The Boulder Agreement

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by barn34

For just one year, I wish everyone would focus purely on the game challenge at hand instead of trying to find shady ways to skirt around it and unfairly inflate or skew scoring and ranking results. Unfortunately, it appears that this will remain a wish...at least for another year.

Explain to me the difference between the strategy suggested here and coopertition in 2012.

[EricDrost]

Originally Posted by Basel A

Explain to me the difference between the strategy suggested here and coopertition in 2012.

In 2012 you could not get the ranking point without working together. This year your ranking point is independent of your opponent.

Additionally, creating more scoring opportunities for your opponent is probably considered playing below your ability as you are contributing points to the other alliance with no direct* benefit for your own alliance.

*Obviously in an agreement, both teams benefit but it is not a direct benefit of creating scoring opportunities for your opponent, it is a direct benefit of your opponent creating a scoring opportunity for you.

[MrJohnston]

I'd be nervous about entering a "boulder agreement."

If my alliance is struggling to score and the other seems to do quite well, the last thing I am going to want is to agree to start rolling boulders out immediately. Holding them is a legitimate strategy.

If you are hoping to make it easier to "capture" a castle, the solution is simple: Keep scoring the balls in play. They can only hold 6 at a time, so score another once and force them to roll it out. There are 18 balls in play, so there will always be one available somewhere unless both castles are hoarding and all six robots are refusing to shoot. I don't see this happening.

I strongly suspect that, in lower level games (think most week 1-2 district qualifying matches), we won't see more than three or four scores in either castle - much less the eight required for the capture.... In much higher level games, the scores are going to be fast a furious and nobody will have much choice as to whether or not to roll them out...

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by EricDrost

In 2012 you could not get the ranking point without working together. This year your ranking point is independent of your opponent.

Additionally, creating more scoring opportunities for your opponent is probably considered playing below your ability as you are contributing points to the other alliance with no direct* benefit for your own alliance.

*Obviously in an agreement, both teams benefit but it is not a direct benefit of creating scoring opportunities for your opponent, it is a direct benefit of your opponent creating a scoring opportunity for you.

It's not independent of your opponent, but I take your point (it's not entirely dependent). Another difference is that the agreement is unequitable: one alliance will almost surely benefit more than the other (especially if one gets the RP and the other doesn't, a very real possibility). Nevertheless, I'm okay with it. While the action of entering balls alone is playing below your ability, the higher level agreement is not (net positive). It's really not universally beneficial though; there are teams that will rely on short cycle times from balls going HP=>secret passage=>into robot=>low bar=>goal.

[bstew]

Originally Posted by EricDrost

Additionally, creating more scoring opportunities for your opponent is probably considered playing below your ability as you are contributing points to the other alliance with no direct* benefit for your own alliance.

Originally Posted by bduddy

Sabotaging your own defense is sandbagging just as much as agreeing not to score would be.

It seems that the legality of this and the other defense agreement hinges on what is considered playing below your ability.

Is playing to the best of your ability defined by completing the tasks your robot was designed to do? Doing what you feel the intent of the rules is? Winning matches? Getting qualification points? Winning the event?

Playing to the best of your ability can be defined in many different ways. How should it be defined?

[New Lightning]

Since it hasn't been mentioned on this thread yet I would just like to post this out here anyway. This so called agreement, again very similar to the one made last year, is a classic case of the prisoners dilemma. And anyone who has studied any kind of game theory or economic theory knows that a prisoners dilemma is situated so that both parties get a better deal if the decide to backstab their partner. To me even putting teams in this position runs contrary to what I believe is an inherent part of Gracious Professionalism and that is trust and honesty. Setting teams up to be able to lie to their opponent and then benefit from it just doesn't seem right to me.