"Collusion" and De-Scoring

[Don Knight]

Originally posted by Patrick Wang
Keeping all stacks up by no touching them does not benefit anyone.

I beg to differ, in a game where QP's and Ep's are what is used to "advance" or "win" your strategy should be to score as many points as possible during the seeding rounds and the first elimination round. If you win the first elimination round then you use the reverse strategy to advance or win in the second match.

Two strategies for the two parts of the game.

[JJG13]

I have something to say about collusion. It was quite rampant at the Central Florida regionals. As of them we had the top three qualifing point matches in the nation. We did not do this. We never tried to make a stack of eight. It was annoying that when we won, we got less qfs then many of the other teams did when they lossed but we were picked to go to elimination rounds because we proved that we we had a good bot not that we were good at cooperating.

We lossed in the semi-finals because we did not de-score. We were on the ramp at the end of the match and we lost. The rest of my team was cheering when the judge ruled that we had made it on the ramp and we got the extra twenty-five points. I guess this shows the confusion too because just about the whole team did not realize we would probably lose because of it. The result was that we needed to make up 94 points in the next match. Needless to say we didn't.

[Joe Matt]

When it comes down to it, the ones who do the 'live and let live' strategy of where all stacks are left alone, then they fall flat on their face on the elimination rounds since they were up there due to a loophole and not their bot working well.

[Powers]

I beg to differ joseph, if both teams let both stacks stay up, they have no outcome on the actual winner, so the better teams in that match will still win, if they are the only teams that want to optimize points by not needlessly knocking down stacks, then maybe they will be too high due to scores, but as long as i see an equal or smaller stack then mine, and i have scouted the robots and feel confident in my AI routine to get more boxes than the opposing robots, i will leave their stack untouched, until something goes wrong, Yes it is wrong to say not to knock down the stacks b4 the match, but the outcome makes sense, both teams get more points, if other teams feel the need to knock down the opposing stacks to make sure they win, then their scores will not be high and they may need to be picked as an alliance... although i dont think i would ever want to leave a stack of 8 standing, that's just a litle high

[KenWittlief]

There is one flaw in your reasoning.
If you are slightly behind and you leave your opponents stack intact, and loose as a result

you will get less quality points than if you knock it down and the last minute, and win

so you will have a HIGHER score - because you won, and you get your score PLUS twice the other teams score.

The teams that do the best overall have the ability to CHOOSE to leave the other teams stack intact, while pushing their own score up as high as possible, get up and off the ramp quickly

and have the abillity to swoop down off the ramp and take out a stack if they need to (to win) and make it back up on the ramp at T=120.

its really simple people! the more versatile your bot is, the more options you have during the match, and the better you are going to rank.

[Mark Pettit]

The game is called STACK ATTACK! It is not called Leave Stacks Alone to artificially increase QPs.
That's all I've got to say about that!