Effect of Coopertition Points

[JABot67]

Whether or not the Coop bridge is a "social engineering experiment", I pretend it's not and instead interpret it as just another aspect of the game. It is just another challenge - you have to cooperate with a drive team ~60 feet away from you in order to get an extra 2 qualification points. It makes the qualifications matches exciting.

I've anxiously watched numerous matches, rooting for either a non-balance or a balance on the Coop bridge depending on what would help my team. I've watched webcasts where it seemed like in every match there would be an attempted Coop bridge balance that failed at the last second, a heart wrenching way to end each match.

The Coop bridge is a GREAT addition to the game this year. Let's face it - it might be confusing for outside spectators to watch, but the vast majority of the people watching a qualification match are going to be familiar with the great power of the Coop bridge balance. What an amazing thrill it is to watch a Coop balance attempt.

Many people in this thread have complained that FIRST always tries to introduce elements of the game that are out of an individual team's control:

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

- Drive a lot more 'noise' into the qualifing process, since advancing in the rankings can often be most out of an individual team's control.

Originally Posted by Cory

It sucks that to seed well you now have to rely on your opponents being good and not just your partners.

In any FRC game there is going to be an element of luck, and that is directly built into the competition structure. That's what makes it great, in my opinion. If the BEST teams at an event always won, then my team should go to MSC with absolutely no hope of winning. Yes, our robot is good, but to be honest the improvements we are making to our robot and code are not good enough to be better than 67 and 469's entries at the event.

Yet I still have hope for winning. The competition structure might provide us with a little bit of luck, and what will make it interesting will be the elements of the game that are beyond my team's control. I'm not ready to give the state championship to 67 and 469 just because their robots are plainly better than my team's. And from the perspective of someone on a powerhouse team (I used to be on 67), I would still find it very boring to go to a competition knowing for a fact that my team will win. I am a fan of the "noise" at the competitions.