"Competition format" game suggestions

[Chris Hibner]

I think that any time you have a game in which there are more than 2 entities (teams or individuals) competing at the same time, informal alliances will result making the game not fair to the better teams. It is only natural that everyone want to bring down the best team thereby moving your own team up in the standings.

It occurred regularly in the 1 on 1 on 1 games in which one of the robots would defend against the good robot while the 3rd robot would try win and get 2nd place for the defensive robot.

If you have only two entities in the match, you have to be very calculating in your tradeoff between offense and defense and "ganging up" on a robot is typically not a good strategy. For instance, in basketball, it is common to double-team a player. But as the saying goes: if someone is being double-teamed, someone else is wide open. In the 2-on-2 game, if one alliance tried to double team a robot, that leaves a lone robot free to score points at will.