[jawebste]

Very interesting thoughts.

Our team was actually the recipient of "being left" at the bridge (being stood up for the prom?) twice. In one of the two matches the two bots on our alliance that had said they could do our bridge couldn't balance, so our alliance received no balance points while the team on the opposing alliance that had agreed to cooperate never came near the coopertition bridge and went and made a two bot balance for their own alliance.

Why couldn't the teams have to report to the refs the numbers of the cooperating "teams" as they set up their bots on the field and then at the bridge, if a team is left and they can get on and balance, they could earn the points and the other alliance would all be dinged the the same number of points. The points total for balancing on your own bridges would all stay the same.

Yes, under this scenario many teams will never agree to cooperate, but if they do agree and are not a team of their words they would receive a penalty.

Fortunately, I did not see any sabotaging of the coopertition bridge at our district. I am saddened to think a coach let that happen. I hope I could pull a driver off the controls before I let them do that. I know the rules did not spell that out as not permitted, but like so many have said, there are interference fouls, there are fouls for holding, and fouls for touching other robots' safe zone. Sabotage at the bridge is so "un-FIRST."

But I think it's also "un-FIRST" when teams do not honor their plans or make plans without the rest of their alliance. Teams that are dishonest in this way should be "known" to the other teams before elimination selection.

And if many qualification matches go without coopertition bridge attempts that's not the end of the world, at least dishonorable conduct would not be rewarded like happened to us twice.

Sadly, I have to say we have learned our lesson and will probably not attempt a coopertition bridge at our next district because we were hurt very badly by this strategy. And I am disappointed because I am sure the lesson we learned is nothing the GDC had in mind either.

All in all, it's a tough but fun game. The championships and state/area regionals should be very interesting.