Aye, it just seems to almost reward mediocrity of performance. Kill a few ships get a decent score, then paste the floor with your next opponents to secure the ten-man slot.
I can promise a few teams that went 5-0 last round are going to lose the next round and not make it, while some mediocre teams will muddle through onto the televised event.
*shrug*
Honestly, I'm not sure you could call it rewarding mediocrity. The match we drew against Black Legion was one of the harder pairings we could have faced. I fully expect them to be on the bubble for qualifying after their second match. Without meaning to sound too self-absorbed, I don't think there was much mediocre about either team in that pairing, but the outcome on paper was "mediocre".
And you are absolutely right that teams that earned 62.5 points in round one will lose and not advance. There are 32 teams with 1 win right now. 16 of those will earn a guaranteed berth with a second win, leaving 16 teams 1-1 and opening 12 spots to 1-1 teams. Without double checking the standings, there are 27ish teams that scored full points in their first match. So 5 that won without full points. Which means 2.5 teams will advance with less than a perfect win in their first round (2.5 because there is one matchup between a 62.5 point team and a <62.5 point team). After that, the remaining 11.5 spots will be fought over between the 16 first-day winners/second-day losers and the 16 second-day winners/first-day losers. And obviously while the 62.5 headstarts going into day 2 will have a significant advantage, a shutout or heavy loss could result in failure to advance. Similarly, a win like ours (37.5 points) leaves us in a very precarious position going into the next round. If we don't win, we need to go down with guns blazing and pray that quite a few other teams simply fail to score points. The most we could possibly finish with if we go 1-1 is 85.5 points, which is a very small 13 point margin ahead of the 62.5 shutout wins. And that would be a best-case, extremely unlikely scenario. More likely we wind up with 70-80 if we wind up in a bloody slugfest that we lose.
Not that I've spent a lot of time analyzing the standings and possible permutations of the second weekend or anything.
Author
Topic: Alliance Tournament (Read 11350 times)