NEforecast 2017: Week 6 District Championship Special

FIRST General Forum
1

We’re bad at polls. Let’s try this again:

NEforecast: New England District Championship, April - April 1, 2017
Team List: http://thebluealliance.com/event/2017necmp

Webcast: https://www.thebluealliance.com/gameday#chat=tbagameday&layout=1&view_0=2017necmp-0&view_1=2017necmp-1

Another exciting season of qualifying district play is in the books for New England! 2017 saw exciting play from start to finish with record-setting four rotor matches in Week 1 to closing out with top-tier play in Week 5. Over the course of 947 qualification & elimination rounds across our 10 districts, we had 135 extra ranking points awarded to teams. Five matches at Hartford saw two ranking points awarded to a single alliance all featuring some small, no name Connecticut team.

This season we saw more unique event winners across the New England districts events with 29 teams walking away with a banner of the 30 up for grabs. Comparing this to previous years:

  • 2016 - 22 winners to 30 banners
  • 2015 - 25 winners to 30 banners
  • 2014 - 22 winners to 27 banners

The sole outlier this year was 2168 the Aluminum Falcons who won two events in New England plus one down in MAR. With more events, more time on the field, and more teams in the region, New England has come a long way from the old era of regionals where the double win solely on New England turf was only achieved by two teams: 195 (2011) & 40 (2008). Regardless, history is history and this weekend teams are looking to write their future.

With a packed list of capable teams, the Whittemore will be a showdown of strategy with alliances doing whatever they can to outscore their opponents before climbing aboard their Airships. Fuel has steadily increased in priority as the weeks have progressed, but failure to climb or a dose of well thought out New England defense will sway more matches this weekend. Nearly every match will have the potential for an extra rank point. With that in mind expect to see some new faces climbing the rankings as defense holds back some top machines during the qualifying rounds. Additionally the influence of a gear robot with potential to get a few pieces of Fuel into a Boiler will take the security of four rotors away from an opposing alliance. In a field of similar machines, Gear focused robots can’t leave any points unattended from baselines, the first rotor, penalty, or a missed climb.

Last year we made two predictions for the 2016 District Championship. This year we were so excited for this weekend we bring you five. At the time of writing this post the team list was not finalized and subject to change.

Prediction 1:

  1. 177, 2168, 238
  2. 2084, 95, 4564
  3. 125, 558, 2370 F
  4. 133, 5687, 1073
  5. 195, 78, 1071 W
  6. 1058, 2648, 4761
  7. 6763, 5813, 6328 SF
  8. 1519, 1153, 230 SF

Prediction 2:

  1. 195, 5687, 3623 F
  2. 2168, 1058, 1991 W
  3. 125, 558, 6763
  4. 2648, 1519, 501 SF
  5. 95, 133, 2370
  6. 4761, 1073, 6328 SF
  7. 4564, 1153, 1071
  8. 230, 78, 2084

Prediction 3:

  1. 195, 558, 4906 SF
  2. 125, 5687, 348 W
  3. 4564, 2648, 6328 SF
  4. 133, 2168, 5813
  5. 1058, 4761, 2370 F
  6. 1519, 78, 6329
  7. 95, 2084, 177
  8. 1153, 1071, 88

Prediction 4:

  1. 558, 195, 6328 W
  2. 95, 125, 177 SF
  3. 5687, 2168, 2067 F
  4. 1519, 133, 4564
  5. 78, 230, 1991 SF
  6. 3623, 2648, 2370
  7. 1073, 1058, 6329
  8. 4761, 5813, 131

**Prediction 5: **

  1. 195, 558, 348 W
  2. 1519, 2648, 6329 F
  3. 5687, 125, 238 SF
  4. 1058, 78, 2370 QF
  5. 2168, 133, 4906 SF
  6. 95, 230, 1073 QF
  7. 1721, 3623, 2067 QF
  8. 4761, 4564, 177 QF

Awards:
We would like to congratulate the following award recipients and wish them luck in their judge interviews!

Chairman’s:
At the New England District Championship, 10 teams compete for the Chairman’s Award. Of those 10, four will receive the Chairman’s Award and an invitation to compete for the Chairman’s Award at World Championships.

Winners:
3467- GSD
1071- Waterbury
4905- WPI
4176- SE Mass
2648- North Shore
125- Greater Boston
1735- Southern NH
78- Rhode Island
1519- Pine Tree
558- Hartford

Engineering Inspiration:
At the New England District Championship, 9 teams compete for the Engineering Inspiration Award. Of those 9, two will receive the Engineering Inspiration Award and an invitation to compete at the World Championships.

Winners:
467- GSD
4557- Waterbury
1735- WPI
3461- SE Mass
4761- North Shore
237- Greater Boston
4905- Southern NH
467- Rhode Island
166- Pine Tree
5422- Hartford

**Rookie All Star: **
At the New England District Championship, 9 teams compete for the Rookie All Star Award. Of those 9, two will receive the Rookie All Star Award and an invitation to compete at the World Championships.

**Winners: **
6328- GSD
6675- Waterbury
6367- WPI
6333- SE Mass
6324- North Shore
6763- Greater Boston
6690- Southern NH
6731- Rhode Island
6337- Pine Tree

Well that wraps it up for this year’s Forecast! We hope you’ve enjoyed our simple analysis this season. We want to wish all competitors the best of luck this weekend in Durham along with a successful trip to St. Louis and Houston (175)! You’ll see us this weekend in the pits, stands, or on the field working with our teams and of course at the many offseason events to come!

Til Week 1 next year,

-NEforecast

2

Still not seeing the poll?

Edit: See it now

3

I think the 195-558 alliance will stay strong and take the win. An awesome fuel bot plus a ridiculously fast gear bot are a strong combo. Add to that that the third bot should be even better than Hartford with the deeper field, and you’ve got yourself a dang good alliance.

4

Prediction:

  1. 195-558-181 SF
  2. 2648-230-1991
  3. 1519-5687-3464
  4. 2168-95-133 W
  5. 131-125-88
  6. 177-78-6328 F
  7. 1058-58-5813 SF
  8. 3623-4564-1071

I think the scenarios that have anyone that isn’t 195 as the first seed are far-fetched.

5

Same for scenarios where 558 isn’t 195’s first pick.

6

Dont want to rip on 558 here, I love brick 2.0 but…

Take a look at 5687,95,2168 and maybe even a few others.

558 isn’t the only robot who can shuttle 7+ gears a match.

7

EDIT: Bailey beat me to it

Ehhh I don’t know how good 558 is relative to 5687/95/2168/78. It might seem like 195 plays favorites, but I know their scouting team, and 195 picks whoever the right pick is. That might be 558. I don’t know.

8

You have to also consider that their drivers work really well together. They have good experience working together and it may be that that factors into 195’s decision as well.

9

I think the only certainty here is that 195 ranks very well (top 3)… and EVEN THAT isn’t certain.

How did 467 get EI twice?

10

Your guess is as good as mine.

Though it is concerning that it wasn’t addressed the same way as the same mistake was addressed in 2015. While I’m sure 467 is extremely inspiring, it stinks to see there was not another team recognized.

11

If I may explain my thought process here:

This one confused me a little, partly due to 177 seeding first in this prediction, yet being bumped back to a second pick in 3 out of the 4 remaining predictions. I also don’t see 2168 accepting another top 8 team, seeing just how strong they are at picking their own alliances. I’d also put them as at least finalists, if not winning.

This seems most on point to me. The top 4 in this prediction all have a good history of regularly achieving one or both RP bonuses. Again, I see 2168 winning, and although 1991 and 3623 seem to have taken a slight dip since their win at WPI, they are both still plenty strong contenders.

Again coming back to 2168, seeding below 4th seems a bit off, but you never know with an event like this one. 195 and 558 certainly are a force to be reckoned with, so I’m not so sure I’d see them out in semis. I also might see a strong gear focused team like 78 getting picked a bit earlier.

I don’t know how I feel about 195 and 558 being swapped here. the pairing itself I’d agree with, but 195 strikes me as a team that’s just too good not to reach that bit above 558. 3623 is good, I’ll give them that, but I don’t know that I see them reaching alliance captain status again against some of the other teams attending, thought they will more than likely see the playoff field.

This might be my second most favorable outcome of the 5. Again we have the 195 558 duo, and a couple strong fuel and gear teams as the first few picks, though I could see a good gear team being picked before a good fuel team, unless pulled from the top 8. Once again, I’d bump up 2168 a few spots, but other than that this seems fairly likely.

Of course, I don’t run a prediction account for a reason, so we’ll have to see how this turns out.

12

The judges were unaware that EI could not be given out twice. FIRST removed 3 points from their district total (EI gives you 8) but allowed them to keep the award.

13

Will be interesting to see how 195 ranks, you never know who can climb the rankings in this game.

And for your second question, I have no idea ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Probably a mistake like Ty Tremblay said above.

14

Interesting predictions.

While some look odd I think back to our previous rankings from 2014 and 2016 and I would have never seen some of those coming.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the predictions hold up: slightly stronger teams seeding slightly lower. Some having to say yes due to being seeded too low. See 195 last year at DCMP

15

I think it’s a little different this year especially with how the ranking system works. 195 pretty much finalized the tuning on their 40kPa auto at Hartford (except for some glitches on the blue side of the field), which should ensure them the pick of the litter for alliance selections.

I’m personally interested in seeing how many 4 ranking point qualification matches happen :stuck_out_tongue:

16

This is the official response from Frank sent in an email to teams competing at RIDE:

Dear Teams who Participated in the Rhode Island District Event,

My name is Frank Merrick, and I’m the Director of the FIRST Robotics Competetition. Over the weekend, I learned that a mistake was made in determining awards at the event. Team 467, The Colonials, was awarded the Engineering Inspiration Award, but as they had already won Engineering Inspiration at a prior event, they should not have been in consideration for that award per the rules. The Colonials very graciously notified the Judging crew later that they had already won the Engineering Inspiration Award at an earlier event, and were not sure they should have been eligible. We thank them for doing this, and think is says much about their team!

I am very sorry for this issue. Obviously we had not provided sufficient information to our Judges to prevent this from happening. We have sent an urgent email to all Judge Advisors to make sure they are aware of these rules and will be updating our formal training to ensure this is incorporated.

In the meantime, we will not be making any changes to 467’s award status at this event, or any other awards associated with the event. It would not be fair for us to attempt to rerun the awards process after the event using the correct rules.

At the same time, we do have some concerns about the District points that would normally go along with Engineering Inspiration. As you may know, the Engineering Inspiration Award winner at District events earns 8 points, while lower-level awards earn 5. Allowing this team to retain all 8 points for this second win of this award could unfairly affect other teams that are close to the team’s season points total. For this reason, we will be making an adjustment to their current points total, reducing it by 3, and so essentially giving them the points they would have earned for a lower level award. There is a good chance they would have won some other award at the competition, and we do not want our mistake to take those points away from them.

Again, I am sorry for this. We are working to fix this going forward, and I hope you find this resolution satisfactory.

Frank

17

Yeah but you should know that, 195 is gonna pick 558…even is a robot can do an extra gear or so.

Also going to be hard for 195 to be knocked off from the one seed knowing they will be getting 12 extra ranking points

18

While we have always enjoyed working with 195, we never know if they are going to pick us unless they come to talk to us just before alliance selections. 195 is a strategic team, and they will go with what the scouting data tells them. We are fortunate that the field is deep with efficient gear robots at NEDCMP. We are excited to see how things play out. Best of luck to everyone!

19
  1. 195 2168 3467 W
  2. 2648 5687 4151
  3. 1058 125 58
  4. 558 1519 4041 SF
  5. 78 177 1073
  6. 133 95 230 SF
  7. 4908 501 348 F
  8. 2084 1153 88

During Alliance Selection:
195 picks 2168 with the intent of scoring >70kPa per match and getting either 3 or 4 rotors. There is an arms race for shooters to combat this leading to lots of in-picking among alliance captains.

Match by Match:

1v8: Nobody can cope with the firepower of the #1 alliance. 195 wins it in two matches setting record pressure in each match.

2v7: Both alliances are able to get 4 rotors, but the #2 can’t do it if 2648 decides to shoot. 501 is able to shoot a small amount and fouls tip the matches into the #7 alliance’s favor. The closest set of matches in the bracket.

3v6: 1058 is forced to play a 3+D strategy and hope 125’s shooting will give them the win. It takes 3 matches, but the #6 alliance is able to get all four rotors and 445 is a hard score to beat.

4v5: Smart strategy, 1519’s auto, and 4041 falling so deep in the draft allow the #4 alliance to execute a 3 + D strategy and blow past the #5 alliance.

1v4: There is still no stopping the firepower of the #1 alliance. The #4 alliance is stuck between a 3 + D strategy and going for 4 rotors, but neither work against a dominant #1 alliance.

6v7: Two alliances that can score all 4 rotors. The difference is that the #7 alliance can play 4 + D while the #6 must spend all match hunting for that elusive 4th rotor. #7 takes it in 3.

1v7: 3 + D with incredible firepower faces off against 4 + D. In the end, a #7 alliance worn out by a difficult bracket falls to a #1 alliance that cruised through playoffs. Match 1 goes to #1. Match 2 goes to #7. In match 3, a robot on the #7 alliance dies but it doesn’t matter: the #1 alliance sets a new world high score.

20

1 alliance tied world high score (sans penalties) last week during the Hartford District SFs. 558 lost comms during one of the following matches where they were on track to beat the high score…so I can definitely see a new record occurring at NEDCMP.

See everyone soon :ahh: :ahh: :ahh: