Breakaway Discussion

[Jane n Mike]

"Let us suppose we have two dream teams on the field, they maximize scoring during autonomous and teleoperated modes, and both enter the last 20 or 30 seconds of game time with 30 points on the board and no penalties to confuse the matter.

Sure, both teams could be content with 30 points and be happy that this match was very beneficial for their rankings, but it is now incredibly advantageous for both teams to try to score at least one point more than their opponents. Let me present two scenarios:

1.) both alliances stick to the agreed upon terms. Each alliance ends the match with 30 points and each team receives 30 seeding points. Everybody is happy, right... wrong! because one of their team members points out later that if they had done....

2.) Red alliance trusts the blue alliance and didn't crunch the numbers, so they stop scoring at 30 points and wait for the match to end. One of the blue alliance coaches crunched some numbers during the match, and, at the last second has his driver score one last ball, resulting in a match score of Red 30, Blue 31. The Red alliance did well for themselves and they receive 31 seeding points- the match score of the Blue alliance. The Blue alliance, however, receives a whopping 91 seeding points - their match score, plus a coopertition bonus equal to twice the match score of the loosing alliance."[

I think you have misunderstood the scoring. Per rule 9.3.5: "In the case of a tie, all participating teams will receive a coopertition bonus of a number of seeding points equal to twice their ALLIANCE score (with any assessed penalties)." So the teams that have engineered a tied score at 30 stand to earn a total of 90 seeding points apiece from that tie. The only incentive for one team to cheat on their agreement, aside from a single extra point, is to deprive the opponents of their 60-pt bonus. That could be a ridiculously expensive decision, as their demonstrated untrustworthiness would make it very hard for them to participate in future lucrative collusions.

Mike Dennis
Team 1719