I was wondering what everyone thought the skills cutoffs would be for top 30 by the time March 7th comes around. Currently, robot skills 30th place is sitting at 276 and programming skills is at 220 but both are rising pretty quickly. What do you all think?
I definitely think that the top 30 in the world will be above 300 in both driver and programming skills by then.
360 will be Driver Skills cutoff and 300 will be Programming Skills cutoff.
This might help:
http://vex.us.nallen.me/extras/skills_cutoffs?program=VRC&season=Nothing_But_Net&stype=Robot
Even though people never seem to pay attention to this and argue anyway, here’s my usual disclaimer: I know this season is different to past season and so data isn’t exactly applicable, but it’s useful nonetheless.
Someone recently asked me to make a graph of how the skills cutoff scores changed throughout the season (for this season and past seasons), which is available here. It shows some useful information about this question if we look at the scores at around the 18th January, and then the final cutoff and compare them.
Robot Skills
Skyrise - “Now”: 43 - Final: 48 - Increase: 11.6%
Toss Up - “Now”: 73 - Final: 84 - Increase: 15.1%
Sack Attack - “Now”: 200 - Final: 235 - Increase: 17.5%
The average increase between now and the final cutoff has been 14.7%
Therefore with a current cutoff of 276 we could expect ~317 points to be the cutoff.
Programming Skills
Skyrise - “Now”: 19 - Final: 33 - Increase: 73.7%
Toss Up - “Now”: 39 - Final: 55 - Increase: 41.0%
Sack Attack - “Now”: 90 - Final: 135 - Increase: 50%
The average increase between now and the final cutoff has been 54.9%
Therefore with a current cutoff of 220 we could expect ~340 points to be the cutoff.
Now of course this makes no sense, there has been a much smaller difference between Robot Skills scores and Programming Skills scores this season than previous seasons so our Programming Skills scores are relatively high for this point in the season. But we can still learn some valuable information from this data, such as that robots don’t seem to improve TOO much between now and the final cutoff in terms of their Robot Skills scores, while their Programming Skills scores do.
There’s strong evidence that the Nothing But Net Programming Skills scores still have a way to go before they begin to level out too (similar to past seasons). In the past 2 weeks of competition the cutoff score has risen by a massive 40 points (was 180 on 2 Jan).
Anyway, my prediction is 310 for Programming Skills and 320 - 330 for Robot Skills.
One of my teams just got 223 in programming this weekend and is currently 31st. Based on what @nallen01 says we won’t be staying there long! (shucks) I do agree though.
My guess would be slightly over 300 for programming.
Slightly off topic question. If the top 10 programming skills scores in the world already have a world invite from their state competition, does the RECF then move down to the top 40 in the world? Or is it top 30 regardless of double qualifications?
I am pretty sure that the top 30 in the world invite is the primary world invite and, thus, the invite earned at the state competition would go to the skills at the state competition and not the worlds ones.
Yes I just so happened to take advantage of this during toss up. A team that beat us in the finals double qual’d so it moved over to the skills in the state and gave out the states spot that way.
Sigh… This is depressing.
How about looking at the graph and analyse the gradient?
Maybe it will give us a better picture of how or how fast the scores are changing?
Robot - 310
Programming - 280 (we hope)
I’d say
Robot - 320
Programming - 300
This is incorrect. Neither invite is “primary,” and the only situation where spots are moved to the state skills rankings is if a team double qualifies at their state championship. Teams ranking in the top 30 of either skills who also qualify at their state championship simply earn two qualification spots, which does nothing for them, and essentially “burns” one of the state’s spots. It simplifies things a bit, since the skills rankings are not made final until March 7th, which is after most state championship tournaments have ended, so all state spots can easily be given at the event, rather than sometime after, when the official world skills rankings are finalized.
I think this year is really intriguing with regards to skills as it’s probably one of the few games since maybe sack attack where having the best skills robot might not correlate to having the best on field robots in general, I generally put Canada along with New Zealand and Singapore above general usually when it comes to robot performance. What I mean by this is the short net shot is the best way to go as far as posting a high skills score. This can be compounded by having a “double barrel” shooter so that the high skills teams will be able to post sub .5 shots a second with extreme precision. This really doesn’t pertain to the match game as teams need to sacrifice other aspects of their robot to be successful. I will also throw in the density of the balls playing a factor into this as well. I think this equates a bit to some elite skill ranking and on field teams being a bit lower than normal on the skills side at this time of year, for instance 7232 series, 62, 185A, 10 series all are a bit lower than normal. Another note on this is no New Zealand score has been added officially yet to the table and the Singapore scores are also low for the region traditionally so those are bound to move the average up. Right now for driver 8 teams have already out shot or equaled just the pre loads for total points. 12 teams really isn’t that much to add to the list. This game also goes back to how good your human loader is for both driver and programming and as the old saying goes practice makes perfect.
I think bare minimum for skills to get to worlds are:
Driver: 350-360
Programming: 310-320
Well this is a lot closer to correct. To just add on. Skills spots go to the highest ranked nonqualified team so they are designed to be non primary. (different from not designed to be primary)
For some reason I thought that qualifying with top 30 effectively opened up 1:1 more World spots for your State. Is this incorrect?
Well if your state competition were to happen like the last week of March. If your state competition submits scores before the cutoff then the spot you will use is your state’s. The skills spots are supposed to be what happens last to allow the best unqualified teams to be invited.
ponder this for a moment 
It is my understanding that qualifying for World’s through skills is totally separate from qualifying through a state championship. We have seven teams that qualify through our state in high school. If a team that qualifies through Skills (top 30) did not qualify through state, that does NOT take away from the seven that did qualify through state. Conversely, if a team that qualifies through Skills (top 30) is among the seven that qualify through state, that does not add an additional spot through state.
As of now: robot: 325, programming: 306
Any updated predictions?