Series: Cups and Championships over Several Contests
A series ranks the teams of several contests together. Use it for a cup, a league or a national championship that is held as a number of separate events: each event is its own contest, and the series adds up how each team did in all of them. The contests are called the legs of the series.
When should I use a series?
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| A national cup with four events at four airfields, run by different clubs | One contest per event, and one series that ranks them. |
| A club league where a pilot’s best results over the season count | One contest per round, one series with only the best N legs count. |
| One event over a weekend, with several tasks | You do not need a series. Make one contest with several navigation tasks; the contest results add the tasks up. |
A series does not replace the contests. Each contest keeps its own tasks, results and visibility. The series only reads the final result of each contest and combines them.
How the ranking works
- Each leg is ranked on its own, by the contest’s result. The best team has place 1. Teams with the same score share a place (1, 2, 2, 4).
- The places are combined. There are two ways to score, chosen in the series settings:
- Add up the places, lowest wins (the default). A team that was 1st, 3rd and 2nd has 6; the lowest total wins.
- Points for each place, highest wins. The settings hold a table of points for first, second, third… place (the default is 25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1). The highest total wins.
- A leg a team did not take part in counts as one place worse than the last team in that leg (the number of teams plus one). Flying fewer legs therefore does not pay. With a points table a missing leg gives no points.
- Weight. Each leg has a weight, 1 by default. Give the final a weight of 2 and its places count double.
- Only the best N legs count (optional). With a season of eight rounds you can let only the best five count; the others are shown but left out of the total.
- A tie is broken by the number of first places, then second places, and so on. Teams still level share the rank.
Because only the places are added up, the legs can be scored in different ways: a precision task where the lowest penalty wins and a race where the most points win can be in the same series.
Who is ranked
By default the pilot is ranked: the same pilot in two contests is the same entrant, whichever navigator or aeroplane they had. If your cup is for fixed crews, choose The crew instead; then it must be the same pilot and navigator (in either seat).
People are recognized by their ASLT profile, so a pilot who is registered with two different profiles will appear twice. Ask the organizers to register the same person every time (pick the person from the search instead of typing a new one).
Step by step
1. Create the series
- Log in as an organizer and open Series in the navigation bar.
- Under Start a series enter the name and press Create. You manage the series. Add co-organizers under Permissions on the series page.
- Open it and choose the settings: how to score, who is ranked, whether only the best legs count, and whether the series is public.
2. Add the contests
Open the series, Legs:
- A contest you manage: pick it in Add a contest you manage and press Add. It is a leg at once.
- A contest somebody else manages (another club’s event): search for it under Invite somebody else’s contest. The people who manage that contest get a request, and it becomes a leg when they accept.
- From the contest side: in the contest, Contest access → Series, choose a series and press Ask. If you manage the series it is added at once, otherwise the series managers get a request.
Requests wait under Contests waiting to join until somebody accepts, declines or cancels them.
The leg number sets the order of the legs in the table, and the weight how much a leg counts. Both can be changed at any time.
3. Follow the standings
The standings are worked out from the results of the contests when somebody opens the series, so there is nothing to publish. A public series can take up to a minute or so to show a new result, because its standings are cached for everybody; a private series is up to date at once. A team appears when it is registered in at least one leg. The table can be downloaded as CSV.
Who can do what
Access to a series works as for a contest. Open the series and use Permissions (shown to those who can manage it) to add people and choose a level for each:
| Level | Can do |
|---|---|
| View | See a private series and its standings. Nothing else. (Everybody can see a public series.) |
| Manage | Everything in View, plus change the settings, add and remove contests, answer requests, and give others access, change their level or remove them (except people with Manage & delete). |
| Manage & delete | Everything in Manage, plus delete the series and give or take away Manage & delete from others. |
Only organizers (people who pressed Become an Organizer) can be given Manage or Manage & delete; anybody with an account can be given View. The person who creates a series has Manage & delete. You cannot remove yourself or lower your own level below Manage, so a series is never left without somebody who manages it. Contest managers can always see a series their contest is in, and take their own contest out of it.
Visibility
- A public series is visible to everybody, and every leg must be a public contest. Make the contests public first; a contest that is in a public series cannot be made private until it leaves the series.
- A private series is visible only to the people you give access to (see below), and to everybody who manages one of its contests: they always see the series their contest counts towards, without being added. It can contain private and public contests; use it to keep track of a cup before you publish it.
Good to know
- Leaving or deleting: Leave in the contest, or Remove in the series, takes a contest out of the ranking. Deleting a series never deletes the contests or their results.
- A contest with no final result yet counts as no result for its teams. The standings fill in as the contests are scored.
- A contest that already holds a whole cup inside one contest can stay that way; you do not need to rebuild it as a series.
- Series standings are not in the mobile apps yet.
Questions
A pilot is missing or appears twice. The entrant is the pilot’s profile. If they were registered with two profiles, the series sees two people. Correct the registration in the contest.
The ranking does not match my own sums. Check the settings for scoring method, weights and best N legs counted; they are listed under the title of the series. Countback (more firsts) separates equal totals.
Who can change the series? Whoever has Manage or Manage & delete in the series permissions; the creator to begin with.