Coopertition - Not As Easy As It Looks!

[Shankar M]

I think we as a community are all in agreement (even before this update) that egregious attempts to unbalance the Coopetition Bridge are wrong and should be unquestionably frowned upon.

However, even after this update from FIRST, I continue to stand by the strategy of choosing, as an alliance, not to balance the Coopetition Bridge in certain situations. There are, of course, several conditions that MUST be met to make this strategy acceptable. These have been captured in in any number of preceding posts - the entire alliance agreeing to do so without any coercion or bullying on the part of any member(s) of the alliance being the dominant one.

It seems that there is some "contentious" strategy that arises each year which causes people to cry foul citing it as an affront Gracious Professionalism. As has been said so many times before: let's not forget that we are all competing in a competition. We all want to have fun and enjoy ourselves. We all want to cooperate and help each other out. We all want to win. Often, that means finding strategies to accomplish certain tasks that help us to achieve this goal - choosing not to balance the Coopetition Bridge in certain situations is just such an example.

I worry a little about teams using this update as a basis to "bully" or "coerce" teams on an alliance that chooses, as they are perfectly entitled to do, not to balance the Coopetition Bridge. I certainly hope this is not the case, but I know that if a situation arises in the future where my alliance chooses not to balance the bridge, I will be at least a little bit on edge about how things will play out.

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I would go so far as to say that even agreeing with your alliance to not balance the bridge (in order to influence the seed of the other alliance) is not a celebration of excellence, and thus not in the spirit of FIRST. It's not a collectivist "alliance > team" quandary, it's a simple "robots showing off > robots not showing off".

I don't know if I agree with this. If I am scoring in the last thirty seconds, am I not showing my robot off? If I am balancing the alliance bridge, am I not showing my robot off? In both instances, I am exhibiting plenty of excellence (arguably, in certain situations, with the added element of strategic excellence).

I know that everyone may not see eye-to-eye with me on this. If that is the case, let's agree to disagree and play the game in the manner which we think is in each of our best interests?