Hi everyone!
Let’s say that you have interest in losing a certain qualification match. Is there anything in the rules preventing you from playing defense on your own alliance members? I know it sounds extreme and I would certainly never encourage anyone to do so, but I wanted to know whether the rules can stop something like this from happening.
Thanks!
I am not a ref, and I am especially not the ref at your event. That said, I suspect that in many situations where what you described occurs, the rules in the attached screenshot are relevant.
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That’s exactly the rule that I was looking for.
Also, I’m not saying that I know about something that happened, I’m just asking.
Thanks!
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I will note that this does not stop what OP is describing, unless they were asked by another team to throw the match.
Playing defense on your alliance partners would definitely get you on a DNP list, if only because it would look like your driver is AWFUL, but that’s another question.
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How could this be the case?
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You’ve determined in your scouting meeting it is beneficial for you to be a lower alliance captain
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Although legal, I would certainly talk it over with your alliance partners first, though, because I bet they wouldn’t be too happy if you threw the match for seemingly no reason.
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What about during practice matches I know I would like some defence practice but it would be nice to be standing but the team playing defence Incase something breaks and we need to tell them to back off
Maybe in that case ask the opposing alliance?
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And make sure your human player is in the other Terminal. Use them as a signal relay.
Also, to those who downvoted this, does that mean that… you support, for your own benefit, throwing your own match, and probably negatively affecting your alliance partners, resulting in you benefitting but your alliance partners not, and without even telling them? Doesn’t that go against FIRST Core Values?
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In the past, 1072 has played matches in ways that wouldn’t necessarily win us the match, because we were gunning for finals and a wildcard to Champs. For example, at CAFR 2019, we consistently tried to play at least 2 cargo and 2 hatch panels every match, to prove that we could do both competently. If we just wanted to win matches, playing raw cargo probably would have won more matches. However, we knew that the likely 2nd alliance captain would want a robot capable of doing both because the cargo bay would fill up quickly and cargo-only robots were common. Obviously this is different from outright playing defense on your own alliance partners, but certainly our goals were not to simply win each match - we wanted our robot to show off its best qualities.
1072’s strategy paid off at both competitions that year, leading to us being the 1st pick of the 2nd alliance at both CAFR and CADA as the 24th and 49th seeds respectively.
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IMO playing defense in practice matches is poor practice unless discussed in advance. It’s usually rare to see it.
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4414 played 1678 in our final qualification match. 1678 was locked in first place, but if they weren’t and 359 was close behind with a 0rp putting 1678 as second seed, would it be gp of us to knowingly lose the event in the name of a fair qualification? (Assuming that we would be picked by 1678 as first seed, and the gap between 1678 and anyone was so large there was little hope otherwise)
Interesting conversation to have.
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Precisely. Another team who shall remain unidentified did this to our bot one night at 8:30 pm, last practice match and broke their robot. Earned immediate spot on our DNP list and had to fix their robot first thing in the morning to boot.
If you don’t arrange it in advance, expect hard play in return that you might not be able to sustain.
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IMO, Playing “sub-optimally” in a particular match as part of tournament-long (or longer) meta-strategy is acceptable.
Intentionally attempting to lose a match or sabotaging your own alliance partner’s efforts in order to achieve that same meta-strategy is not acceptable.
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Agree with all the above comments, but scouts from other teams might just think your drivers aren’t very good or don’t know what they’re doing…so might be un-beneficial in the long run.
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This falls into, not in the rulebook. Not advisable bucket. If you want even, when #1 asks , then the #2 should decline …then we have more even play strength without looking for not best effort solutions.
I hope First realizes they stacked the deck way to far forward, this season. Hopefully, they never do that again. Games are better when sub #1 alliances have a real chance.
There have been a couple matches over the years where the driving of some ally was so detrimental that I wondered if they were trying to throw the match. But when this has happened I’ve looked at playoff scenarios to see if there was some strategic benefit for them or even some other team and I was never able to find any.
So if there is a specific event you have in mind I would be pretty cautious about ascribing to malice something that might just be incompetence.
Where’s the line on this? If I intentionally sit dead, but don’t negatively affect my partners performance in any way is that acceptable?
I think I draw the line somewhere around there, meaning once you can see evidence of your robots actions in someone else’s scouting data your “throwing”.
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