Nothing backwards about it, and I’ve already seen teams do it. It is actually quite an effective way to load up “top loaders”.
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Sports analogies do not apply here. There isn’t a single major sport (involving a ball, at least) in which your playoff seeding is entirely based on your opponent’s score. This is because win/loss records usually suffice (i.e. there is no incentive for a basketball team to blow the other team out, because all that matters is the win). FIRST plays few games with many teams, resulting inevitably in lots of W/L ties. Thus, in FIRST, the tiebreaker is a key strategic element, where in most major sports, nobody cares about this rare event.
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Every team is at this competition to win. Period. Teams do what they have to do to win. If it is possible, within the confines of match play, to advance your position by scoring for your opponent, it would be a brutal mistake not to do so. The system is there for you to use.
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This topic comes up every year. In 2003, elimination rounds were set up such that the alliance with the highest point total at the end of two rounds won. The points an alliance received were a multiple of the loser’s score (I believe the multiple was 1 for the loser, and 2 for the winner). The dominant strategy was to win the first round no matter what, collecting 2x your opponent’s score, and then lose the second round as badly as possible. If you lost with a score of zero, you were in the best position possible, because neither alliance received any points in the second round, and your alliance won by default (because you won the first round). It was a terribly broken scoring system, but the teams that won used what they were given to the best of their ability. Teams complained it was “unsportsmanlike” to lose intentionally. Teams said FIRST didn’t intend the game to be played that way. But the fact of the matter is, whether FIRST intended the game to be played in that manner or not, they set the game up that way. De-scoring that second match wasn’t losing. It was winning within in the confines of the system. Just like scoring in your opponents goal isn’t showing off. It’s advancing your position (winning) in the confines of the system. And that is all that matters when you’re out there playing a match.
Jeff
Thats not very nice. It could also hurt you even though you lose it will also lower your average points. Just think you tied for eight in wins but are ninth because of your QP’s and then you do not get picked.
PreNote: This is not directed toward any of the triplets, but is made as a general statement.
Two points of truth keep getting repeated in this thread:
- Scoring points for your opponent is a good strategy when you will win by a blowout, and
- It is embarrassing to have an opponent so self-assured of victory that they begin to score for you.
My question would be “Why did the other alliance not have the ability to score many points?” Was their robot not working correctly? And, did you do anything to help them get it working properly?
If a team is struggling to get their drive system to do more than run in circles, and you are sitting in your pit polishing the chassis of your bot, then you don’t “get it”.
The FIRST competition isn’t just about beating your opponents at YOUR best, but it is also about beating your opponents at THEIR best. If you have made no move to help them fix their robot, when you have had ample time to do so, it isn’t the lowly scoring alliance that should be embarrassed for their play, it is the dominating team that should be embarassed for their unwillingness to help fellow competitors.
Repped.
You just have to be sure your offer to help is made graciously and professionally. That’s a careful balancing act as well.
In many of the matches that I’ve seen, it’s not that the robots weren’t working properly. A few times, the robots tipped, making scoring very difficult without very original strategies. Other times, the machines had basic design flaws which made it difficult for them to do things quickly (I remember last year, we scored maybe 1-2 tetras per match, if that).
To the credit of the Triplets (or at least 1114), I was in 1114’s pit’s a bit at GLR and whenever anyone asked for anything, they were eager to help. Yes, they were sitting down, but they are probably one of the classiest teams that I’ve seen based on their actions.
You saw a robot jump off its ramp at the end of a match, OK
but how can you possibly know why that happened, unless the driver told you the reason after the match?
There seems to be a lot of mind-readers on CD this year. Reporting events you witnessed is good information.
Conjecture on what was going on in someone else’s mind is not good.
As Sargent Friday would say, “just give us the facts!”
i agree with you 100%. only say something if you know it for a fact. this is why i actually went and researched what i said about the robot getting off the ramp at the last second for myself. it turned out to be true that they did get off of the ramp on purpose on the end of the match to give the winning alliance less points.
The scoring system has never made any real sense to me… unless you plan to put every team up against every combination of teams with every combination of alliance partners, you’re going to get inaccurate results.
Some good team could go up against the best combinations of alliance partners and never win and not get many points, while some less-than- average robot who was up against the easiest teams could end up in the top eight.
I recall at the NJ regional, spike (293) had a great bot who, given the oppertunity, could score a ridiculous amount of points. I also recall after three or four matches they were in about 46th place.
We could also have a really really good team go up against a bunch of really really bad teams, or in one case score a ridiculous cough 137 amount of points, but because their opponents only got 10 points they would not move up, but down in the rankings because other matches were much closer.
I understand FIRST’s logic, that you should only award points based on how hard the match was, but how hard the match was can not be measured in points. If they want to do that they need to create a major league and a minor league. All good bots to the left, all bad bots to the right (which obviously they won’t do.)
In the game this year the amount of points scored is based heavily on how hard you get hit by other bots, and it seems the bots who were best at hitting people were also the ones who couldn’t really score any points. If there was a bot that was just a drive train with some strong motors and great turning/speed that just smacked 25 around, they wouldn’t have had near as many points at the NJ regional. But just because your opponent didn’t manage to get any points doesn’t mean the match wasn’t hard. Dodging three tank bots just to get a few points in the top goal is no easy task for any bot.
It seems they were trying to fix the ‘easy matches shouldn’t be rewarded’ part and by doing so they created many more problems than they had. This isn’t like a sporting event, major league and minor league teams don’t play against eachother and thus how many points they score and how many points they PREVENT their opponents from scoring measures how good they are.
Having to score for your opponents to get your rightly deserved points is ridiculous in the first place.
I think if you’re insulted by the other team scoring for you, you probably should take a look at the scoring system and you’ll understand. If I do badly enough in a match that they have to score on themselves to get a good ranking, be my guest. I’d do it in their position.
It sort of makes me wish we had just put 25 on the offense in that match and used both 486 and our alliance partner to score on our own goal near the end so that we got a good ranking, but then again 25 didn’t score all 137 points :rolleyes:
There were a lot of good teams at NJ that were not ranked well… but they got picked as alliance partners, so I suppose we can say scouting to the rescue 
Last year in Atlanta we were able to stack tetras 6 or 7 high almost every round. Which was very good, we could cap the center goal easily. At the end of day one we were dead last and no wins if I remember right.
Challenging the ranking system is not going to really help. The RP system exists for more than just strength of schedule, as I have already pointed out in previous posts in this thread. The symbolism behind it is what is truly important.
It’s not gracious. It’s not professional. It’s just plain insulting and rude.
If you’re so bent on winning that you do that, then FIRST is not for you.
not so long ago teams would get some multiple of the loser’s score, if they won. This “tweaking” of points that we are seeing at some competitions is like a remnant of that frame of mind.
Since I wasn’t in FIRST before 2001, I can’t speak for earlier years, but in 2002 you received some form of the losers score. That is the first year I remember watching teams “descore” to cause their opponents to have fewer “ranking points”. The 2002 game had “tethers” back to the end zone for additional points, and robots that obviously had lost would drive out of the end zone so they wouldn’t count for bonus points. It wasn’t frequent, but it did happen occasionally.
Please excuse me, but maybe FIRST is not for people who think that FIRST is not for someone else.
The only reason that this issue even matters is because of tie breakers in seeding. Teams with the same number of wins are then ranked by the points derived by the formula that promotes scoring for the opponent, once the win/loss has been determined.
Which is often by the end of the auton period or the end of the next period - leaving the final period when everyone can score to decide what they will do.
I don’t advocate scoring for the opponent - because I think thats demeaning and not worth upsetting the opponents feelings, but I do realize and understand why others may feel differently about this - and that is their choice.
What could have been done to eliminate this entire issue, is when they decided to go back to seeding using this method (it wasn’t always like this), they could have used a formula that didn’t encourage this kind of behaviour.
The problem with that is, there are times when point differential isn’t the issue - its more a problem of what attributes the alliance has, and the number of robots that are working and play in the match.
On top of the problem with unbalanced alliances, often their are 3 team alliances, where 1 or 2 teams can carry the 3rd team to victory regardless of the score for either team. Scoring teams provide the next level of seeding for everyone in the alliance - even if some of them cannot score at all. This doesn’t seem like a good way to determine which teams should be seeded above others - to me. Teams playing great defense don’t get extra points for the team, but they do keep the score down (which is opposite of what the next level of seeding is based on). Something is wrong with this concept.
Using score differential as the next level tie breaker in seeding implies that the teams CAN score, but often that is NOT the case. 3 Defensive teams can win matches by outnumbering the scoring teams that have little or no help - 7 to 9, 8 to 10, whatever. Low scores with little point differential. The teams playing defense cannot afford to let the other team score for them and as the match progresses the teams are too busy trying to get enough of their own points, let alone worry about scoring for the other team.
I think if you are going to use the points for wins method to determine seeding, the second tier for ranking is going to be very difficult to determine and make it so everyone is going to be happy - perhaps just draw straws at the time of the alliance selection process would suffice and drop the formula scoring differential altogether as the tie breaker. All teams with 0 losses draw straws to determine which is higher ranked for alliance selection, then those with 1 loss, and on and on until the top 12 are determined - after all, beyond the top 12 seeding doesn’t much matter.
No - it’s oxymoronic, which is what the “Excuse me” was about. 
[Claps] That is realy well put, although another way to fix would be to make it against the rules to score for your opponent, it woulnt fix everything, but would fix a lot i think.
BUt past the 12 seed is STILL important for some teams, if your 13/68 seed it feels beter then having (no rank) … or having a 7way tie for 3-3-2 record is rediculous.
-kevin
well this has not really been an issue for our team at Lone Star because the random alliances are pretty balanced out so almost every match the score is close, but like usual there are matches were an alliance just blows away the opposing alliance. i think our team has just gotten to the conclusion not to worry about it and just win.