[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by EricH

The coopertition bridge, IMO, is one of the best strategic elements the GDC has ever put into an FRC game. It forces you to think about ranking strategy, strategy for relating to other teams, and split-second decisions without good communication with the person you're working with (a real-world challenge). And they got it just about right.

I agree with EricH's perspective above -- I think the coopertition bridge has been a great part of this year's game at the two regionals attended by 1519 (Granite State Regional in Week 1 and North Carolina Regional in Week 6). However, we haven't had direct experience with the regionals where the Coopertition bridge became an ugly point of contention with teams intentionally refusing to balance with other teams in order to affect the other team's rankings, so our perspective may be limited.

Our #1 seeding at the North Carolina Regional was a direct result of our acquiring Coopertition points in 8 of 10 matches (the highest at the event). However, bridge balancing was the #1 design goal for our robot, as it was apparent to us from reading the game manual that Coopertition bridge balancing would be essential for high seeding in Rebound Rumble.

Accordingly, we designed our robot to optimize balancing. We knew it would be difficult to balance with another team whose drivers were over 50 feet away and would have a robot very different than our own. We made design decisions about the CG of the robot to increase our balancing ability at the cost of making 3-point shots more difficult. (A lower shooter makes 3-point shots tougher than for a higher shooter.)

Some would point to our 6-3-1 record in North Carolina and say that we didn't deserve to be the #1 seed since we only got there based on our Coopertition points and the #2 seed had a 9-1-0 record, making them a clearly better robot!

However, in all 4 matches that we didn't win in North Carolina, we lost the match by a point spread of less than 10 points and our robot was on top of a balanced Coopertition bridge each time. (If you're curious, the point spreads in our non-wins were 0, 4, 7, and 7.) In each of the matches we didn't win, there was at least one empty spot on our own alliance bridge. If we had instead balanced on our alliance bridge, we could have increased our own alliance's score by 10 points and might have come away with an undefeated 10-0 record, but we would have had fewer Coopertition points. (I would note that this scenario is not always a valid argument, because in many cases the other robot we were cooperating with could have done the same!) I also know that if we hadn't been regularly heading to the coopertition bridge with 45-60 seconds left in the match, we would have been able to take a few more shots on the basket before heading to our alliance bridge.

Nonetheless, the Coopertition bridge is a key feature of this year's game. I like it, as it adds a strategic dimension that hasn't been present in the past, and also make coopertition apparent to not only the teams, but also to the audience that is part of the culture we're trying to change!

Then again, we designed our robot expressly to be good at balancing on the Coopertition bridge, so it only naturally follows that we would like the game feature!