A novel strategy: Always score for your opponents

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

But in this game a "win" is irrelevant and not even tracked. All that matters is your seeding points.

That is absolutely false. In this game, showing off your great robot to other teams matters a great deal more than your seeding points, and how well your robot performs overall is very, very highly tracked -- by scouting teams.

The scoring system this year is really, really wonky, but if you look at the top-seeded teams at the FLR, they really were the best robots -- and that was for the most part without these kinds of shenanigans.

As an *overall* strategy, this idea does nothing but maintain the status quo -- it doesn't help you stand out, and it doesn't help your rankings when compared to the other five teams on the field. Perhaps, if you know you are going to get absolutely crushed, you might consider doing this, but in any other circumstance it just doesn't seem viable to me. We've won too many close games that we "should have lost" in the past five years to not go for the win even when we're down.