[Dan Richardson]

In qualifying the verbiage winning and losing should nearly be stricken from our vernacular, because it's a non recorded erroneous statistic. Coopertition by it's very definition does not even use the verbiage win or lose, but describes the two competing alliances as having gained higher or lower point totals. ( United States Patent 7507169 )

The ONLY thing that quantifies the result of a match this year is your seeding score. When reflecting upon a qualification match and in communicating those results to fellow teammates the match should not be described as having been won or lost but yet described as having gained X number of seeding points. The reality of it is, this is the only statistic that matters in developing the strategy for qualifying.

Now, this is contrary to every sport and nearly every real life scenario but I believe this is what the GDC intended. To disregard this strategy as UN-GP or unsportsmanlike is illogical and to cast a team in a negative light for having participated in this strategy in a public forum like this is indeed UN-GP.

Having said this if a team is really trying to do everything it can to "Win" this would often be the best course of action. If an alliance decides that a loss is likely, then it would be best to play no defense, aid the other alliance where possible and guarantee that no points are scored for them. The absolute worst outcome in this case would be equal seeding points or a "tie" and often, because of the frequency of penalties this year, higher seeding points, or a "win."

Teams this weekend proved that superior play can help you seed highly and it would be naive to say that all teams will subscribe to this philosophy. It does not take a 6v0 "collusion" to pull this off, just an agreement by one alliance.This may complicate scouting but should be expected and understood as playing entirely within the spirit of the game.

One thing I hope happens tho, is that if an alliance chooses to play for the other team, that this decision is unanimous. I guess what I'm saying is I think it will be disappointing to see robots playing defense on their own alliance.