[Billfred]

Funny, you seem to have described 1618 at Palmetto this year.

Always thinking we'd figured out the arm problems, we would tell our alliance partners we'd try and get one human-fed ring, then go with our standard defense for the rest of the match. If the arm wasn't going, we'd just scrap it and go immediately to defense. (Then, if the arm ever did work at that one tube, we'd plan accordingly in the next match. We wouldn't dare change strategy in the alliance station.)

I'd ask my partners to let us score one or two rings as scout fodder, then go on defense. It's neither of the options really, but I've yet to find a set of partners not receptive to input from all three partners.