So after finding lots of information on how scoring Win Points, Skills Points, and other factors can push you up the competition chain
(local to state to regional to worlds) I still can’t seem to find what I’m looking for…
Basically my concern is about going to multiple local events. For example our closest competition is in October and we want to compete. However there’s a good chance we would do much better at the competition 5 months away.
So, is there a downside to going to, and bombing, earlier events? Or are the scores of each tournament localized to each individual tournament. As in if each of the tournaments had the same difficulty level, would it be just as easy to win a state spot at any tournament as the next, regardless of past events?
No, there’s no downside. You are only rewarded for doing well at tournaments and not doing well in skills or not winning the judged awards or the elimination bracket has no consequences.
By the way, I’m not sure if I’m just misunderstanding, but Win Points, APs, and SPs all affect your ranking within a tournament, not a region or anything. The only things that matter with regards to qualifying for states and worlds are winning a qualifying judged award, winning a tournament (most of the time), or scoring sufficiently high in skills.
Besides state, there’s no significance to later season tournaments. You might not be as good in October as January, but neither will your opponents, so if you can win early with a simple robot, that’s a good way to qualify for state.
In short, just go to all the tournaments you can afford and have time for and try to do well at each one, but don’t worry about doing badly.
It’s hard to beat early-season events to learn game strategy and test out ideas early to see if they have good potential. That’s why we run our first event at the Monroe County Fair (it happened last Saturday). Come on up next year…it’s only a 12 hour drive from Alabama
I guess you have a point but going to more competitions just gives to more advantages in general. While its true that by going to a early competition, you team will do much worse than at a comp in 5 months, however, you probably will only do much better in that comp in 5 months because you competed at the earlier comp. Competitions allows teams to evaluate their designs and compare it to other designs at the comp. Also there are things that may happen at a comp that you may never see at testing or trying to recreate competition scenarios.
Go to as many as you can, fail at as many as you can
That’s how you can learn.
And run programming and driver skills all year (from the start) up until the bitter end!!!
As far as I’m concerned, there are no downsides to attending many tournaments other than the cost. If your team can afford it, in my opinion it can be extremely beneficial.
For one, what better driver practice is there than a real competition environment? At tournaments you (especially if you attend enough where you have room to mess around at some) can play around with different strategies and game analyses. You also get to find out where the weak points in your design are (something I wish we knew of before our regional event), and still have time to ammend the hole.
All I’ve heard from teams who’ve attended multiple tournaments was good feedback. For example, 86868 won 31 awards in starstruck, excluding their world championship title. Ive also heard the same advice from members of 44 and QCC2.
I remember one weekend, 86868 went to two tournaments. The only possible downside I see is less time to work on the robot, but if you have a fully functioning robot, I don’t see any downsides.
I would advise against going to competitions that you know you are going to tank in. When worlds comes around, many teams will be running their scouting programs. You don’t want to have a bad win/loss ratio as teams will note that down. Also, teams will try to analyze your AP to determine if you have a consistent autonomous. Although robots change before worlds, the data, given by your regional and state performances, does reflect how other teams might perceive you. But, if you are confident in your robot, and you have the money, you should go to as many competitions as you can.
I would agree with this. If you take a design that’s not competition-tested to a late-season event then you don’t know the outcome. By going to early season events you have a better sense of what works and what needs to be scrapped.
No downsides, as everyone else has pretty much expressed. If your budget can allow for it and your team has the time available, the more events the better.
It will also allow you to keep a constant eye on the level of game play in your region throughout the season, which might help you come states.
I actually disagree. For me, it’s really helpful to prepare some 1-2 month gaps between competitions so I can rebuild and improve. If I win a competition, I know my robot is doing well, but if I don’t, there’s always room to improve. I’d recommend spacing out competitions or leaving some gaps so you can make changes as appropriate. That said, there are quite a few teams that go to competitions quite regularly and do well, so it really is a personal/ budget based decision. Either way works.
Our team always tries to goto as many tournaments as possible for a few reasons.
Real competition is much different than any practice you could get at your own school/location, and much
more beneficial IMO. The variety of strategies and designs you can encounter during a tournament conditions you for many more situations than you could create vs your own teams on a practice field. It also allows you to test your robot in real conditions. You could say testing your robot on your own field is real conditions but during a competition you might encounter excessive defense, or a maneuver you never thought of at your home field. The last reason is you can find other teams designs at tournaments, and use their innovations to add to your own robot. Really the only thing with a downside is not going to tournaments. Not to mention u get awards and have alot of fun!
Adding on to what Scrufferdog wrote, if you and your team do not get a lot of scrimmages and practice (perhaps you don’t own a field) going to all comps will allow for maximized practice and exposure to all the competition. Also being around the vex community can really help teach not only engineering skills but also a lot of life skills. If from one competition you get bombed and lose horribly, it could just be bad luck with pairings, opponents, etc. Going to more comps will help increase the sample size and eventually tell you what type of robots are good and if you should invest a lot of time modifying rather than practicing.
To be honest there isn’t truly any downside when going to all competitions when it comes to VEX and becoming more successful at VEX, but it would mean a tad bit less time in your life as well as it would be highly recommended to get sponsors due to the amount of money you’d have to spend in order to get into a competition.
From my experience, the more competitions you attend, the more testing your robot goes through, as well as experience you gain. More competitions can mean more stress, but for sure means more excitement.
