as registration was open until April 2013.
I actually calculated this out the other day. It would take teams from Montana(5), Wyoming(3), Colorado(48), New Mexico(5), North Dakota(3), South Dakota(1), Nebraska(0), Kansas(20), Oklahoma(48), Iowa(5), Missouri(62), and Arkansas(18) to make up an amount of teams that just barely exceeds the number of teams in Michigan.
I love the theory of the district model but there are a few kinks that would need worked out for areas that do not have high density of teams thoughout a state or a predetermined amount of land.
The issue with adding more teams is that FIRST STRUGGLED to get to 400 teams this year. Even with a wait-list and the wildcard system. I think it had to do with pulling teams off the wait list to late. If a wildcard isn’t claimed/used from a competition then teams need to be pulled off the wait list right away or here is a shocker we need to just not have a wait list or wildcard and champs is only as big as the teams who register for it when they qualify. :yikes: Crazy!
I really don’t want second picks to be universally not included. I believe a lot of second picks are what make the difference between winning and losing particular regionals, and no system designed to exclude the so called “carried” second picks could be perfectly fair to those that made very legitimate contributions to the alliance. For example, the WPI Regional this year would not have been won if 3044 was not on the winning alliance.
I heard an idea at the Championships that I don’t know if I support. The idea was essentially to allow an optional, opt-in “fifth division” for rookie all star winners, culture change award winners that did not medal at events, etc. That way, these teams get the “championship experience” while not dragging down the level of play or being forced to play nightmare match after nightmare match. The division would be optional so that rookies who feel they can handle the big dogs could still compete in the normal four divisions.
Auto qualify Chairman’s Winners. Everyone else gets in via district-like points system.
This with slightly less teams per division and 16 alliances instead of 8 in elims. “First round” is single elimination. Other rounds play like normal.
Agreed.
If a universal point system isn’t on the table, another way to do it is by qualifying a set number of teams at each event, no matter what. There’s a pecking order of which achievements qualify you for the next level, and if a team near the top of that list is already qualified, the bid goes to the next team on the list.
One possible list:
- Chairman’s Award
- Winner - Captain
- Winner - 1st pick
- Engineering Inspiration
- Winner - 2nd pick
- Winner - replacement bot
- Finalist Alliance Captain
- Finalist 1st pick
- Rookie All-Star
- Finalist 2nd pick
- Motorola Quality
- GM Industrial Design
- Innovation in Controls
- Highest seeded semifinalist captain
- etc…
Let’s say this system was in effect at a regional where the winning alliance included a HoF team and the Engineering Inspiration winner. You’d end up qualifying the RCA winner, the winning alliance, the finalist captain, the finalist first pick, and the RAS. It’s 7 teams in all since the HoF team was already qualified.
This system has the advantage of being easily scalable (just reduce the number of qualifying teams to 5 and you’ve just reduced crowding at Champs) and it would be very easy to implement.
FTC uses this method. Here is their list
Qualifier Host Team (NOTE: Assuming that the team competes at one other tournament within the region and has met the criteria set forth by the Affiliate Partner in the agreement. This applies to qualifying tournaments only.) Inspire Award Winner Winning Alliance Captain Inspire Award 2nd place Winning Alliance, 1st team selected Inspire Award 3rd place Winning Alliance, 2nd team selected Think Award Winner Finalist Alliance Captain Connect Award Winner Finalist Alliance, 1st team selected Rockwell Collins Innovate Award Winner Finalist Alliance, 2nd team selected PTC Design Award Winner Highest Ranked Team not previously advanced Motivate Award Winner Highest Ranked Team not previously advanced
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/tournament-information
Yeah; I didn’t mention them since people might get scared by the association with FTC. FTC qualification is unfair for one big reason: not enough qualification slots from each tournament, so the winning alliance captain’s first pick usually doesn’t qualify for the next level. With only two spots to earn from most events, only the Inspire winner and the winning alliance captain get invitations to the next level. In my opinion it is questionable to put the Inspire runner-up ahead of winning alliance first pick, but that is a judgment call. Anyway, FTC either needs either more slots at the Championship or another layer of competition (super regionals) to remedy that. It’s a problem.
Who would really opt in to that, though? Who wants to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to go to championships and then decide beforehand that they have no chance of winning? Obviously that’s not what the championships are about, but I doubt - in fact I hope there are no teams in FRC with that mindset.
I’d like to see some sort of leveling. At the very least, there should be some attempt at balancing the 6 teams in each qualification match.
There shouldn’t be any matches at the World Championship where an alliance scores less than 10 points. It’s hollow for the winning alliance and demoralizing for the losing alliance, and it doesn’t make sense to the crowd.
I sat through three rounds like that and it’s no fun. I’d love to see a system where every match was a tossup, and OPR wasn’t the near sure thing it is now.
Please don’t bring back the Alliance Algorithm of Doom. It was bad in 2007, and I don’t think it will ever be a good idea.