Off season events - 4 team alliances in Elims

[Cheri]

I was the scorekeeper at MARC this year, and just wanted to share my experiences.

We used 4 team alliances for the eliminations. We used alliance selection in FMS for the first three teams of the alliance, and used that to create printed brackets for people. We kept track of the full four team alliance in an excel spreadsheet. We also used the spreadsheet to keep track of which robots played in which matches and scores of matches.

We originally started playing elimination matches in match test, but switched to practice matches after we had a problem with a robot dropping out unexpectedly during a match, and we wanted to keep track of logs better. (Either of these options allows you to set which teams are at each drivers station, and we had not run the practice match schedule. All practice matches at the event had been run in match test.)

One thing neither match test nor practice matches allows is for 3 robots on alliance bridges. We had to manually adjust the score to add the 20 additional points and have the announcer explain why the points don't show up as bridge points. We also would have had to have broken any ties manually, but we were fortunate enough not to have any ties.

I am curious as to how others handle four team alliances in Elims, so please share what you have done.

Thanks!!!

[rtfgnow]

One alternative you have, although I have never tried this, is to create a schedule and import it into FMS.

You would have to know who is playing each match beforehand and I am not sure how it would handle transitioning from quater to semi to finals.

[Cheri]

We didn't know which teams would be playing in what match until they came on the field, since they could decide which three of their four robots to play based on what the lower seeded alliance did, or if a robot wasn't working well, or whatever.