[Tknee]

Let me start with the disclaimer that outside of being an avid spectator, I haven't participated in a FIRST event for years.

I'm an ardent supporter of unintuitive strategies that can benefit a team in the long run as long as they do not: a) sabotage an alliance member in a match; b) rely on lying to the opponents; c) rely on promises made between teams regarding being picked. I feel that sharing these strategies are akin to sharing tools.

With all that said, I don't think cooperation bridge defense, pre-determined results and meta-coopertition are all that useful in this years competition.

Cooperation bridge defense is essentially alliance sabotage (or preventative measures against alliance sabotage - which should be unnecessary). The need to defend the cooperation bridge disappears if your entire alliance is in agreement whether to balance the bridge or not. I would hope that members within an alliance can communicate with one another their needs and graciously set aside some of their desires to come up with a compromise strategy.

Before continuing let's consider reasons why you would not want the cooperation bridge balanced. The reasons I can think of are: i) you think your alliance can win the match if your robots are engaged in other endeavors ii) you do not wish your opponents to receive the 2CP that come with a balanced bridge. (there's also iii) you do not wish your alliance member to receive the 2CP - but that's alliance sabotage).

I find the 6v0 situation described in the original post as extremely unlikely. If Red1 is such a powerhouse, they probably do not require the full 2 minutes to balance the bridge; if blue alliance is such an overwhelming underdog who is trying to score minimal points, it is difficult to imagine them up 10 points near the end of the match; lastly if the alliance bridge is balanced Blue1 has already showcased their balancing - driving off doesn't negate having done it. Nevertheless the gist of the scenario is that underdog alliance blue is attempting to avoid reason i as to why the bridge isn't balanced and is willing to lose the match to avoid it (with the understanding that they will probably lose the match regardless) while showcasing some of the robots abilities.

I do endorse communication between opponents but want to point out that agreements between opponents regarding bridge balancing don't have to be a binary yes or no, but can be conditional e.g "We will attempt to balance if we are winning by 10 or losing by 20 with forty seconds left in the match". Now in the example, if red alliance gives blue alliance a conditional statement, the blue alliance can develop a strategy to score minimal points to ensure that there is a balancing attempt, but without a set agreement to lose the match. Thus if they find themselves winning, they can do so in good conscious and receive the 2QP for winning instead of from CP as they had expected. I suppose things could still go wrong if blue is inside the margin in which a balance attempt is offered and end up losing, but the point is that teams can accomplish the goals described in the 6v0 scenario without having to agree which team will win or lose.

As for meta-coopertition, my thoughts are more jumbled and less clear. With the assumption that you usually want the cooperation bridge balanced, let us focus on reason ii as to why you wouldn't want the cooperation bridge balanced. Supposedly you are playing against a dominant robot (DR) and don't wish DR to seed 1st in order to prevent DR from picking dominant robot 2 (DR2). If there are more than 2 dominant robots, one must wonder how much preventing DR from seeding high going to help. So under that scenario consider:

1) How much are you hurting the DR vs How much are you hurting yourselves - To be truly helpful to you in the long run, other teams (meta-coopertition) must have the same thought process.
2) Can you predict that the other alliances in subsequent matches will join in refusing to cooperate with said dominant robots - Even if the DR plays subsequent matches against teams that may also be interested in preventing the DR from seeding 1st, those teams have to convince their alliance.
3) The benefit of splitting DR1 and DR2 goes primarily to the teams that get to pick (are picked by) DR1 & DR2. True all the alliances benefit from not having to play a DR1-DR2 alliance, but if DR1 and DR2 are that dominant, their two alliances will still be the favorites for the competition.

With all that in mind, I don't see meta-coopertition being all that helpful.