Advancement Criteria - Answer Thread

[Administrator]

Answers to questions posted pertaining to Advancement Criteria.

[JoAnn]

Advancement from Qualifying Tournaments

I'm curious if other states work the same way as NorCal, or if this is even considered a legitimate advancement scheme. NorCal has 14 qualifiers, though it counts it as 17 qualifiers because 3 events have two fields. To that end, they are advancing two teams from all but the 3 two-field events, which advance four. For most competitions, they are only advancing the host team of the event, and the Inspire Award winner. The Winning Alliance Captain doesn't get to go.

I did a breakdown of the data as I saw it. Is this a legitimate advancement scheme? It doesn't seem like a robotics competition if the winning robot doesn't get to advance to the regional championships.

A breakdown of the data would indicate there are 12 host teams, for 14 qualifiers (not the 16 the website claims), plus 14 Inspire Award winners, equals 26 teams. From the 3 two-field qualifiers, an additional six teams get slots: 3 Winning Alliance Captains and 3 Inspire 2nd place. That adds up to 32 of the 48 available slots. The remaining 16 slots are then to be filled via lottery. There are still 9 Winning Alliance Captains that do not have a spot (as there are 14 qualifiers, and 3 are two-field events that automatically advance the Winning Alliance Captain plus 2 no-host events). Instead of advancing these Winning Alliance Captains automatically, when there are clearly still slots available for them to take, and filling the last available slots by lottery, the policy is instead to fill all 16 slots via lottery. This in turns creates the highly probable situation where a Winning Alliance 2nd pick or Think Award winner is selected to go to the regional championships instead of a Winning Alliance Captain who earned the spot, according to the rule of advancement from the game manual (section 4.8.2, part 1). How is this a sensible solution? It appears more like faulty mathematics, where it was decided to simply divide the number of available seats by the number of qualifiers and then declare that that is the most any competition can send automatically, while advancing an optional team over a mandatory team, instead of taking a moment to consider the situation and work out a neater, more equitable solution.

Hello Team 10794,

Thank you for your forum post.

The advancement criteria being used in NorCal follows our FIRST Tech Challenge advancement criteria policy. The organizers are not deviating from that policy in any way. While you may not agree with the policy, FIRST recognizes it as a legitimate way to advance teams. The Inspire Award winning team advances because they have earned the highest and most important award that is offered by the FIRST Tech Challenge program. The host team advances because they have taken on the burden of hosting an event, which in turn helps FIRST to further our mission. Though FIRST leaves the decision to advance or not advance the host teams to our Affiliate Partners, we recognize that if no teams hosted events, there would not be 14 qualifiers in the NorCal region, and teams in the NorCal region would not have multiple opportunities to compete. We respect and support the Affiliate Partner decision to provide multiple opportunities for teams in their region to compete. We believe it is possible for a team to build an excellent robot and meet the requirements for the Inspire Award, and we encourage all teams to aspire to that goal.

[Billie Jean]

Advancement Criteria - Answer Thread

The answer to Tournament Rules #38 explains more detail on advancement from #17 forward. However I'm not clear on what "Winning Division" and "Finalist Division" refer to. My guess is that these refer to various Championship winners coming together at a super-regional event.

If so, then at a qualifying tournament, does it skip these & advance the even numbers from 18-42 (finalists from the judged awards)? Or do they advance based on ranking from the qualifying matches, or some other way?

The Advancement criteria begins by breaking down the advancement of the Judged Awards, and Winning and Finalist Alliances. If there were still a need to continue down the list to determine the next advancing team, it would be broken down by the highest ranked team based on first their qualifying, and then ranking points. In almost all cases, Qualifying Tournaments and League Championships wouldn’t advance past #16 on the advancement list. This is mainly because of the smaller number of teams competing (compared to a Championship level tournament or higher), and the smaller number of advancing spots. The need to distinguish “Wining Alliance” and “Finalist Alliance” is to provide further clarification on the advancement order for dual division events.

[Billie Jean]

Advancement Criteria - Answer Thread

Game Manual 1, Section 4.8.2 provides an ordered list for advancing teams. The list concludes with the 40th team (actually numbered 41st, but there is no host team, which is numbered 1st). Each year quite a few teams qualify to advance in more than one category. For example, teams may advance due to on-field performance, and also by winning a judged award. Since 34 teams will advance from each Super Regional event, it is probable that the last of the 34 advancing teams will go beyond the 40th team listed in the advancement criteria. What are the criteria for advancing teams beyond those listed in the Game Manual?

--FTC 9915

The last listed advancement in the Game Manual is:

Highest Ranked Team not previously advanced, from the Winning Division

Additional Advancements would continue in this way:

Highest Ranked Team not previously advanced, from the Finalist Division
Highest Ranked Team not previously advanced, from the Winning Division
Highest Ranked Team not previously advanced, from the Finalist Division
Highest Ranked Team not previously advanced, from the Winning Division
Etc., until all spots are allocated.

[Billie Jean]

Advancement Criteria - Answer Thread

How many teams will advance from each of the Super-Regional tournaments to each of the World Championships?

34 Teams will advance from each Super Regional to their designated World Championship.