A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I'd like to propose a strategy I haven't seen yet on CD or on the field: always scoring for your opponents. I think it's at least viable, and perhaps even a winning strategy during the qualification matches. Here's my reasoning.

If you lose, only your opponent's score matters (Manual section 9.3.4). Thus, if you're likely to lose a match, you should never try to score for yourself or play defense.
If you think you will win, you'll theoretically get the best score by scoring for your opponents to keep the score near even. But the number of penalties in this game throws a wrench in that plan.
Suppose the other alliance can't do anything. You can score 10 points for yourself, or 10 points for your opponents. Either way, you will get 10 seeding points. However, if you get a penalty, the opposing team will get more seeding points than you do. But if you choose to score for your opponents, you score points you can't lose. As long as you don't get disqualified, any penalties you commit won't affect your seeding score.
The only thing I see that would make this hard is <G29>, which says you can only have one robot in your opponent's zone.
Now, if your opponents figure out what's going on, and start trying to score for you, things could get really interesting. I'm not sure what would happen in this case.

Does my thinking make sense, or do I need to get some sleep?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Or you could score 6 for yourself and 4 for your opponent and get 14 seeding points.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I think you "get it".

Just remember to change that strategy once you get to the elimination rounds, where a win is actually a "win".

Jason

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

That seems to be the "conventional thinking", and may be a better strategy. However, I think that choosing to always score for your opponents might actually be a safer strategy. What if one of your alliance mates gets three penalties, or perhaps one penalty with one of your opponents managing to hang at the last minute?
Most teams don't have the strategic awareness to pull off a score-balancing act like you describe. Something safe and simple is likely to be a better route for many teams, even if it doesn't have the maximum scoring potential.

I'd like to think I do. :-) My concern is that the majority of teams don't, and the game is going to suffer for it.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

But your opponents will just see you scoring for them and begin scoring for you. They will then end up with more QP then you.

This is the great part about this year's game, the coaches will have to be very aware of what is going on if they want to maximize QPs.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

If you're playing for the red team, then your total score is as follows

where S is the number of points you score for a given alliance


The decision of whether or not to score for the other guys depends not only on the probabilities of winning in each case, but the relative value of S. So without even talking about the odds of actually being able to score just barely enough to win, the decision would also depend on how many points you think you could score.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I dont agree with this.
Scoring 4 for yourself and scoring 2 for the other team across the field is easier said than done.
IMO, you only need 1 scoring bot in the near zone and an effective defensive/shoot balls over the bump mechanism to win a week 1 regional!

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I can see where duking it out with no defense will screw the loser if this becomes the norm. Knowing this the loser would always opt to help the winner. So it doesn't make sense to try and outright win unless you know for certain that you can AND the other team WILL score some points for them in your benefit to cover some of your penalties.

So now, it seems to me if you could get an agreement from all 6 teams to score for the team that has hangers. Plus give the losing team 1 or 2 points to cover the winning teams penalties, then you would have assurance from everyone that it was reasonable to cooperate from the beginning, hence optimize the assured seeding and coopertition points. Otherwise playing chicken with them will just lower everyone's points.

There's some logistical issues. It's going to get crowded at the winning teams goals. So put your 2 best herders there, the mid field bots can make shots, the far bots just help move balls forward then help if they can or just stay out of the way. Then the winning team hangers hang making more room for the other bots to move in and continue scoring till the end. This could make a consistent 15-20 point seeding/coopertition score for both teams fairly reasonable.

I think this is worth proposing, but the purists will spit on you. And you need to be able to trust the agreed winning team for this arrangement to work. Maybe we need an insurance agreement document, where the cheated party gets to pick a spare motor from your kit if you diverge.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Sorry, but this thread is correct. One of the worst things any team can do during the qualification rounds is play defense. The ranking system and current regional rankings clearly show this. Preventing your opponent from scoring is driving your team down the ranking ladder plain and simple. Since you start with a "backfield" robot, scoring for your opponent should be relatively simple. just bulldoze balls in.

As for what's needed to win a week 1 regional... lets see what happens when the seeding point system isn't important in a match.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

If they can reach you from where you'll be sitting, way up in the standings.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

good luck getting picked. A lot of teams have already said if they catch you scoring for your opponents they will never pick you.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

These teams are most likely the ones that haven't read the manual. If they knew that scoring for your opponents actually benefits your ranking, then guess what, they would be doing it too.

As far as wanting to be ranked well... meet with all 6 bots from your match, pick a side to score on and play a 6v0 game. If you end up scoring 20-0 in one alliances goals, and no one on the "winning" alliance takes a penalty, then all 6 of those teams will get 20 QPs.

This quite possibly may be the stupidest rule ever conceived. If its still around by week 4, I guarantee that teams will be exploiting it left and right.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Wouldn't you be better off with a 10-10 tie? All teams get 30 QP's?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Striker / "Recycler" / Flex - Defense is something that won't just win week 1 events, I hope.

Collusion sucks. I'm going to figure out how to maximize my team's ranking score (if it matters to us) without talking to the other alliance. Then again, my team's built a very defense oriented robot, and the qualification system gives us no chance to show off the characteristics of the robot designed completely around the elimination round... *sigh*

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

If both alliances are scoring for the other alliance, wouldn't it be better just to score for your alliance? :rolleyes:

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I'm beginning to wonder if I should just flip a coin and tell my team to score in whichever goal the coin says.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Basically, you have to score into your own goal, keep your oponents from scoring into their own goal and then there are two more things to consider:
1. How do you get your oponents to get penanlties?
2. If your strategy is to loose anyway, you can get as many penalities as you want. What does this allow you to do.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Clearly you havent read the rules. Winning your qualification matches is not nearly as critical as it has been in years past.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

No, because you can lose points that you score for yourself. You can't lose points you score for your opponent. Penalties don't hurt you if you don't have any points to lose. I'm not suggesting that you should commit penalties because you can - I'm merely saying that they're a huge part of this game, and they will happen to your alliance, whether you like it or not.

From the webcasts I saw today, it was not uncommon to get five or more points in penalties. Nearly every match seemed to have a penalty on one side or another. With this kind of unpredictability, reliably winning by a small margin seems nearly impossible.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Ok, I'm not really competing in this years game...but reading this thread has been shocking. Any previous year this strategy would have been seen as unethical and means for not getting picked. I believe it has been brought up more then once for previous games and has never gotten this response. I'm not debating the ethics or the effectiveness. I just wanted to comment on how confused your going to have the audience if this becomes common. Also, how do you explain to sponsors that you averaged 5 points for the opponent? Finally, why is there a game that these questions have to be asked?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I would just like to note the fact that this was used AND WORKED at Fingerlakes regional today (no less, from a rookie team). They got into it with their alliance and the amazing thing was, the MC understood what they were doing. However, few teams followed their lead, due to gracious professionalism. In fact, however, their score on yourself thinking got them into number 3 seed, and well into the semifinals...

EDIT: Winning qual's arent very important, unless you get into the top 8. Our team was in 27 seed, and were the first pick of a 7 seeded team. And we would have done even better if both of our alliance partners hadent pooped out during the match (lol we scored 5 points, and played all three zones)

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

So that is what you tell your sponsors, Molten. How you got to the semifinals will not seem important to your sponsors. The amount of time their name was in front of the audience will be a major concern to them.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Yes, at peachtree regional scoring for your opponents ended up working. In one seeding match 1771 and 1466 were allied together and were up 10-0, 1771 then started launching balls towards the opposing goal so their opponent could shovel them in. Final score 10-4, and 1466 got the highest seed and the coopertition award. Everyone on an alliance should talk to the other alliance and talk about not playing defense, letting the game get up to something around 10-10 then play for real.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

.Actually, not true, most games we played in were close at peachtree, we even tied 0-0 3 times, our record at the end of qualifying was 2-1-3 but we were ranked dead last due to no points in a 0-0 tie. We were picked for an alliance because they knew teams ahead of us were worse than our robot and we ended up going well into the semis.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

We saw this strategy and we thought that it was very much against Gracious Professionalism, and poor gamesmanship besides. We played every game to win, no matter what...

...and we were first seed, and at the end of the day, Regional Champions. (*AND* we won the 'Cooperatition(TM) Award' to boot.)

My suggestion: just play the game. It worked for us, *and* it gives the other teams' scouts a better idea of what your robot is capable of when winning is all about who has more points at the end of a match.

The top eight teams are *so* fluid this year because of the scoring system, that scouting is that much more important -- we went from 13th to 1st in three games. Too many people seem more focused on a mathematical trick than they are on the psychology of scouting -- and IMO that is a big mistake.

Patrick

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Try explaining to them that the majority of the time their name was in front of the audience it was scoring for the other team, and letting them win. This strategy will make matches much less entertaining to watch, turning away many newcomers, and those who enjoy watching hard fought FRC matches.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

my vote: change the qualifying so it is hard fought. Also, I agree with your scouting plans, in Peachtree the bottom three teams were picked for alliances due to scouting. However some people do not scout and those teams will leave skilled robots out of competition because those robots could not get in the top 8.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Pardon my "bolding", but since when did being unable to comprehend the rules equate to "gracious professionalism"?

A better phrase might be "few teams followed their lead due to a desire to win the match rather than advance their ranking".

Just because the rules of this tournament are different from other tournaments doesn't make them any less the rules... and make no mistake, the rules are the rules whether we think they make sense or not.

Jason

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

You guys were great at FLR. Loved the robot!
I think that the qual ranking system this year is FUBAR. Smart teams should just not look at it, or they will get false hope, or become depressed. We got picked as a first choice for an alliance even though we were seeded in the high 20's. The team that picked us knew that we were good, despite a bunch of lousy scoring matches.

BTW, GoW, were you the guys we played with in the match when we had 2 bots with no field connection and we scored 5 goals on our own?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Just for the record, going for this strategy does not require "collusion" or cooperation between two alliances... one alliance can do it by themselves fairly effectively.

They can just park one robot in front of each of their own goals, to make sure that the opposing alliance doesn't "helpfully" score on their behalf, and then use the third robot to pass balls towards the opponents end of the field, making it easier for them to score.

Boring match, yes. Not a great way to show off your robot for alliance selections? No. But a good strategy to employ should you ever face off against a notably superior alliance? You bet.

The rule of the game this year, whether we like it or not, is "if you think you're outmatched... give in."

Jason

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

We played you in Q55, and won 8-2, so unless you managed to penalize yourself three points, then no, it wasn't us!

Patrick

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

The people promoting gracious professionalism wrote these rules. I would hope that nobody would think that following the rules as written would go against gracious professionalism.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Today and yesterday at the Oregon Regional we were also pondering this year's bizarre seeding system. We noticed at least one match in which an entire alliance appeared to have coordinated to shoot into only the opposing alliance's goals. Initially we were baffled, until we looked more closely at the rules. Then we saw the brilliance and counterintuitiveness of this system.

Unfortunately, we didn't think to do this until after all of the qualification matches were over, but teams at later regionals may find this useful. We wrote a LabVIEW VI which displays the raw score and seeding score for each alliance, based on the number of points and penalties input for each color.

The source code, a compiled EXE (requires labview installed) and a full installer (does not require labview installed) are available on our team website. Below is a screenshot. Hopefully some teams can find this useful for the subsequent weekends. It would be really awesome if someone figured out a way to build this into a custom dashboard, so that during the game players could see where to shoot to get optimal points. If anyone does anything super awesome like that, please let us know; we'd love to hear about it!


(Isn't it weird? The red alliance scored 8 points and got 2 penalties. The blue alliance scored nothing. And yet the blue alliance got more seeding points.)

Download/info on our website

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

What is the particular benefit of everyone scoring on the same goal versus intentional tie? All I see is only one alliance can "defect" with a lopsided match, but both can with a tie.

That's a fantastic idea, by the way. Thanks for the handy app. Now I just need an iPhone version.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

A "defection" in a one-sided match will result in a few more QPs for the winner (only 2 per goal). A "defection" in a high scoring intentional tie (say 7-7 going to 8-7) results in a massive seeding points loss for the loser, they go from 21 seeding points down to 8. If instead they had chosen to go 14-0 for one alliance a single defection would give them 14 points and their opponent 16.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

This was our alliance team 1515 in our last Qualifying round. Is took quite a bit of convincing to get the other teams to play along because as you said and a few people on this thread have said.....alot of team don't understand the seeding rules.

There is an inherit issue here though at a large regional with 60 or so teams not only are you boosting your seeding score it is also boosting everyone elses on the field or about 10% of the teams at the regional.

Because of this it is really only an effective tacktick for your last match because if this was done the entire time the efectivness of it would diminish.

In a sense it almost turns the game into a 6 on 0 and sees who has the best set of 6 bots on the field instead of 3.

Although the match didn't turn out as well as we expected (the other alliace couldn't really score and were having some control issues) the best part was listening to the announcer (who was a great guy) but had no clue how the seeding worked and could not figure out what we were doing.

[rant/]
This raises another important issue of the scoring. I am not going to get into it (as there are already many other threads) but it is very complicated and can be taken advantage of. I look at it both in a positive and negative way however. I consider it part of the game just like a "field element" and strategy has to be developed to deal with it. In the same light though because the "match score" and not the "seeding score" is showen on the score board there is alot of confusion and I think misleads people who do not know the rules as much as us rule worms that study them extensively. A great example of this was at the organ regional there were 2gopc reps walking around and they came to watch a match. I had spoken to them earlier so they aproched me and asked me who won. They were very surprised to find out that the team that got 0 won. If FIRST really wants the public to enjoy the game I think they need to have more strait forward scoring or at least more clearly display the seeding score which is really the only thing that matters durring the qualifiers.

[/rant]

Sorry for the long post,
Matthew Forman
Team 1515

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

But in this game a "win" is irrelevant and not even tracked. All that matters is your seeding points. And sometimes you get the most points by scoring in one set of goals, and sometimes you get the most points by scoring in another set.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

We certainly did not ever "collude" for the fabeled 6v0 approach. And I do think this scoring system is bizarre, but does suggest high-scoring close matches. I agree with Jeff, read the rules. I think there's way too much "Gracious" and not enough "Professionalism" (and I'm not a sore loser, we won). It was very frustrating to see a team ranked in the Top 10 that had trouble moving most of the time.

On one positive note from this strange twist, we did get some respect for our scouting team, and shared our scouting with others. There were teams in the Semis we KNEW were high penalty teams and avoided them. THAT paid off, and that's professionalism, AND we shared our info with whomever wanted it.

Play the game, not the angelic/doormat/everyone wins. We also need to teach our kids how to lose well (that was our lesson last year, and the year before, and ...)

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

That is absolutely false. In this game, showing off your great robot to other teams matters a great deal more than your seeding points, and how well your robot performs overall is very, very highly tracked -- by scouting teams.

The scoring system this year is really, really wonky, but if you look at the top-seeded teams at the FLR, they really were the best robots -- and that was for the most part without these kinds of shenanigans.

As an *overall* strategy, this idea does nothing but maintain the status quo -- it doesn't help you stand out, and it doesn't help your rankings when compared to the other five teams on the field. Perhaps, if you know you are going to get absolutely crushed, you might consider doing this, but in any other circumstance it just doesn't seem viable to me. We've won too many close games that we "should have lost" in the past five years to not go for the win even when we're down.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Let me clarify -

Seeding points is FIRST's way of ranking teams.
Scouting is our way of ranking teams.

For ranking, win loss is irrelevant, it is purely seeding points, and that is what I was referring to.

For scouting, we don't even look at win/loss or even seeding points.
We look at our data on each robot's performance - scoring ability, hanging, defense, control on the field, consistency, penalties, etc. This data helps us craft a strategy for each match, and that is also why a low "ranked" team is often higher on our draft list than a "higher" ranked team.

Strong scouting is more important this year than most and you cannot rely on the seeding points ranking system to identify the strongest teams.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Sorry if i did this wrong, its my first post, but we effectivly used this strategy in our last qualifying match. We had two defencive robots, and one that had only part of a working drive train. We played the match and lost around 9 to 2, however because of field errors we had to play it again. While they were fixing the field, our alliance decided to score for the other alliance. We lost 12 to 0, after one penalty for the winning alliance. We got 13 seeding points and the "winning" alliance only got 12!

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

We noticed that since the matches were low scoring and close, often 1-0 or 2-2, wins didn't help much, and we moved up in the rankings every time we lost. So, we briefly considered an unusual strategy. We would have two of our robots pull into our goals and park to block them, and the third bot would do everything they could to score in the opponents' goals. Since there were almost always penalties, this strategy would give us as many or more seeding points than the winning alliance. We decided at the last minute that we would just play straight up. In retrospect, we should have gone with the original plan.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

FLR - Qualification Match 63

All teams involved 6v0

250, 191, 3181 (v.) 229, 3173, 1511

Final Score of the Match 12 - 0

Teams Received:
Red: 12
Blue: 11 (Due to Penalty)

The announcer couldn't figure out what we were doing till the last 20 seconds. We (all six teams) discussed the strategy the morning before the match being that many of the teams were well connected with each other. Thanks again to all teams involved, I fully expect this strategy to be used in the weeks to come.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

While we used this same strategy, we believe that it is against the values of first to do predetermine matches. When we did this, we didn’t tell the other alliance of our plans to maximize the seeding score. But I will say I have never seen the killer bees crowd (who were on our alliance) so quite during one of their matches.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

This is essentially the 6v0 strategy.

Did you spend 6 weeks building this robot to play the game or game the system?

To anyone engaging in this strategy I say SHAME ON YOU.

If this is proposed to your team just say no, it is simply not in the spirit of FIRST and is a betrayal to team mates, friends and family.

Please play the game, don't game the system.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I am stunned and really have lost a lot of respect for your team. My team 957 was one of your allies. Perhaps the one who resisted (I sure hope so) this stupid game the system strategy. Of course you guys had won several matches and were high ranked. You gave no consideration to the struggling team who has not played on a winning alliance in 2 years. When finally our bot is working and we have good allies you betray us. Our team was crushed by this match.

Hope your are proud of yourself.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

As I said in a similar thread:
I think it is fair to say that the GDC probably did not foresee all the possible ramifications of this seeding system. I understand and agree with the concept of coopertition, but when a win is a loss and a loss is a win, when poor robots rise to the top of the seeding, and when it becomes smart to forfeit matches and not play the game, then something is clearly very wrong. I talked to both students and mentors this weekend that were discouraged that building a good robot meant less than knowing how to game the seeding system. If the cooperition factor is taken too far and begins to effect the participants' moral, or if FRC gains the reputation for being a league where building a good robot doesn't really matter, then that is potenitally very damaging ground for FRC.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

In my mind purposly throwing a game is unaccepable in any sport at any time for any reason. Just play the game and let the chips fall where they may.

I am waiting for an apology from your team to ours.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

More specifically, I think they expected teams to play with honor, integrity, and gracious professionalism instead of just playing to "win".

Winning is an outcome. How many times have we heard Woodie say not to let outcomes dictate your behavior?

This just is not true. At one point we were seeded 20th, even though it was clear at the time that we had the dominant bot. (It still seems weird to say that... Weird in a very, very good way! :D ) We were very confident that we would be one of the first (if not *the* first) robot picked, regardless of where we were seeded at the end of the day -- because we built a good robot.

Of course, that we did not even once try to game the system and still ended up 1st seed -- and the Cooperatition Award -- was just glorious. That the alliance selection followed good robots over high-seeded robots reinforces my point.

I agree with Integral -- this is a cheap tactic that prioritizes a certain low cunning coupled with gamesmanship, instead of cooperatition and gracious professionalism.

Play each game to win. Show off that robot you've worked so hard to build. You won't regret it, and neither will your parents, fans, mentors, or sponsors.

Patrick

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Teams need to understand that by not trying to maximize your seeding points you are, in fact, 'throwing the game'. By playing defense or any other thing that will hurt your seeding points, you helping no one and effectively throwing the game. Teams need to change their mindset that winning each individual match is not the goal.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I may be weird, but I enjoy the play of the game. Winning or losing takes second seat to a well played game.

I sincerely hope that when 1515 arrives in Atlanta they will be ostracized for pushing this misbegotten strategy. Any team that proposes this needs to be taught the fundamentals of FIRST. Once again shame on your for ever suggesting it.

1515 (Beverly Hills HS) is, believe it or not, is a very well funded team they are scheduled to attend multiple regionals and stole a slot to Atlanta at the Oregon regionals. Our team on the other hand struggles to find students and money in our economically stressed area. Our team would have been energized by playing on a winning alliance. 1515s tacky strategy could well destroy our team.

Perhaps a gain of a few seeding points was great advantage to higher ranked teams. We were low middle of the pack there is no way we gained anything for this match. So what if we moved from 35 to 33.

Throwing a game is simply unforgivable.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Personally, I consider the ranking system part of the game, it is released to us at the same time as the game and governs how success in the game is measured (strictly in terms of competition related, qualifying results).

They didn't steal anything, they earned their spot by playing the game that we have been given. If FIRST wanted to prevent this behavior they would have gone with a different ranking system or put something into the game to discourage it.

I do not agree with a strategy of collusion between alliances, but I feel that a single alliance should be able to do anything within the rules to maximize their seeding points.

While I do understand the excitement of winning, if your students are only staying around for wins then frankly you are not doing your job as a mentor. This gets said over and over, but there is much more to this competition than robots, and certainly much more than winning with those robots. It is up to you and your fellow mentors to help the students enjoy the experience of the build season and competition season even when you aren't earning the W's you may have hoped for.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

To those who have issue with team "playing the system" all I gotta say is : Hate the game, not the player.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

FIRST knew what they were doing when they put this in.
To them it's just another element of the game like the bumps and the towers to tickle your brain to make you figure out how to navigate your way to the top of the standings.
And I would not be surprised if they knew this would happen. They're too smart not to see it coming.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I think this discussion about "this is wrong" or "un-gracious" is silly. The rules are published at the beginning of the season. The goal of this, or any competition is to win. Do you think Dean Kamen will give away the rights to the Segway to be "Gracious"? If you don't plan to do all you can do, within the rules, to win, then why play? I realize that Gracious Professionalism is the heart of FIRST, but as I have said before, if we weren't supposed to compete, we wouldn't keep score. If we weren't out to win, I know I wouldn't have many kids interested in joining the team. The better the team does, the more students are interested joining. Is that not the goal of FIRST? To get get kids involved? Like most people, kids are interested in wining traditions. Look at football. Teams that win a lot have a lot of fans. In FIRST, those fans become involved in the team, and maybe in engineering and technology. The reason I am involved in FIST, and plan to stay involved, even though both my kids will have moved on to college, is to inspire more american kids to become engineers. At my place of business, less than 50% of the engineers are native born Americans. I am not knocking those talented foriegn born engineers, but the fact that we have to import talent because we don't have enough of our own tells me that there is a fundamental flaw in the way we inspire kids.

I, for one, will continue to inspire the kids that are on our team to do everything they can do (within the rules) to win. If winning gets more kids involved, and therefore interested in science and technology, then it is, by definition, within the spirit of FIRST.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Incredible. Our combined teams ( cross town rival HS have combined resources and stopped competing for scarce funds to compete) have gone 2 years without playing on a winning alliance and you castigate me for only wanting to win.

Just wow.

We simply want to play a well played game.

I find your attidude self serving and disgraceful.

This is my last word on this.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I think one problem is that your definition of "winning" is different than many other teams and the rule book. I get the impression that you would rather win 1-0 instead of losing 3-4, which would give you more ranking points. I understand that you may want to win a match but that is a little selfish to your two alliance partners who are trying to win the regional.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

The problem is not with teams that choose to forfeit games or collude, the problem is with the system. If you invite smart kids to play within a system, then they are going to figure out how to play the system smart. Asking teams to NOT do what the system invites them to do is not reasonable or realistic. If throwing matches 6v0 is not a behavior we want happening, then we need a system that does not reward it. I'm afraid the GDC simply over-reached on the cooperition factor, with unintended consequences.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Wanting to win is not a bad thing. I am a very competitive person and want to win every time our team is on the field. Having said that, I will not be "crushed" if we do not win a single match this year. I know that we have already had our best year yet, by building the most technically advanced robot in our team's short history.

Your attitude that your team's single match victory is any more important than your two alliance partners trying to win the regional seems to me to be the self-serving one.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Please don't post your "dirty laundry" on this thread. We are supposed to be talking about the implimentation of this strategy. It is clear that this strategy can and will be an effective means of being ranked in the top seeds. If you don't agree with using the strategy, it is fine to say so, but please don't turn this into a fight. The real spirit of FIRST is teams who have different backgrounds, beliefs, strategies and idea's coming together to share these things and create friendships with people across the world. If teams are working together and discussing strategies such as this one, i don't see how this isn't in the spirit of FIRST.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I, for one hate the ranking system. To me a competition is about two teams playing against each other to determine an outcome. What I believe is happening is, in my opinion, what happens when 2 or 3 businesses work together to eliminate other businesses. NOT our typical sports like competition. FIRST seems to be instilling the business mindset and not that of GP that they promote. One where 2 teams will compete against each other but help each other become better and stronger. The FIRST that I loved.

That said, the rules do allow and promote a 6 x 0 game but for what reason I do not know or understand. There is nothing GP against playing that way as it is all within the set boundaries and rules of the game.

For spectators that come and watch the game, they will be confused by the play that they see and it doesn't promote a good experience. If they come to the Elimination rounds they will see an exciting game that they CAN understand and enjoy, giving them a good experience.

What was FIRST thinking?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

So you are then saying that not playing defense, colluding, and/or artificially inflating scores is "playing for fake"?

I think I've found a new description for this process. ;)

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I agree, I'm not a fan of the ranking system, but i believe the original intentions were good. I see the direction the GDC was trying to go, but this system just has an unfortunate downside. Leave the system the way it is and wait until next year and hopefully we can create a ranking system that will have the same original spirit as was intended of this years system, and also the same outcome.
Now, lets all go to another thread and talk about how awesome it was to see all of the different designs and friends from other teams! Or help those teams who need some assistance!

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I too join the chorus of those who hate the idea of winning by losing but that is the situation we have been thrust into.

I have just now sent an e-mail to my fellow mentors on my team arguing that we should try to convince our alliance partners to play to maximize seeding points. If they all agree then we approach the other alliance, if they agree then we either decide based on the number of hangers or by playing paper-scissors-rock whether to score in Red or Blue (probably after autonomous so that teams could tune in their programming for the elims). If the other alliance won't agree, then we score for them and don't hang.

It is a strange way to play the game but it is the game that FIRST made for us.

For me the only ethical issues revolve around the idea that everyone is trying to get to play after lunch on Saturday. At some point, the seeding will sort itself to the point that teams are in 3 camps:

1. Those still in the running for Top 8 (top 10-11 really because it is typical for the 10th or 11th rank team to move up to the #8 slot)
2. Those that really need a monster seeding point game to get back into the hunt for Alliance Captain.
3. Those clearly out of the running for Alliance Captain

What happens when a team from Group 3 really really needs to show that it can play defense is paired with a team from Group 1 or Group 2?

What is the ethical thing for each team to do in this case?

I honestly don't know what to tell these teams.

Joe J.

P.S. Just to be clear, I think that the GDC was simply wrong in setting up the seeding in this way. I believe that it is bad for FIRST in the long run. If FIRST continues with this system year after year, I believe they are in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. HOWEVER, FIRST knew what they were doing setting up the rules as they did. They are smart people, to say they didn't know what they were setting up is silly (imho).

Teams are supposed try to seed high. Winning or losing qualifying matches is not the name of the game this year. After all they are called "QUALIFYING" matches.

So... ...I don't think it is fair to criticize teams for doing their best to QUALIFY during the qualifying matches.

However it IS FAIR to criticize FIRST for making a poorly constructed set of incentives that result in a confusing and boring game to watch in the qualifying matches -- and before you even make the argument, NO, I don't think that what happens in the elimination rounds makes up for it. It was dumb. FIRST knew it was dumb. They did it anyway for their own reasons. JJ

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

we did this at dc in our final qualifying match.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

After reading this entire thread, i'm really worried what this season might look like after acouple of weeks. This whole thing could get very ugly very fast. I do not understand what the gdc is trying to accomplish. To do your best and play to win means nothing. Make deals and know what the out come is before the match is played is the right thing. I hope this is not what the gdc wanted.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

In qualifying the verbiage winning and losing should nearly be stricken from our vernacular, because it's a non recorded erroneous statistic. Coopertition by it's very definition does not even use the verbiage win or lose, but describes the two competing alliances as having gained higher or lower point totals. ( United States Patent 7507169 )

The ONLY thing that quantifies the result of a match this year is your seeding score. When reflecting upon a qualification match and in communicating those results to fellow teammates the match should not be described as having been won or lost but yet described as having gained X number of seeding points. The reality of it is, this is the only statistic that matters in developing the strategy for qualifying.

Now, this is contrary to every sport and nearly every real life scenario but I believe this is what the GDC intended. To disregard this strategy as UN-GP or unsportsmanlike is illogical and to cast a team in a negative light for having participated in this strategy in a public forum like this is indeed UN-GP.

Having said this if a team is really trying to do everything it can to "Win" this would often be the best course of action. If an alliance decides that a loss is likely, then it would be best to play no defense, aid the other alliance where possible and guarantee that no points are scored for them. The absolute worst outcome in this case would be equal seeding points or a "tie" and often, because of the frequency of penalties this year, higher seeding points, or a "win."

Teams this weekend proved that superior play can help you seed highly and it would be naive to say that all teams will subscribe to this philosophy. It does not take a 6v0 "collusion" to pull this off, just an agreement by one alliance.This may complicate scouting but should be expected and understood as playing entirely within the spirit of the game.

One thing I hope happens tho, is that if an alliance chooses to play for the other team, that this decision is unanimous. I guess what I'm saying is I think it will be disappointing to see robots playing defense on their own alliance.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I think if every seeding match were played 6v0 the best offensive teams would rise to the top, because they will consistently score higher whichever alliance they're with. I think the 6v0 (everybody wins) is better than the 3v3 (loser wins) as far as getting the best offensive teams to the top (which are usually the ones at the top anyways). The week 1 results won't show this because they didn't start figuring it out until Saturday.

However, those who can't convince alliances of 6v0 are kind of screwed. This means the teams who do the best job of convincing everyone to work together, or get parings that favor it will seed the highest, and not necessarily who scores the best.

I personally don't think the GDC thought of this as they put a lot of emphasis on the opponents score being a multiplying factor for the winner. I think they missed the lack of incentive for the losing alliance.

I like the idea of not counting balls scored from the opposing alliance, but that screws up FIRSTS intention of coopertition as well. I would whole heartedly support a rule change to get this season back on track. Otherwise anyone at the Florida regional can expect team 179 will be looking to cooperate.

Maybe we should start threads for each regional so teams can advertise in advance whether they are willing to 6v0 or not. Then we can avoid some of the confusion and confrontation in advance. I really don't want to offend anyone if they feel it is a moral issue. I see it as 6 teams working as an alliance rather than 3. But if our alliance or opponents refuse we will cooperate just as well.

COME ON FIRST, IT'S OK TO MAKE A CHANGE, IT'S NOT TOO LATE!!!

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Pish-posh. Many of us figured it out a few days after kickoff -- and just assumed that most teams would play to win *anyway* in the *spirit* of the game, as opposed to by its letter. Please give the rest of us a bit more credit in the smarts department than you are. Thank you.

118 qualifying points and 22 hanging points shows that your statement here is false. We faced several situations where our alliance partners and our opponents wanted us to engage in this 6v0 shenanigans, and my drivers and field coach (who is a student, by the way) would have none of it. And good on them.

We were quite decidedly *not* screwed.

------------------

Steve (by the way you're the best MC ever, even if you are from that weird, freezing area north of the Big Lake), I think it *is* fair to criticize teams who make decisions based solely on "winning", as opposed to "winning the right way". We can argue all day and night about the fuzzy definition of "winning the right way", but like GP, it's something that probably doesn't need a fully codified definition.

The biggest problem with 6v0 is that penalties will cause the "winning" team to "lose" every time -- and there's something terribly wrong with that. By negotiating a 6v0 game, whoever the "winning" alliance is chosen to be has a better chance of getting less points than the "losing" alliance, and that's just plain not right.

This is the first FIRST competition that has ever left a bad taste in my mouth. Like something smelly on the bottom of my shoe, I don't have to see it to know what it is.

------------------

On a side note, 6v0 is patently unfair to teams that would otherwise be breakaway stars. It is not right to pressure them into a 6v0 game.

In week one, we *owned* the tower. We got 22 hanging points -- which is higher than any other team at any other regional by 6 points. (Except perhaps Peachtree -- their stats aren't coming up on usfirst.org, so I can't check them.) If we were chosen to be on the '0' team, and we had non-assertive drivers who could be intimidated -- even unintentionally -- by older and/or generally more successful teams, then we would deliberately *not* hang from the tower and would deliberately *not* use ball starvation in the mid-zone -- denying us the opportunity to show what we are so darn good at.

I really, truly feel for any team that enters into a 6v0 game and loses the opportunity to present the greatness of what they have accomplished over six weeks to the scouts of the other teams, to the judges, to the fans, and to their sponsors. Most of these people want to see you *win games*, and won't care much about a long-winded explanation of why it's ok because of qualifying points and seeding strategies.

Not trying to win every game with the most impressive feats of robotism you are capable of is equivalent to *selling out*. Like selling out, it might be clever, and it might benefit you in the short term, but...

----------------------

On a final note, I predict that, in the end, 6v0 will not be all that effective. We didn't engage in it even once -- not even a little.

What was effective? Good game strategy, a well-engineered and robust robot, good communication amongst alliance partners, and a winning spirit. And charged batteries -- don't forget those.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I'm confused. Did you or did you not play in match that was 6v0? I'm not making a judgement on 6v0, but I'm reading some conflicting information here.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

What we did was always try to win every game, every time. That's it.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

But if two of your matches were a 6v0 (even if your alliance didn't plan it) it does show that the 6v0 strategy does result in seeding high. Your team is the prime example of that.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Do you people think the GDC members are stupid? They knew what the result of this rule would be. They want you to score for whichever team will generate the most points. If they didn't they would have made a rule that you couldn't score for the opponents. (What game was it a few years ago that had the rule?)

I don't particularly like this system, but don't claim unintended consequences.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

If my opponents want to score for me that is fine. It is silly to me to go and score for my opponents. It is more valuable for me to win a match 4-2 than it is to win 6-0 or 7-0. The ranking system this year rewards teams that win quality matches, unlike in the past where an ugly win is worth any kind of win. Having 6 teams working to score into 2 goals is really awkward since you will wind up with several teams in the middle zone that will get in each others way. It is interesting that this game has lead people to no longer try and win hard fought matches, when a hard fought match is going to turn out well for you.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Then you were participating in this method that's being discussed. You could have played defense against yourself if you really disagreed with this whole idea, or stopped scoring points. Your team benefitted from the "broken" system and received a ton of ranking points for it.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

We didn't, actually. One 6v0 game resulted in not enough qualifying points to change our overall seed early on Friday, and the other benefited us not at all.

Our second-to-last was a 6v0, and we got 11 points -- but so did our alliance partners (one of whom was seeded higher than us at the time), and so did our opponents (two of whom were seeded higher than us at the time). We were excited to have the 3rd and 6th seeded teams against the 4th and 5th, and were very disappointed that they essentially chose not to play. The strategy was used against us as a way to keep us at sixth -- below the other three. (The other two teams involved were out of the running at that point anyway.) All it really did was maintain the status quo... but we had one more game to play than either of those three teams did.

Our last match (Q74, the last qualifying match of the regional) was a hard-fought, all-out-on-both-sides 10-8 victory, netting us 26 qualifying points in one fell swoop and launching us into first place with 118 overall QPs.

So no, gentlemen, I reject the notion that we benefited from the overall strategy of this broken system. (And by the way I do agree with those who think that the system is broken... IF people choose to play it that way.) We benefited from having a great robot and a lot of hard-fought games.

Patrick

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I don't think you can have an argument that says "6v0 strategies do not work" when the #1 seed had 1/5 of their matches 6v0.

I'm not passing judgement on how you won or if 6v0 are 'right' or not. I'm just saying that the facts point to 6v0 being a good strategy.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I sincerely hope there isn't a rule change mid-way through the competition season.

On a side note: How about FIRST giving a price break to teams attending a week 1 regional? Something like a beta test fee?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Let's be perfectly clear. In the first 6v0 match, we were strongly favored to win anyway, which meant that the 6v0 strategy very likely cost us QPs. Not benefited us, but cost us, because we were strongly favored to win the game in the first place, and were denied double our opponent's score. It helped them, but it didn't help us.

The second 6v0 match (Q70) was a complete wash, because we were the lowest-seeded team of the four in contention, and would have gained on and possibly passed the #4 and #5 seeded teams had it been a straight-up game that we won. (And we likely would have won.) So this 'wash' also cost us in the seeding rankings, both in terms of overall position *and* in the QPs needed to catch the #1 and #2 seeded teams.

Those two 6v0 games decidedly did *not* help us -- they hurt our overall standing.

It is very disappointing to me that the first year we have ever been good enough to place in the top eight -- much less the top seed -- is being cheapened by these kinds of shenanigans. I'm very proud of my team, and I hope none of them read these threads and become disappointed that their well-earned place at the top of the FLR, won with honor, integrity, and gracious professionalism throughout, is being called into question because of an exploitative trick that twists coopertition into a dark vision of what it was supposed to be.

Even if the GDC envisioned 6v0 strategies as a way for teams to work together to rise all of their boats -- and I am far from certain that this is the case -- I *am* certain that they did not intend for it to be used to bring down successful teams.

And that's what it does.

It should be wholeheartedly rejected by all teams as counter to the spirit of FIRST.

Patrick

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

No, I believe them to be human. They aren't deities and are going to miss something eventually. I think that they rarely have an issue this big is a note of their intelligence. However, I believe this case was a definite oversight/misjudgement. Let them learn from it and fix it in the future.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I'm surprised so many people are willing to adopt this strategy. It may get you more seeding points in the long run and place you higher in the rankings, but it is actually against the spirit of the game and FIRST. Breakaway was designed to be easy to understand, as seen in the scoring system. Dean Kamen wants us to try to get as many non-FIRSTers to these regionals as possible. When you employ the 6v0 strategy, you are effectively confusing everyone in the audience and complicating the game. This is completely backwards from our goal to promote science and technology to the non-FIRST community.

A second fault with the strategy is it has the potential to put teams of lower caliber in the top 8, making the eliminations less exciting (where the strategy does not work anymore).

While it may be a valid strategy, and FIRST may have messed up the seeding system, I don't condone losing matches and getting a higher rank because of it.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

For all those suggesting that scoring into your opponent's goal is not GP or is not in the spirit of FIRST, I submit the following excerpt from Dean's Coopertition Patent

Emphasis mine.

This says to me that GDC both anticipated and desired the cooperative aspect created by this seeding system.

As I have said before, I am against collusive agreements between alliances. However, I feel that an alliance deciding, on their own, to cooperate for their opponent either in the form of 6v0 or in the form of only scoring a few goals to increase seeding points in a win is not only not against the spirit of FIRST and GP, but is exactly what the patent describes.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I would just like to say that 1551 had a really good robot, and their number 1 position was well deserved.

EDIT: After reading the patent, it is obvious that the GDC intended it this way. There goes "easy to understand for the masses" out the window...
EDIT2:^^After further looking through the patent, this may not be true...

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

The seeding system does seem to favor both "cooperative" 6v0 and balanced but "competitive" 3v3 matches, so maybe this *is* what the GDC is looking for...?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Another thing of note is that date of Dean's patent: 2004. Do you think that they were really looking at the 2010 seeding algorithm in 2004? WTF?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

According to one embodiment of the invention, a first participating player, team, or alliance is motivated to cooperate with a second participating player, team, or alliance by rewarding the first participating player, team, or alliance for assisting the second participating player, team, or alliance to achieve a higher score than might otherwise have been the attainable.

I'd like to narrow the emphasis further to the bolded word. Assisting someone is not the same as doing it for them. Simply passing a ball is an assist...scoring it for them isn't an assist. At least not the way I've been taught.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I dont think that this rule was for during competition--It may have been for in the pits, helping get an opposing alliances robot ready.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I'm not sure what that has to do with coopertition-denying 3v0 games.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

After talking to pfreivald, I learned that we were approaching the situation and this discussion from pretty different starting spots. Once we talked in the same 'common denominator' I think we came to the same conclusion or atleast understood the other's opinion better. So, hopefully this may help some the confusion:

My definition of 6v0 was different than his definition. I thought a "6v0" was when both alliances agreed before hand to only score for on alliance. However, he viewed it as any match where either alliance did not play full out to win. Basically when he said 2 of his matches were 6v0, I thought that they must have pre-planned it and scored for just one alliance. That was not the case, however, because we had different ideas of what a '6v0' was.

Secondly, in match 70 at FLR has been called a '6v0', but I think that is a mistake. As discussed in this thread and the FLR one, once two of the one alliance's robots did not work, the final alliance partner decided to sit infront of the goal and did not score, which would have given the other alliance 2 points for each goal. Many (including myself) feel that was a very smart play by that team as they did not want to fall further behind in the rankings. But, from the other perspective, it hurt the other alliance as their ranking points were abnormally low because that team did not partake in the match. I can understand how someone would feel upset and how the other alliance " purposfully quit so we couldn't get ranking points".



I think the 6v0 (my definition) strategy is a legitimate strategy that is well within the rules and GP. That, however, does not mean I will use it in every single match.
While I understand how someone can feel that other team 'quit so we couldn't get ranking points', I compare it to playing defense (in previous years). Both are well within the rules of the game, and impede the other alliance from scoring so your alliance benefits. I know some disagree that playing defense and this 3v0 strategy is unGP. Although I understand their opinion, I respectfully disagree.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

A hypothetical team helps a second team by building their robot for them. Upon having success at their events, the second team receives much false praise for their "accomplishments", as in reality, they contribute little of their own efforts to the process. The first team carries them along, and they receive acclaim for what they have done to bring "success" to the second team. However, the second team no longer exists because they were never forced to stand on their own two feet - they were never encouraged to become an active participant in the process - and they believed the false hype handed to them by their benefactors and the FIRST community at large.

I view scoring for the opposition when the opposition is less capable in exactly the same manner.

However, I view "ammo sharing" among competitors as a valid application of the patent language.

It is not impossible for Dean Kamen to make a mistake in judgment, nor is it impossible for him to overlook rather important side effects of the game mechanics he has patented.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

If a cooperative game was intended where 6 robots work as a team and share the score/result of their combined efforts, then such a game should have been designed and played that way. It might be great idea. But to pretend that a game is a traditional competition between two teams when in fact the scoring system rewards you for not competing, that is just confusing and discouraging. Regardless of which side of this issue you are on, the turmoil it is creating is not good for the health of FRC, and that makes it a bad idea no matter what.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

The best teams will be able to take advantage of the system to get themselves into one of the top 8 spots. They will score for themselves as well as their opponents, but win the match so they get 2X their opponent's score. As long as you are winning (and you don't penalize yourself to death) scoring for your opponent will get you more points.

As far as scouting, Team 343 will be looking at good scorers and hangers, and teams that understand strategy . Teams that get tons of penalties will not be picked by 343.

As far as audiences watching, if you explain the winning alliance gets their score plus 2X the losers score, then they understand.

Or it could all just be a war where we make sure we kill the same number of people on both sides.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Many people are saying that because a 6 v 0 qualifying match is better for both alliances than a 3 v 3, teams will always do it or those that 'cheat' will do better overall. They will realise that in the playoffs, the 6v0 format is unviable and will obviously be scrapped. Thus, teams that played good defense (even if that's bad for seeding points) will be picked because that is a strategy that can win games, as opposed to leading to higher scores. Also, watching a 6v0 match, nothing seriously stands out (well, maybe, but moving on..). When you watch one team play great defense on another, it looks good, and you'll check out that team more to see if you'll want to pick them later. Furthermore, all teams that played 'for real' in qualifying will have a strategic advantage going into eliminations, because they have played 'real' matches and know what they have to do to win. So basically, this 'cheating' may be good for some teams because they seed higher, but the real winners are those that win elimination matches, which will more likely be the teams that play 3 v 3, even in qualifiers.

In this way, it may come down to a balance of two types of teams:
1. Teams that play 6v0 in order to get higher seeds and hopefully be able to select the best teams to their alliances and
2. Teams that play 3v3 in order to look good, play better, and get picked on alliances. Which team you want to be is the same decision as 'do you want to go over the bump?' or 'do you want to elevate?' It's a decision that is merely strategic, and is designed for you to have the greatest chance of reaching Atlanta and winning the World Championship. It all comes down to a balance of specializations. Will your robot get the #1 seed and pick the best teams, being the figurehead of a winning alliance? Or will your robot play hard and strong on opposing teams, leading to you getting picked by the top alliance, and actually leading your alliance to victory?

Ideally you want to be a type-2 robot that gets seeded in the top 8, so that you'll have 3 robots that play the real elimination game. However, that really looks highly unlikely. It's actually a bit like playing defense: any robot can play defense or play 6v0 decently well, but it's the offense or the 3v3 that makes your robot stand out. I'm not trying to say that any robot can or will absolutely specialize one way or another, because that's impossible, because either way lots of your points will be scored by scoring balls in a goal, yours or the other alliance's.

I hope you enjoyed that 'brief' post. I thought it was something a lot of people were missing. And 2337 will be a type-2 robot.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I am not saying I necessarily agree, or with or like the system we have been handed. However, I personally don't see any moral dilemma in playing a match as a 6v0 (not arranged with the opponents) or scoring for our opponents to maximize our seeding points. I have not yet talked with my team about this, and will certainly be doing so before implementing either strategy to make sure everyone feels the same way.

We (assuming my team agrees with me) will not be using 6v0 in every match, or even in most matches, as strategically I don't think it is the best way to maximize seeding score and I don't think it is the best way to prepare for eliminations. We will be playing at least most of our matches to win, but to win close if possible.

I feel that there is no such thing as "running up the score" in sports. If you don't want the opponent to score so many points, then you should stop them. I have been on a basketball team that lost a game by 100 points. While that experience sucked pretty bad, it wouldn't have been made any better if the opponent had stopped scoring at some number like a 30 point lead or a 50 point lead. Personally, I use experiences like this to push me to work harder.

I feel the same way about self-scoring in FIRST. If you want to stop your opponent from doing this then you better bring the defense to stop it or the offense to make it unwise. If I don't give them a reason not to, I fully expect my opponent to play the game in a way that will maximize their Seeding Points. This is the game we have been given, and I will not fault my opponents for playing it.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I wish FIRST did something more simple for Coopertition, like "if you put this ball on a special goal both teams double their SP! YEAH COOPERTITION" rather than something that changes the whole game like this. Or even "hey I'm going to stop playing defensive tackle in the middle zone so you guys can get some balls too!".

Right now, I have no idea what my team's going to do regarding 6v0 or whatever. All I know is that I hate that I have to even think about it.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Right. In both cases, it was more of a 3v0 situation where the weaker alliance essentially refused to play against a stronger alliance.

-----------

I want to be clear here that there is no bad blood between me and anyone. My team did great, and I'm tremendously proud of them. 22 hanging points is the highest in week one, and in addition to regional champion and top seed, they won the judge's award and the coopertition award. This is by far the best we have ever done, and we did it all through 3v3 play.

-----------

My goal in posting in this thread is to make people realize that there are absolutely situations where teams are *hurt* by 6v0 or 3v0 play, and it may very well hurt FIRST itself.

On 3v0:
1. It's not Coopertition. Strong alliances are denied coopertition bonuses and higher QPs by 3v0 strategies, and I think it is not in the spirit of FIRST to deliberately lose by refusing to play.
2. It's counter to the spirit and mission of FIRST. 3v0 games are *boring* for the players and for the audience, and *boring* techno-geek-stuff is exactly what For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology was designed to _not_ be. It is neither inspiring, nor is it a good demonstration of science or technology.
3. It's counter to the goal of making the game more audience-accessible. 'Nuff said there.
4. It might be harmful to your team in terms of sponsor and media support. I cannot imagine that such decisions sit well with sponsors, who want video, still shots, and articles written about how successful the teams that they have poured time, money, and energy into are doing. Newspapers want win/loss ratios and whiz-bang robo-tricks, not strategies that involve doing nothing.

On 6v0:
1. 6v0, fully-cooperative-and-agreed-upon-beforehand play may well be in the spirit of first, but it has several negative impacts.
A. The long-term benefits are low. Used excessively, all it does is maintain the status quo. Compared to winning medium-scoring 3v3 games, it is not as good at generating QPs.
B. It benefits a pre-determined alliance more. The alliance chosen to be the 'loser' will likely get more points than the 'winner', due to inadvertent penalties.
C.i. It hurts your chances of getting chosen if you do not get into the top 8. 6v0 play removes opportunities for teams to show off their robot -- to the audience, to the fans, to their sponsors, and to the scouts of the other teams (who are looking out for which robots will *win*.)
C.ii. It hurts young teams more. I think this is especially damaging to rookie and second-year teams, who may go along with the strategy due to peer pressure from more established and successful teams.
D. It confuses and annoys the audience. (See above).

It's bad strategy for teams, and it's bad strategy for FIRST.

Patrick

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

I will disagree that 3v0 games are necessarily boring. They can provide the opportunity for robots to showcase inspiring potential offensive capabilities. I'll point to '07 GTR Q15 (it was a 3v1 match, but the alliance with 1 wasn't playing defence)

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Don't be fooled. 6v0 is not a viable strategy. Below is the competition record of team 1515.

The first number is the match number followed by the red teams then the blue teams, next is the match score, red, blue. Then the winning alliance followed by the match seed points and coopretition points. The totals are last.
My total is off by one point, but I do not have access to unpenalized scores so there must have been a penalty

I do not know that 1515 actively pursued 6v0 but 4 of their matches are the desired result of this strategy, 3 of those would be considered very successful.

Their final seed was 55 of 61. Their highest seed gain was match 79 which was a well played match NOT a 6v0 game.

Looking at the results of our regional all of the top seeded teams had a boat load of coopretition points. A successful 6v0 match results in NO coopretion points. Looks to me like this is the fatal flaw. If you want seeding points play hard, with just enough defence to maintain a narrow lead.


3 2865 3188 2898 948 8 1515 0 5 blue 5 0
13 2374 8 956 1778 2951 1515 1 0 red 1 0
23 1425 1515 2471 1571 2411 2002 1 1 blue 1 2
31 753 2922 2521 3024 1515 368 6 3 red 6 0
46 2915 948 1318 1700 1515 3070 2 1 red 2 0
57 3131 1823 1515 2130 3192 2192 0 5 blue 5 0
62 1595 1515 2046 3024 3223 1540 0 7 blue 7 0
79 2517 3210 3131 3145 2522 1515 2 4 blue 4 4
86 1571 957 1515 2635 3213 2147 0 3 blue 3 0
34 6 40


BTW concrats to team 1515, in spite of their bad seed 1515 was selected as an ally of the #1 seed and earned a trip to Atlanta.

Why is seed so important?

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

If you don't make it to the top 8 seed does not matter at all. Seed matters to try and get into the top 8 to both guarantee you will make elims and give you the control over assembling your alliance.

Re: A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents
 

Clearly, and the best way to get into the top 10 is to Drive Well, Play Well , Fix Well.

This misbegotten strategy is simply not the answer.