Quote:
Originally Posted by TheMadCADer
The thing is, you don't have to play half-heartedly or just sit there in order to lose the match. Just point your shooter at the other goal (especially if you can get some of their coloured discs and score them in their pyramid goal, that way they get 26 points each thanks to G17). That way you don't make yourselves or your sponsors look bad, it just makes it obvious that you want the other alliance to win. Get your alliance partners to help out, and they'll get an easy way to prove their abilities. You can probably put up a really high score together.
Obviously you should talk to your alliance partners about it, but even if they don't want you to, I don't see that as an issue. You shouldn't be obligated to win for some other team's sake, especially if it isn't in your own best interests. One thing I like to stress in the early stages of design is to never rely on your random alliance partners for anything. If they are only ranked high because of other teams helping them, then they probably shouldn't be ranked high. If they want to rank high, they should do it themselves. It gets completely different when there are two approximately equal teams on each alliance, and your behavior is basically choosing which will rank higher, but if it's just a couple teams that want to move up from 30th to 20th, I wouldn't hurt my own chances to help them, because it honestly wouldn't matter since they couldn't pick anyway. They should just focus on showing off.
I don't like to see teams making "pick deals" for losing matches, but rather I'd like to see this when there are two other teams that could seed first, and one is distinctly stronger than the other, and you are playing against that stronger team.
Imagine three teams, given numbers based on how many points they score. Team 200 scores 200 points each match, Team 150 scores 150 points, Team 80 scores 80, and every other team scores fewer than 80 points. You are on Team 150, and you already have a few losses with just one qualification match left, against Team 200, but you have better alliance partners and could win the match. Both Team 200 and Team 80 are undefeated, and Team 80 has already played all of their matches. If you win your last match, Team 80 is the #1 seed and picks Team 200. If Team 200 wins that match, they get the #1 seed and pick you, Team 150.
It should be obvious which situation gives you a better chance of winning, since no other robots can top Team 80, and you can't top Team 200. Also, this matches the expected outcome, where the best teams win the event. While we always want to see good competition, we also want to see the robots that are legitimately the best win the competition.
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Let me lay out another situation. Our team was in a rather unique scenario at our St Joseph District (
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2013misjo), we got to play king-makers in match 78 (the final quals match), where teams 2000 and 2959 were facing off as the undefeated 1st and 2nd seeded alliances (in the last match of the day no less). I wouldn't dare to figure out which of them was a better bot, they were both very good, and played a very similar game.
Our robot was a very attractive pick (3rd seed at the time) for either of the two amazing cycle runners, we had the only seven disk autonomous at the event, and considered ourselves to be likely for the first pick of either team.
I would be a liar if said we hadn't discussed the what-if's of throwing the match (although I wouldn't say we considered it seriously). If we chose to throw that match, we may have still won the event, but our friends on 2959 would have been the victim of something embarrassingly deceitful.
Even if we had been with another great robot in that final match instead of 2959, throwing the match would have had the same consequences for 2959, albeit less direct, and it still would have been wrong.
My personal opinion is, even when it IS worth it to throw the match, it isn't worth it. There is always the next event or the next year for winning, but you can't wipe away a seedy past as easily.