Scoring and Defense.

FIRST General Forum
1

Posted by Sean Kim, Student on team #115 from Monta Vista High School.

Posted on 4/26/99 11:00 PM MST

The game and the rule was really complicated. It was nice, of course, and fun!

But I think this average point thing had its disadvantage. My team, whose average score was like 43 after 4 rounds. (ick)

We LOST the 5th round with the score of 57. It raised our average.

And we WON the 6th round with the score of 12 resulting in 36 points with the tripler for winners. This actually decreased our average. We were playing defense and trying to get the other team’s basket from raising with our arm.

I don’t know what you guys think, but I think they should have gotten rid of all the average point things and played more rounds, say 12 just like in NASA Ames Regional, and count the number of wins. By counting the average scores, I think we didn’t get to see all the defense plays that we could have seen without average point system.

kison

PS: heehee I am kinda skeptic…got to be when we are 190th!

2

Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.

Posted on 4/26/99 11:58 PM MST

In Reply to: Scoring and Defense. posted by Sean Kim on 4/26/99 11:00 PM MST:

Not a bad suggestion.

In fact, this would reduce the effect of a high scoring round on teams that simply got lucky. However, it also would bring a team that got unlucky for one round WAY down in the standings. Maybe. It’s hard to say. Perhaps we’re on to something here, maybe it should be more like seeding was last year.

First tried to give a heavy multiplier for winning a match, but that only magnified the effect of a high scoring round. 1620 QPs for one round? Easy top 16.

One last comment. In the finals, teams are ranked solely on wins and losses. Why should the goal of the QMs be different than that of the finals?

What do all of you other highly opinionated people think? (it’s scary how well that describes me)

-Daniel

3

Posted by Sean Kim, Student on team #115 from Monta Vista High School.

Posted on 4/27/99 12:06 AM MST

In Reply to: I like it! posted by Daniel on 4/26/99 11:58 PM MST:

Punk…can’t say ‘Good idea, Sean!’?
You just had to say ‘Not bad’

Punk.

heehee

4

Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.

Posted on 4/27/99 12:13 AM MST

In Reply to: This is Off Topic posted by Sean Kim on 4/27/99 12:06 AM MST:

C’mon Sean, you know me better than that. You can’t expect me to call you a genius…

-Daniel

5

Posted by Jeff Burch, Engineer on team #45, TechnoKats, from Kokomo High School and Delphi Delco Electronics Systems.

Posted on 4/27/99 9:20 AM MST

In Reply to: Scoring and Defense. posted by Sean Kim on 4/26/99 11:00 PM MST:

You’re right, the 3x multiplier for winning puts too much emphasis on high scores, which I’m sure was FIRST’s intent. But with this system, a team the loses with a score of 100 gets more qualifying points than a team that wins with a score of 30. Does this make sense?

My suggestion is to have a fixed number of qualifying points (say 200) added to your score for winning. Taking the same example, a winning score of 30 gets you 230 QPs rather than just 90. I think this would make for more exciting matches because there would be more incentive to win rather than just score big.

6

Posted by Joe Johnson, Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 4/27/99 8:27 PM MST

In Reply to: Re: Scoring and Defense. posted by Jeff Burch on 4/27/99 9:20 AM MST:

I think that FIRST was trying to liven up the competition by having an incentive to play offense rather than defence.

In some ways, I think this was FIRST’s attempt at a shot clock.

I am still digesting what I think about this year’s whole competition format, but I have to say in general, I liked it.

I will have to formulate a more specific and reasoned opinion as time goes on.

Stay tuned…

Joe J.

7

Posted by P.J. Baker, Engineer on team #177, Bobcat Robotics, from South Windsor High School and International Fuel Cells.

Posted on 4/27/99 10:06 AM MST

In Reply to: Scoring and Defense. posted by Sean Kim on 4/26/99 11:00 PM MST:

It was my feeling before Nationals, that we would have to have 2 300+ pt.
Rounds to make the top 16 teams. I was only partially right. We did get
the two big rounds (thanks SPAM (432 pts.) and Rip Tide (378 pts.)). In
addition to those two big wins, we had three wins with 13, 54, and
(I think) 36 points, and one loss with 36 points. Along with our partners,
we fought hard to win those low scoring matches. At the time, I sort of
counted them as losses. After our 432 point round Thursday night, I was
always waiting for the second big score. It turned out though, that
winning those squeakers was very important for cracking into the top 16.
The teams were all so close, that had the 13, 54, and 36 point wins been
losses with the same point total, I think we might have ended up in the
20’s instead of at 14th. I don’t have complete information, and probably
never will, but I would bet that almost all of the top 16 were 6-0, 5-1,
or 4-2. Not 2-4 teams that had ‘lucky’ pairings. If you are out there
and were in the top 16, please respond to this post with your record to
prove me right or wrong.

To sum it up, I understand that it sucks to have gone 6-0 and not been drafted (you are not alone Walled Lake, I know of at least one other team), but I think that the system ended up rewarding teams that could both win close matches and win with big scores. Although there were certainly more than 16 teams with that capability, I felt that the system did a great job of getting most of the best teams into the elimination tournament.

8

Posted by Dave, Student on team #308, Walled Lake Monster, from Walled Lake Schools and TRW.

Posted on 4/27/99 6:17 PM MST

In Reply to: Re: Scoring and Defense. posted by P.J. Baker on 4/27/99 10:06 AM MST:

Hey,

I know this is a little off subject, but I have to say thank you to all the teams that noticed what happened to us. After we didn’t get drafted, I was running ideas through my head, espically about the fact that publicity gets you noticed. Us being a rookie team, many people probably looked over us, while I’m sure that everyone heard of team #1 before they won it all, mostly because they passed out everything you could imagine and got people to notice them. Now, I’m not saying that it’s all how they got in, but I’m sure it helped.

Dave

: It was my feeling before Nationals, that we would have to have 2 300+ pt.
: Rounds to make the top 16 teams. I was only partially right. We did get
: the two big rounds (thanks SPAM (432 pts.) and Rip Tide (378 pts.)). In
: addition to those two big wins, we had three wins with 13, 54, and
: (I think) 36 points, and one loss with 36 points. Along with our partners,
: we fought hard to win those low scoring matches. At the time, I sort of
: counted them as losses. After our 432 point round Thursday night, I was
: always waiting for the second big score. It turned out though, that
: winning those squeakers was very important for cracking into the top 16.
: The teams were all so close, that had the 13, 54, and 36 point wins been
: losses with the same point total, I think we might have ended up in the
: 20’s instead of at 14th. I don’t have complete information, and probably
: never will, but I would bet that almost all of the top 16 were 6-0, 5-1,
: or 4-2. Not 2-4 teams that had ‘lucky’ pairings. If you are out there
: and were in the top 16, please respond to this post with your record to
: prove me right or wrong.

: To sum it up, I understand that it sucks to have gone 6-0 and not been drafted (you are not alone Walled Lake, I know of at least one other team), but I think that the system ended up rewarding teams that could both win close matches and win with big scores. Although there were certainly more than 16 teams with that capability, I felt that the system did a great job of getting most of the best teams into the elimination tournament.

9

Posted by Dale Boudreau, Engineer on team #191, X-Cats, from Joseph C. Wilson and Xerox.

Posted on 4/28/99 11:14 AM MST

In Reply to: Re: Scoring and Defense. posted by P.J. Baker on 4/27/99 10:06 AM MST:

: It was my feeling before Nationals, that we would have to have 2 300+ pt.
: Rounds to make the top 16 teams. I was only partially right. We did get
: the two big rounds (thanks SPAM (432 pts.) and Rip Tide (378 pts.)). In
: addition to those two big wins, we had three wins with 13, 54, and
: (I think) 36 points, and one loss with 36 points. Along with our partners,
: we fought hard to win those low scoring matches. At the time, I sort of
: counted them as losses. After our 432 point round Thursday night, I was
: always waiting for the second big score. It turned out though, that
: winning those squeakers was very important for cracking into the top 16.
: The teams were all so close, that had the 13, 54, and 36 point wins been
: losses with the same point total, I think we might have ended up in the
: 20’s instead of at 14th. I don’t have complete information, and probably
: never will, but I would bet that almost all of the top 16 were 6-0, 5-1,
: or 4-2. Not 2-4 teams that had ‘lucky’ pairings. If you are out there
: and were in the top 16, please respond to this post with your record to
: prove me right or wrong.

: To sum it up, I understand that it sucks to have gone 6-0 and not been drafted (you are not alone Walled Lake, I know of at least one other team), but I think that the system ended up rewarding teams that could both win close matches and win with big scores. Although there were certainly more than 16 teams with that capability, I felt that the system did a great job of getting most of the best teams into the elimination tournament.

I am with team 191, we seeded 13th. We went 5-1 in the seeding rounds. We scored a perfect game with TJ^2 immediately after losing a round with another team by scoring only 16. We had scores of 126, 108, and 126. We then scouted the top 60 teams heavily, not looking for the team with the best record, but the team that complimented our machine well. We were not as prepared for this task as we would have liked, but our take was that all the machines out there in the top 60 were very good and very close. Luck and strategy play as much a role in the playoffs as excellence in engineering. We picked some excellent partners in GRT and Quincy. We were, unfortunately eliminated in the first round by some great competitors, but, as they say…that’s why they play the game.

10

Posted by Chris, Coach on team #308, Walled Lake Monster, from Walled Lake Schools and TRW Automotive Electronics.

Posted on 4/28/99 11:48 AM MST

In Reply to: Re: Scoring and Defense. posted by P.J. Baker on 4/27/99 10:06 AM MST:

: To sum it up, I understand that it sucks to have gone 6-0 and not been drafted (you are not alone Walled Lake, I know of at least one other team), but I think that the system ended up rewarding teams that could both win close matches and win with big scores. Although there were certainly more than 16 teams with that capability, I felt that the system did a great job of getting most of the best teams into the elimination tournament.

I just want to point out that we’re not whining or crying or anything. As I pointed out on the Rumor Mill we’re mostly disappointed in ourselves for what we did wrong. We were just hoping that we could get picked up so we wouldn’t feel so bad about what we did. Not getting picked up really made us live with ourselves, and that is hard.

I should explain what I mean:

Has anyone seen the story of the Super Bowl in the late 70’s between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys? At the end of the game, the Cowboys had the ball deep in Pittsburgh territory and trailed by less than a touchdown. As time was running out, Roger Staubach noticed that the tight end (can’t remember his name) was wide open in the end zone. He threw the ball nice and easy and hit the tight end right in the hands with a perfectly thrown ball. THEN - the tight end dropped the ball, losing the game.

Well, we ‘dropped the ball in the endzone’ at the nationals. In the last match we had an easy chance at a perfect score, but we had a motor problem. The problem was easily fixable and would have been noticed had we run our standard test before the match. For some reason, the test was not run and we didn’t notice the problem until the match was under way. Our two opponents both had robot problems and we had the entire field to ourselves to make a perfect score. But thanks to our mistake, we settled for a low scoring win (thanks to our partner team), and dropped out of the top 16. The perfect score would have been good enough for the #1 seed, as it turned out.

So, first of all, we’re dissappointed in ourselves that we let the #1 seed slip away. And that is very hard to live with. Then we missed the finals because of our mistake, which just compounded the dissapointment. I suppose some of us wondered out loud why we weren’t picked so we know what we did wrong, so it doesn’t happen again.

I do have a few theories why we weren’t picked.

  1. We may not have sold ourself well. We tried to sell ourselves to the rest of the top 16 when we were in the top 16 just in case we didn’t make it. I guess our sales job wasn’t good enough.

  2. Spending time in the top 16 hurt us. We were in the top 16 almost the entire tournament until the very end. The only teams that came to see us were teams looking to get picked by us. No one from the top 16 came to see us (except Team E.L.I.T.E., which didn’t make it either) in case we didn’t make the top 16 ourselves. When we tried selling ourselves, some of the top 16 teams didn’t appear that interested in seeing us because they thought we would end up in the top 16 so they didn’t want to waste their time.

  3. Regional Alliance Comfort. I knew this would kill us if we didn’t make the top 16. We STUNK at our regional. A lot of the top teams were in the top 8 at a regional and were comfortable with their partner at that regional. I figured that these teams would pick their partner from the regional that they were comfortable with and have played with already. I noticed that at least a few teams did this.

  4. Our robot didn’t fit. This was true with some teams. But this is where I thought we had an advantage to being picked. We could do almost everything, and our strength was controlling the puck. Most teams were looking for a team to control the puck, and we did that as good as anybody.

So, we’re not bitter at anyone or anything like that. We’re just upset with ourselves and hoped that we would be picked up so we could forget about our mistake. When we weren’t picked up, we wondered out loud why we weren’t picked up. I have some theories why, but in the end, there’s only one guarantee to get into the finals, and we blew it.

-Chris

11

Posted by Joe Johnson, Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 4/29/99 4:59 AM MST

In Reply to: Re: Scoring and Defense. posted by Chris on 4/28/99 11:48 AM MST:

I just want to say how much I enjoy the input that Chris and the others from 308 have given to this forum.

I think that with the attitude that I see reflected in their messages, we can expect great things in the future from TRW & Walled Lake.

Keep up the good work.

Joe J.