So my team is new to vex competition and I would like to know how the alliances work. So my school has two vex teams, and I would like to know if we were allowed to be on the same alliance during competition. How do they even pick alliances? Is it random or can you have predetermined alliances before competition?
Alliance selection for tournaments are random, so you may go against your school.
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During qualification rounds alliance selection is random, however if you do good, you can get into the elimination rounds where you get to pick your alliance partner. BTW you can read the game manual found on the Vex website.
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Check out the Tournament section of the game manual for it all written out: https://content.vexrobotics.com/docs/vrc-tower-takeover/GameManual-20190816.pdf
I would also recommend going to the first competition in your area, even if just to spectate, so you can see how tournaments work firsthand.
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As said above, the event is broken into two parts. Qualification rounds, where your team is raked based on performance, and elimination rounds, where the real tournament is.
In qualification rounds, your alliances are random. You can expect to be with, go against, or possibly never encounter your organization in these rounds.
In elimination rounds, the top seeds get to select their partner for the rest of the tournament. A lot of teams do select their own organization because they can know exactly what to expect from them. If you seed high enough, you may select your own organization, if you wish.
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This is how competitions will normally work for regionals and states. Some signature events and worlds are formatted differently. It doesn’t really matter this early in the season, but it’s always good to have extra information.
Everything described in this thread applies to all events, including Signature Events and Worlds. Some events will also have additional elimination matches after the finals (e.g. having elimination rounds within a division and then having the winners of each division play against each other), but the qualification matches always work the same way, and each team gets the same number counted towards them.
Edited to add:
For the elimination rounds, you are allowed to pick any team you want as long as they have not officially declined another team who attempted to pick them.
You can pick another team from your school if you want to, but sometimes it’s best to pick a team from a different school, depending on how good their robot is.
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I apologize for not being specific enough, I was referring to how competitions like worlds and the US Open have divisions. However, this does not exactly pertain to the topic so I decided not to emphasize.
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