Are you kidding?
there may be wthical values involved in this, but you just gotta win man. you have to.
you need to strive for perfection and wipe down the weak!
and at the same time, you have to help the weak while you are offstage.
if your sister team is 8th and you are 50th, you let them win a match, ok
they goto #1 ranking and you fall to what? 65th?
if the #1 ranked team picks the #65th ranked team in their first draft pick, there is no way you are going home with the trophy, because the #2 team will pick the #3 or #4 team, and by the time your sister teams gets another pick, their choices (with the new rules this year) will be down to the #17th ranked team.
Poetic justice: if you are not playing to win and hand a match to your sister team
and they pick the #65th ranked team (you) then they are not playing to win either. In the end you both loose, and the judges will pick up on this and you can kiss goodby any other awards your two teams might have won.
It would be a looooooooooooooooooooong bus ride home!
Winning or losing is a bug issue and people have different interpretations of winning. While moving on the finals of a regional by losing a match is still winning I’d rather take a loss in a match and keep my integrity.
Either way you lose but this is what I’d do.
The issue of collusion was a much bigger deal in the past. Up until 2 years ago teams were ranked not by their wins but instead usually by some multiple of their opponents scores.(Think the current tie breaking system but for your overall rank) Thus it was often to both teams benefit if the other scored as high as possible. While this can only be taken so far in zero sum games like zone zeal in 2002, in 2003 with stack attack it was taken pretty far. Teams could start with stacks of boxes already set up. Opponents would often agree to each leave their opponent’s stack untouched in order to improve their rankings. It was frowned upon to a certain extent but not as much as the collusion presented in this thread has people riled up and angry.
As for this situation, depending on the other teams in involved I would consider throwing the match. It would however have to be a very select group of teams. The other robots in my alliance would have to be poorly functioning or not at all for me to consider it as an option. Also as an aside, you don’t get to compete that often, only 8 rounds if you only go to one regional and don’t get into the finals. If you’re driving you want to go out there and show off no matter the situation.