While I was at the AZ regional I noticed this idea going around and some teams using it quite effectively.
I agree with not ‘fixing’ the match, but I also feel like a purely defensive strategy is boring and predictable.
Most of the matches I witnessed consisted of teams knocking HP stacks over and fighting for the ramp. This quickly became boring and never allowed teams that had stackers to do anything they designed their robots for. But I also don’t think that a match where a stack of 6 survived was fun to watch either (edit, unless they built it from scratch or added to a stack etc.. good job to those teams
Although, agreements to NOT knock stacks over seem unfair, it still doesn’t necessarily mean teams "fixed" the match.
These matches still had everything to do with who could get to the top and who could funnel more boxes into their scoring zone. So for the most part I don’t think that "fixing" the match would be fair, where teams would agree on every movement of the entire match and set the winner/loser.
Our team was tempted a few times to try and see if all 4 teams would agree to concentrate on the offensive side of the game, but realized this strategy wasn’t fair to the robots designed for defense, and never ended up doing it.
In the end we were not in a single match where the HP stacks survived (or someone tried to knock them over) we also must have witnessed at least 10 matches where 2 or more stacks of 6 survived.
I don’t think that 'fixing' the matches is fair, but I do think that teams should try and play a game that is a little more offensive, realizing that by knocking over the HP stacks you are hurting your own score. I think this should be done within the team and should not be suggested to opponents. If they feel the same way, then they will show you by not knocking them over.
Good luck to all teams in the upcoming events.
Travis
PS. Thanks to teams 606, and 460 for a great alliance!!!