Re: Intentionally Losing Matches
 

:confused:

Re: Intentionally Losing Matches
 

Alan,

I'm sorry that I didn't answer this earlier. It got lost in the flurries of messages.

When I said "not showing up" I was mentally associating it with "not consulting your allies". Of course you aren't a mind reader, so you asked the question. Maybe that was a bad mental association for me to make.

Everyone,

In each message I posted during this discussion, I attempted to always put honoring ones commitment to one's allies ahead of any single-team strategy. I hope that this exchange and the other messages are adequate evidence of that.

And, even in a hypothetical situation (just for the sake of making a point) in which all three teams of an FRC alliance have no interest in the outcome of the match; I feel that each of those three teams still has a strongly implied obligation to the event organizers and the audience to run their machine on the field in that match and in every match in which it is fit to participate.

In this thread's lively discussion of whether FIRST's FRC (and FTC) drafting rules include an improbable, but possible, situation in which losing a match conveys an advantage to a team seeking to win the tournament, I have never intentionally said that any secret conspiracies should be formed or that any ally should ever be shortchanged. I think that I have always asserted that one should never employ a don't-want-to-win-the-match strategy without the full support of allies. For that matter I never said that the team using the strategy shouldn't ask the announcer to explain their motivation to everyone within earshot of the event.

I would have thought that emphasizing putting the allliance ahead of the team would have made unnecessary most of the virtual brick bats that were hurled about so far; but alas that wasn't the case.

I hope this clarifies the satement Alan questioned. Just to tie a ribbon around his question about whether staying off the field should done to make it 100% certain that a team will get no QPs from a match; well, my presumption is this: In a match that a team believes they should lose (regardless of whether their belief is well-founded), it will be possible for them and their allies to have some fun in the match, to get some practice time under their belts during the match, to give a robot improvement a shake-down cruise in the match, etc. and still avoid winning. ;)

Blake

Re: Intentionally Losing Matches
 

So if a team wants to sit out a match for their own purposes, the good of the alliance outweighs that want?

So if an alliance wants a robot to sit out a match, for whatever reason, the good of the community outweighs that want?

My feeling is that teams have a strong obligation to play the game to the best of their abilities. Sandbagging is not appropriate.

I've lost whatever hold I had on your concept of strategic losses. The "fitness function" you're using to optimize outcomes is apparently much more complex than I first thought.

Emphasizing it would probably have helped, yes. However, this post of yours is the first time I've noticed you stating such an emphasis. You might consider it to be implicit in your position, but -- as you noted before -- we're not mind readers.

I have only two things to say at this point. First: word salad. Second: I'm done with this topic. There's too much fun to look forward to next week.

Re: Intentionally Losing Matches
 

Folks,

Well, even though Alan has turned his attention to other things (and for a pretty good reason), if any other readers missed that emphasis on consulting with allies, here is one emphatic instance of it here. In other posts, such as the one here, where I attempted to tighten up Fred's original scenario into one that had most of the loopholes closed; I either explicitly stated a similar emphasis or ensured that I never said to disregard allies' wishes.

Blake