[jtrv]

I don't think it is necessary, but it will certainly help.

The fact of the matter is - eliminations really don't matter very much. Tell me how many times you've seen a #1 seed lose the tournament. The answer is probably a lot.

Eliminations are what matters, and there is no coopertition in eliminations. If you devote a significant amount of your strategy or build design to doing coopertition, you're not going to do well in elims. Sure, you can do fine. But you won't do fantastic unless you have a spectacular bot.

You have to rely on the fact that the other alliance wants coopertition just as much as you do, and can also even reach to get the fourth tote up. Some teams will not be able to reach. Some teams will not care about coopertition.

For example, the teams seeded 4-12ish are going to care A LOT about coopertition on the second day. The 1-3 and 13-45ish teams will not. That's a vast majority. Those teams need to show off to other teams what they can do ASIDE from coopertition, in order to get the best alliance.

Sure, the first day, there will be a lot. But when it comes down to crunch time, coopertition based strategy won't win you anything.

Besides, if the other alliance doesn't want to do coopertition, you just wasted a lot of valuable time placing the totes on the ledge when you could have been doing other work.