[kirtar]

Section 9: The Tournament

What I see as the intent of the rule is to discourage cut-throat competition in the qualification rounds. It is perfectly to your advantage to keep the score close (e.g. win by say, 1 point). The idea is that the scenario that is the most beneficial to both teams is a high-scoring, penalty-free tie. It's like the previous system (I think on that one it was called either ranking points or qualification points. I don't remember which was which) in which one portion of seeding was based off of the score of the opposing alliance. However, it is now included in the primary seeding value (your total seeding points) as well as being the first tiebreaker.

The scenario that would be the most beneficial to a single team is to have the opposing alliance lose to a ridiculous number of penalties while still obtaining a high score (and not have any penalties).