Talk:Hat League

This is a team competition in which teammates' names are drawn from a hat (so to speak).

(add more description as plans take shape)

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There are a few obstacles to overcome:
1. There needs to be a common message language.
2. Each team pairing (there could be more than two per team) needs to be created manually, unless someone writes an automated team file creation device.
3. There is no Roborumble support, so like the TwinDuel it must be run and reported manually.
4. Who fights? Who wins? I am guessing that for each tournament, each competitor will only be on one team, paired once against each other team, and the overall winning team will be declared the winner (as opposed to an individual).
What are your ideas? -- Martin

5. Who is the leader of one team? --Krabb

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I was thinking about the team creation aspect of it... It would make things easier on the administrator if the teams for the tournament were set at the beginning of the tourney, as opposed to re-drawing for each match. I think it is possible for a program to create the teams in any case: you would just need the classes and an appropriate .team file packaged in a .jar, which I think is completely do-able with Java. If we did automate it, it might be really interesting to re-draw at leach level of the bracket tourney, if we had one anywhere in the competition's format.

Despite being a really sucky team / melee bot, I've got some pretty solid scan sharing in Codious that I could adapt for the base class.

I personally kind of like the bracket tourney style for the final parts of the tournament, but I'm flexible. And I agree that the team should be the winner, not an individual bot. Nice name, too =)

-- Voidious

I think point 2) should be no problem, teams are just defined in a file which contains "teamname", "team-members", "description" and so on. It should be no roblem to create them automatically.. But point 4) is sure a problem, it would be only luck if you win a tourney (With a good mate). If we have a 2on2 with members A,B,C and D we could run 3 matches: A+B vs C+D, A+C vs B+D and A+D vs B+C, the one with the highest overall score would win. What do you think? --Krabb

• Problem: It would give you an advantage if you handicap your mate to get more points ;(
  • 1. think 2. write: If each team gets points and not each robot it would be no advantage to shoot your mate...
• if(ally.getName().contains("voidious")) this.setTarget(ally);
  • Do we have to change the robot names? :/
  • I thought teams only score as teams, not as individual bots. So if you harm your ally, you harm yourself. -- GrubbmGait

That how it is being done in TwinDuel at present. That's probably the way it will go, unless we get a better idea. The number of pairings could be a problem if interest rises, in which case we may have different divisions that play amongst themselves, with the winner of one division swapping with the loser of the next higher division. That's probably a ways off, and given the level of existing interest in team competitions, not worth stressing over. -- Martin

Just a sidenote, would HighHatTourney be a better name, as drawing from hats usually is done with highhats. -- GrubbmGait

• I play a game called Ultimate and they call their random team leagues/tournaments Hat League/Tournament. -- Martin
  • Where do you play? Ultimate is taking away from all of my robocode time... --Alcatraz
  • Right now I'm halfway through a 7 week league at a park in downtown Sacramento, CA. They have stadium lights around the park for our 7pm to 9pm games. I usually just play at a local park with people I used to work with. I learned of the game through them about 3 years ago. -- Martin

(Edit Conflict x3 =)) Heh. I'm not sure about running every pairing to get an individual bot as the winner - with 10 or so bots (about what TwinDuel has now), you have like 45 teams, I think? That would be a ridiculous amount of matches. Also, being stuck with a teammate for the whole tourney would encourage you not to sabotage him, that's an interestinng point. A couple options for having a number of entrants that isn't divisible by 2 (or 3 or whatever): have a random bot on two teams; have a random bot on a team with a copy of itself; have a "filler" bot that is a decent melee bot, like Shiz or GlowingHawks member, thrown into the mix. I kinda like the idea of having a random bot on a team with itself. -- Voidious

• My suggestion (which I think I mentioned about) is that a tournament is run every week, and for that week you have one partner/team for the tournament. We could have teams of 2, 3, or more people, but you'd have that same team for all of that week's battles. -- Martin
  • I dislike this mode, its no fun to have a awful mate 3 times in a row (3 weeks). I would prefer 3 times longer battles, its too much luck. --Krabb (damn Edit Conflicts ^_°)
  • Yeah, I like that idea... It wouldn't be 3x the battles, it would be exponentially more :-\ -- Voidious
  • Hey, you could also weight the randomness on the previous week's results? Like pair one of the bots from the top half with one of the bots from the bottom half of the results. -- Voidious
    • Yea, we could do this, and the one with the higher ranking gets the leader(20 extra energy)? --Krabb
      • The higher ranked bot being the leader sounds OK to me, and perhaps is fairer than making it random. (It's actually an extra 100 energy, leader starts with 200. Droids get an extra 20.) -- Voidious
• I don't know where you got the idea I meant to have people paired up for more than one tournament (at a rate of one tournament per week). Also, if you are going to make the pairings non-random, it's no longer a hat tournament. -- Martin
  • Me? I didn't think anyone thought that, but Krabb did bring up having non-fixed teams and one bot becoming the winner. I think I'm in agreement with you - generate teams at beginning of each time the tourney is held. Sorry if I was unclear... Completely random pairings is cool with me. -- Voidious
    • Actually I was referring to Krabb, who spoke of not liking having a theam for 3 weeks in a row, which nobody suggested. -- Martin
      • Ahh sorry, my english is horrible. I should have said "its no fun to have awful mates 3 times in a row". But nowadays i think we would only have good and perfect bots, no awful ones :) Completely random pairings is now OK for me too. --Krabb
  • I'm not sure we should discount weighting the pairings just because of "what a hat tournament is". The original idea was just mixed 2v2, and we are making the rules here... Weighted random is still random. Though, like I said, completely random is still OK with me. -- Voidious
    • We won't discount it, but if that's how it is decided we should give the tournament a different title. As I alluded to earlier, we could also have random 3x3 or larger teams battles as well using the same system. -- Martin

Re: Who is leader...

• Well, if the leader is given 200 energy and the other is given 100 energy, then each bot knows where they stand without being told. Wether or not they follow the leader's orders is another matter. -- Martin
• My understanding of "leader" was just the fact of having 100 more energy points as a leader and i thought it would be good to hand them to the higher ranked bot. I dont think we should implement orders, it would complicate everything. --Krabb

By the way, how many of you are interested in this? From the conversation so far, I gather that Martin, Krabb, maybe GrubbmGait, and I might participate. (Well, I certainly would.) Just curious. -- Voidious

• I'm willing to participate if there's at least 8 people / bots. -- Martin
• sure --Krabb

Not that much interest ;/ Would have been a niche chance to get more people interested in teams --Krabb

Well, maybe some more people will chime in. The TwinDuel got more participants than I thought it would after the first few days of talking about it, though it has slowed down now. -- Voidious

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Just looking for a rough idea here: other than myself and Martin, who else might be interested in participating here? -- Voidious

• I'm of cause still intrested!!! --Krabb

• Maybe. Are we talking pre-existing? Or new bots? What size? Is the communications class already written? --David Alves

• No CodeSize, so you could adapt existing bots. The comm stuff isn't written yet, but it was previously discussed and outlined for the most part on Hat League/Message Format. -- Voidious

• I wrote some kind of prototyp at that time, but i don't know if this kind of communications class is the best choice... --Krabb

• I'm interested! Disclaimer: When I have time, I'll be interested, with school and everything... --Starrynte