Would agreements help YOUR team?

[Alex1072]

Would agreements, if everyone was allowed to make them, be unfair to YOUR team. (If your opinion).

EDIT:
Clarifying that by agreements I meant agreeing not to destroy HP stacks. No more than that.

[David Brinza]

If the "agreements" involve protecting HP stacks, and we busted our butts building a stacking mechanism - I say such agreements are unfair to my team.

If the "agreements" involve a free pass to the top of the ramp, and we struggled with having enough power and friction to battle our robot onto the top - I say such agreements are unfair to my team.

If the "agreements" make it clear that this is not a competition, but rather a scripted exhibition of robots dancing around a floor - I say these agreements are unfair to all the teams who embrace FIRST with the goal of building competitive robots within all of the rules and maintaining Gracious Professionalism.

I find it interesting that the title of this thread contradicts the question in the poll - that doesn't seem fair either!

I'll abstain from voting in this poll, but be assured: our team will abstain from making "agreements".

[Alex1072]

The title/question inconsistency was a mistake. This poll is intended to find out if teams are actuly harmed by this strategy (if it would be validated). My opinions are posted in other threads. Please do not assume that I want to cheat the competition, or get higher QP points. I just think allowing this strategy would compensate for the game having one clearling dominant strategy this year. Our robot is designed to steal stacks BTW, so I do not think I am biased.

Edit:
Also, I would like to see the actual impact on teams, not the impact on hypotheticle teams. I think there are a lot of people out there who are trying to help teams that might not really exist. If some teams come out and say that it is unfair to them. I think everyone (or at least I) would agree that this practice should cease.

[David Brinza]

I'll say that "agreements" are unfair to all teams - including those that make them. They have no place in FIRST - the result of these agreements is a tainted product. After a morning of watching teams struggle to build and/or defend stacks of 3 or more then seeing two giant HP towers untouched - it just looked and felt wrong.

Members of more veteran teams (68, ...) were appalled by this. An AZ team next to us in the pits took a vote whether to withdraw from the competition. That team invested six hard weeks of robot building, plus fund raising and other personal sacrifices to get to Phoenix. I'd say considering withdrawing from the event in your own backyard is a very strong statement of the values that the teams in FIRST carry when it comes to ethics and credibility.

[AlbertW]

Just because the teams that are harmed by this are "hypothetical" doesn't mean it's right.

There are teams out there that can stack, there are teams out there who would be better off denying an "agreement"

but where does that put them? if they deny an agreement, and they end up with a stack of 8, they're now at the same level of those who agreed and built a HP stack of 8. the only people that lose are those people who were unlucky enough to be seeded against a stacker team, because they can't maintain a stack or 8 like the stacker team, or the teams who were in the agreement.

[Alex1072]

I would argue that the game, as it was played at Sacramento, was not what FIRST had intended. Stacking was quite frankly useless. This made the bins undervalued. I thought allowing agreements would in a way patch up the game. FIRST should make an officiel statement saying wheither or not they want this. That would settle everything once and for all.

[AlbertW]

we shouldn't need FIRST to make moral judgements for us.

[Alex1072]

Originally posted by Aonic
Just because the teams that are harmed by this are "hypothetical" doesn't mean it's right.

There are teams out there that can stack, there are teams out there who would be better off denying an "agreement"

but where does that put them? if they deny an agreement, and they end up with a stack of 8, they're now at the same level of those who agreed and built a HP stack of 8. the only people that lose are those people who were unlucky enough to be seeded against a stacker team, because they can't maintain a stack or 8 like the stacker team, or the teams who were in the agreement.

If the teams are hypotheticle, it means there are no such teams.

There are teams out there that can stack, there are teams out there who would be better off denying an "agreement"

I'm wondering whether such teams actuly exist.

[Alex1072]

Originally posted by Aonic
we shouldn't need FIRST to make moral judgements for us.

This is no where near a moral dillema. I specifically seperated it from that. There is nothing immoral about making agreements if ALL teams agree that it is in the spirit of FIRST. I am simply trying to convince people that this would be good for the competition this year (my opinion). If I succeed(doubtful) it will be moral. If teams start making "agreements" when other teams have agreed not to, THAT is immoral.

[David Brinza]

Our team is far from "hypothetical" - go check out our bot at our website:

http://www.Team980.com

There are thousands of hours and thousands of dollars invested by our team to build a robot that would meet the challenges of the game. We won our first quarterfinal match 46-45 using every bit of capability we built into the robot. You don't need astronomical scores to have an exciting game, just two hard working alliances with quality robots and good drivers.

[Alex1072]

Then its settled.

[David Brinza]

Such agreements would be unfair to my team because we would not enter into any.

Teams that agree to leave large stacks untouched would benefit from the inflated points they bargained for before the match (rather than earned on the field). Those teams would place higher in the standings after qual matches. We would then be at risk of not being selected by one of those teams because we don't play the game the same way as they chose to play it.

This would indeed harm are team, because one of our goals is to compete and win to the end. I voted yes....

[Libel]

i would completely agree that it makes th game all more exciting and fun and even more ethical....

i have to say that it would be great if we dont have these agreements and pacts...

but as long as they are going on i hope my team will keep doing them too...

if it just all stopped cold turkey, then i would totally agree with stopping them ourselves because our robot just rocked all the other robots at the AZ regional...

we especially disliked the fact that the #1 team made #1 in Qualifying Rounds because of these agreements and their point average was 50 ahead of the 2nd and 3rd teams... (however they just dropped out in the 1st quarter match so it was ok, yet what happens when a copmetent robot makes deals like this AND is made to do well in the finals?)

[IronSlayTallica]

The real question is, HAVE agreements helped are team and the answer is no. We were supposed to have an agreement with one team and they blew it off and we lost big time. We still were chosen as alliance partners for quarter finals but that loss dropped from 7th or 8th place down to 15th. Play your own game and nobody elses, that's the best advice i can give.

[Clanat]

Our robot is one that has the capability to stack, and it would be very unfair to us as well as the people making the agreements. We can't make a stack as tall as the Humans can, but we can make stacks, so we wouldn't have a reason to enter an agreement, even if we thought they were OK.