What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

Ever since kickoff I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to handle the coopertition bridge.

Do you talk to the entire opposing alliance before a match? Just the team you want to go on the bridge with?

Should it be the best bridge climbers on each alliance going on the bridge? The worst? Will teams say to the opposing alliance that one team will do it when another will do it?

Will teams say they wont do it unless the best robot on the other alliance does it, in order to give their alliance a better chance at winning?

I am glad that we are not competing in a week 1 event and will be able to see how this plays out, but I was wondering what teams' current thoughts are on this matter.

What is your coopertition bridge plan?

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

Best teams or climbers or balancers, coopertition bridge is worth a lot.

I believe u should talk to the entire other alliance if u plan on going for the coopertition bridge. Decide wat teams and when u go.

Now if u noticed, I said if u plan on going for it. I believe that sometimes in strategic moves that u dont allow the other team the extra two points. This would be from earlier collusion from a high placed team that might have said that they will pick u. While I dont believe this is in the nature of FIRST, dont be shocked when it happenes because im sure it will.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

You won't see clear pattern or plan to that bridge I think til the end of Practice on Thursday. By then you know what your and your competitors bots are capable of so you should have an idea of what to do.

And I can see the allies/opponents in the queuing lineup discussing this. And lots of last minute dealing and wheeling. This will actually mean all of those handshakes that make up the Seeding and Tourney play will be ongoing all through the competition rather then just through the Qualification matches.

I'll wait and see what A) happens at the scrimmages B) happens in week 1 and C) practice day at the regional I'll be at.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

I think you always prioritize the Coopertition Bridge. Even if you are losing, if you can get the bridge, you would get the same amount of points as if you won and didn't get the bridge.

So co-ordinate before, and unless there's no opposition who's going to help you balance, go for the Co-opertition Bridge.

And get your best balancer.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

It also seems like poor form to say "no, thanks" when a team asks your alliance if they can balance the bridge with you.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

Why? Maybe it's disadvantageous to give members of the opposing alliance two free QPs. I think saying "no" is a perfectly legitimate answer.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

I think even if you plan with the other alliance to do it, its still going to become more of a last minuet/spontaneous thing where one alliance is going to get on the bridge and wait and hope that the other alliance notices and gets over to get on as well.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

The issue I'm seeing here is the size of the robots. When you have a large piece of machinery with 120 pound max (and I just KNOW we're going to have a lot of robots approach that limit) that is 28"x38", the balancing problem increases.
Simple communication with the team across the field will be difficult, but the largest problem is how would you pull down the bridge? You can't push down with the greater-than-120 pound force needed to push the other robot up, because your own bot would lift off the ground from the force of the mechanism. So unless you can coordinate driving, simply getting two bots on there won't happen.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

One robot is already on the bridge waiting for another robot to approach, when they see the robot coming they drive to that side of the bridge thus lowering that side to allow that team to drive up onto the bridge then both robots drive towards the other side of the bridge to balance it out..

Problem solved...

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

There the problem lies in communication. While running a mockup we noticed that properly coordinating to balance *quickly* requires effective communication, because you don't know how far each robot has to move to balance with each other, and if you do you have to communicate it with the other team. Since you'll be trying to align the robots while looking at them from the drivers' stations, that's not the easiest thing to do in the frantic last thirty seconds. Then again, I could be wrong, but we won't know until we're playing against another bot.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

For teams that want to win tournaments, this will not be the case...

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

Not really because good teams will always get picked, yes get the added qualification points is fantastic but it will all equal out over the course of qualifications

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

Good teams get picked, great teams want to do the picking...

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

I understand that and your right to a degree, but you are 1 robot on a field of 6 there is only so much YOU can do. You can't force the other 2 robots on your alliance or the other 3 robots on the other alliance to do what you want.

Now I am not saying that the extra 2 or 1 point(s) depending on it being balanced or not isn't very important and that teams should just forget it or not try, it be stupid not to.

But at the same time if every match has a balanced coopertition bridge then the rankings are going to be the same if every match didn't have a balanced bridge.

Its a good strategy to know if the coopertition bridge is a valid option in EACH match, as Madison said its not always going to advantages to do it.

Re: What is your cooperition bridge plan?
 

The fact that I cannot control every aspect of the game to ensure that I rank as high as possible is the most frustrating part of the coopetition bridge and ranking system. If the best robots tend to not rank in the top 8 because less capable teams will not cooperate with them then the ranking system itself is flawed.

If my team is winning a match by a significant margin and we get on the coopetition bridge and tip it for the other alliance and they refuse to even attempt to drive on I have done everything in my power to try and cooperate to assist BOTH alliances in getting more qualification points. I tried to cooperate, I should receive some merit for that as I can not control the other alliance screwing me for spite or for ranking reasons.

This is just like 2010 where it was not always in your best interest to try and win the match.

So, back to the original argument, the coopetition bridge is key for those who want to do well in elims as it is worth the equivalent of winning a match. Good teams will get picked, but a great team as #1 seed will get the second best team, and the only way to be number #1 seed is to use that stinking bridge.