[Chris Fultz]

The rule changes have been thought out and discussed, and several options were considered, including "none".

We made the decisions we made with this type of thought process.

We would expect a high percentage of alliances to co-op balance. Most teams can do it, and teams would be hesitant to not do it because it would hurt their ranking, as well as be bad from a reputation standpoint. So, if everyone co-ops, then it becomes irrelevant to the rankings. This change probably has little impact on rankings.

The triple balance, and attempts at it, are very exciting. Alliances will need to determine if it is worth the reward (+40) for the risk (maybe 0, maybe robot damage), compared to an almost guaranteed double balance and more scoring from the 3rd robot. Not every alliance can triple, and even many of the "3 wide alliances" will not be able to triple. With the match schedule, alliances will not have time to go practice with each set of partners. We believe it is going to be exciting to watch the attempts.

The changes were not meant to help or hurt any robot or design. Many long robots are good at triples, many wide ones are not.