Nash Equilibrium

[Gabriel]

I was reading through the game documentation last night when I found an interesting bullet point under Rule SC14

Ties are allowed. In the event of a tie, all 4 teams get the total of the scores of both the RED and BLUE alliances.

Maybe I'm misreading this but that tieing the game will effectively double everyone's score!

This revalation got me thinking, maybe instead of competing with each other the best solution is for the teams to "rig the match" before the game begins. What if all 4 teams work together on a plan to tie each other. They can then use their resources to help each other out, getting a higher score.

I realize that this works much better in theory than in practice, and that it will take some VERY careful planning and execution to succeed, but does anyone think its worth a shot? What if each team got half the tubs in their scoring zone, a stack of say, 3 and allowed 1 robot per team on the endzone at the end (and pushed the last odd tub out of play)? By my quick calculation, each team should be able to get 100 points, thus making each teams final score 200.

The problem is that in order to prevent backstabbing there would need to be some deterrent. How about an informal agreement between a group of teams to "watch each others backs" if one team agrees to enter into this "tieing scenario" and then backstabs another team, they would then have say 8 other teams unwilling to cooperate with them. This alliance is a good way for teams to help each other out "graciously and proffessionally" thus giving everyone a chairmens award advantage.

I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but maybe cooperation is the best way of going about this game