FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy

[Austin2046]

Originally Posted by Hallry

What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy

Still, something feels not completely right to me about this. Maybe it’s because teams using this strategy are giving the appearance of wanting to have a team join their alliance, when that’s not their actual objective. (Ever been invited to a party when you know the host doesn’t really want you there?) Maybe it’s because this strategy gives an individual team great power in being able to break up several other potential alliances. Maybe it’s just because the community often calls this strategy ‘Scorched Earth’, which sounds, at the very least, unfriendly.

I really think it's the opposite. I've seen a lot of scorched earth in my day, and it seems to usually happen because the top teams don't want to be with the higher seeded team. They've gone to the top teams and they've said they'll decline if invited. So they work their way down to a lower seeded team that will accept. Imagine hosting a party where everyone says that they don't want to come... because you'll be there . I understand that sometimes high seeded teams make a deal with a lower seeded team to do scorched earth to give their alliance a better chance at winning, but I think that's perfectly fine. Every team that decides to decline is taking a risk, and the team inviting is taking a risk... I think scorched earth is a perfectly legitimate strategy that requires teams to use better strategy and scouting in order to win rather than relying simply on the strength of their top two robots.