I have a question on a hypothetical scenario for alliance selection. Imagine there is a small tournament with only 16 teams. During the alliance selection, what would happen if the first place team asked every team and they all declined? For that matter what if they asked the 16th placed team and they declined? Would the 8th seed be only one team? Obviously this would likely never happen, however I was wondering what would happen if it did.
This would never happen however if it did the event might redo alliance selection.
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Either first seed gets tourney champ, or a redo happens
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I’ll look for it, but from a ruling based in Starstruck(?) In The Zone, I’m pretty sure the answer is that the top eight seeds all only get one team each, filled by the ranked 1-8 teams, and it’s a 1v1 for all the elimination matches. Of course, only the current official Q&A can give a definitive answer, but previous answers are usually consistent.
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There is no provision for “redo” of alliance selection - teams make choices, if it satisfies the criteria set forth in the tournament rules, it is a go. The result in this situation, eight one team alliances, and eight teams pack up to go home.
That said, it would be a symptom of a very toxic environment if every team declined. If it is unsportsmanlike conduct, for example one or more teams targeting the first seed captain, you can face a Code of Conduct violation with consequences beyond that specific tournament.
I would hope that the situation be avoided by alerting the EP of this toxic situation early in the day.
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Or, a bad robot may have gotten lucky and placed first or very high in quals, but no one wants to partner with them. I’ve seen it happen a few times by now
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Where 1st gets rejected by all? Or just a few? Or a bad robot gets 1st?
as far as I know, the ranking system does not have a “luck” factor. What the ranking tells you, the first ranked team performed more consistently as an alliance partner than other teams during qualification rounds.
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It doesn’t happen very often but a s an example, during the tp season we had an 8 motor chassis with a crappy puncher on the side. Because we got amazing partners and not so amazing opponents, we some how got to second seed
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The most rejections I’ve seen is 9. Top seed was a janky one stage tray, that consistently got stuck in their own goal zone during auton. But they went undefeated because lucky schedule (yes, there is luck in vex) and ended up ranking higher than a bunch of high scoring consistently amazing robots. Elims was fun, 9 declines really scrambles the alliances a bit lol.
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I do not see any rankings for 64540A during TP season.
64540A is a new team that I formed after I moved to Texas from California I’ll send u the number of my old team through pm
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I have seen many cases where the top seed, or at least one of the top seeds, was not a great robot. Yes there is luck involved, as the pairings are done by random. I have seen less than great robots being ranked high due to very lucky pairings and a very good robot being ranked low due to very unlucky pairings. This is why it is best to have as many qualifying rounds as possible. Having a 60 team event and 5 qualifying rounds, for example, means you will very likely have MANY undefeated team and at least one of them was lucky in their pairings. To me, a minimum number of qualifying rounds is 6 and should increase as the tournament size increases.
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…Poor soul. Top rejections I’ve seen was in this year with 11, which was a team that only lost one match, but overall looked like a decent two-stage tray. I’ll admit that the winning alliance won because of excellent scouting.
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Scouting is huge. First seed at my last competition had a decent 2 stage tray bot but did not talk to any teams for alliance selection so they were rejected multiple times.
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Agreed - we run 8 QM round for qualifying events, and 10 for Championship event. If the event is five, well not sure how that ranking is meaningful. A team that makes it through 6-8 with “bad robot” is a little more than just luck - good dynamics with alliance partners, teamwork, consistency of hardware, not breaking rules that result in DQs. So if the team got win points as a benefit of teams that got DQ’d that is not luck, but choices of opposing alliance teams.
Cautionary tale:
http://read.gov/aesop/025.html
there is a rule that says 16th seed has to say yes
Please cite specific rule. I have not found any in the game manual.
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Every time I MC a tournament that every team goes on to the finals, I always state that the last team has the right to reject. Will they? Probably not, but for instance if their bot completely broke (or something I’ve seen increasingly something wonky happened with the firmware/code), and they can’t fix it, they might be a hindrance rather than help.
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Exactly!
Every team has the right to decline - not just the last team. Their decision, and if we have to spend extra time tweaking the chosen teams in TM, so be it. Not fun, but it is the will of the teams - we can not force teams to participate in eliminations or leave early.
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