Everyone seems to be missing two key factors:
1. If the two alliances are not colluding, then the best strategy for the alliance planning to score 0 is to block both goals with its robots and push the balls into the other alliance's zone.
2. Competition should lower the maximum amount of points a given alliance can get, given competency on the part of both alliances. If we both get 6 of the balls, then that's a 6 point margin that's being taken away. If one alliance plans to get 0 points, then the other alliance gets 12 points plus however many they can put back onto the field.
Some say that the cooperition bonus "is for this purpose", while shying away from the stronger statement that the cooperition bonus would compel both teams to compete. This simply isn't true; they fail to factor in the heightened maximum points you can gain from not scoring any goals.
For instance, take the numbers that have been thrown around. Say the score is 8-8. That means that 4 balls have been re-entered into the field. A total of 16 balls. The winning team in kirtar's scenario is 8-8, or 8-7, or something close to a tie. The winning alliance gets 12 seeding points minus penalties, while the losing team gets 8 points.
Compare this to the strategy of scoring 0: using the same number of active balls, one alliance scores 16 and the other 0. The final seeding points distributed is 16 points to each team. 4 points higher for the winning alliance, and
double the losing alliance's potential score. It is simply not the case that it is always beneficial to tie a game.
In fact, the original scenario assumes that 8-8 is the score, assuming that the number of active balls is 16. The two teams fight for the 16 balls, making sure that they are not efficiently delivering goals and re-entering balls into the play field. If they did, by teaming up to score the most points, they could increase the number of balls higher, thus making their score
even higher.
Why does everyone think this strategy is counter to the spirit of FIRST? It's not counter to the spirit of the rules, since Dean Kamen himself foresaw this use of the rules in his
patent. Second, it effects an environment in which
both teams work together in order to maximize their benefits. Is this not more close to gracious professionalism than
competing to make sure you beat the other team just hard enough to get the win, but just soft enough to get the most cooperition bonus? Surely once you have established the win, it's almost manipulative to behave this way. If you are at 1 minute left with your alliance at 8 points and the other alliance at 4, a team looking for seeding points (and who isn't?) would wait for the other alliance to score up to 3 points to gain that extra 6 seeding points. The losing team knows this. They know it, and they know that they're going to lose and any attempts to win would just increase the other alliance's seeding points at the end of the match. What hopelessness. Scoring for yourself actually drags you lower relative to the mean seeding points.
I'm not advocating this as a main strategy; when I presented it to my team our mentors repeatedly said that it would probably be changed, it might be entirely eliminated, and that we shouldn't use it as our main strategy. The strategy we could use, if this isn't changed, is determine whether we're going to lose or not beforehand. If we are, then convince our alliance partners to not score. If they won't be convinced, score like mad. If they will be convinced, don't score and block the goals, helping the other team while preventing them from lowering our score relative to them.
Again, most teams will likely examine this strategy and find it too risky. What if the other team scores on us - then we actually lose points. I'm just pointing out that this is a
legal,
effective strategy, and worthy of discussion, even as a matter of pure game theory. Questions of fairness or fidelity to our foundations are tangential at best.