[mathking]

Mike is correct that the main benefit of the extra point is to knock three teams down from 90 to 31 points, since you would only gain 1 point.

However, playing for the tie is a very difficult proposition. First off, you likely won't know for sure who penalties are on. Suppose you know that one penalty has been called, but are not sure who it is called on. Or even worse, what if there are 5 or 7 or some other fairly large odd number of penalties. You know for sure that a tie in points scored will not end up being a tie, but you aren't sure which team is behind. If you do not attempt to score a couple more for yourself, you risk losing out on a lot of points.

We should also remember that this is a robotics competition. It is not going to be easy to score one at a time, so alliances which are cooperating will probably just try to score a bunch of balls in the first half of the game and then equalize later. It may be difficult to insure a tie at this point. Say its 25 - 24 with 20 seconds left. You have the 25 and an agreement to play for a tie with the other team. Do you leave to go lift yourselves or try to score for them? What if both sides are trying to score that last ball for the side with 24 and they accidentally put in 2 balls? Then sticking to your agreement just knocked you from 73 points to 26 points. Or if you are the alliance with 24. Do you stick to your agreement and take 24 or do you lift one of your robots to get to 26 for yourself, moving you to 76 and the other side to 26. If you have an alliance with 3 really strong scoring bots, you may just decide to run up a big score for yourselves and then at some point switch to scoring for the other side to pump up your coopertition bonus.

I don't see anything wrong with cooperating for a tie, or cooperating for an n to 0 score. But I don't think it will be so easily done. I also don't see anything wrong with declining to participate in a cooperative tie. And again I will say that this is a really interesting game theory problem.