Petition: Change Elimination Rounds

[Jay Lundy]

Imagine this:

The game starts. The 2 robots on one alliance don't move at all at the beginning of the match. They both have "damaged drive trains." The other 2 robots set up the field in such a way that they are going to win 100 to 99. With 30 seconds left, they both move up onto the ramp and wait. Suddenly, with 2 seconds left, both of the "disabled" robots dart out and knock over a stack or knock 2 tubs out of scoring position. The other robots can't do anything about it because they are relying on the 50 points from the ramp. The team that did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING all match wins 99-98.

Is this strategy, or is it a loophole? Sure this would only work one time, but I can see some modified version of this where one alliance does all the work only to be beaten by a misjudgement.

There are several factors involved in winning a game:
- Robot functionality
- Robot reliability
- Pre-game strategy
- In-game strategy

This year the focus in the EPs is mostly on in-game strategy whereas previous years it was robot functionality/reliability and pre-game strategy. I can see how this can work to level the playing field for rookies who tend to not build as good a robot as veteran teams, but I agree there is too much luck involved in in-game strategy to make it a good way of determining a winner.

Sure, it isn't about winning, but it sure does feel good when you do win, and even better when you know you won because you drove better, built a better robot, and strategized better, and not because your opponent forgot to count 2 of the bins when they counted up the number of bins in scoring position.