C3. Asking other teams to throw a MATCH — not cool.
C4. Letting someone coerce you into throwing a MATCH — also not cool.
NOTE: This rule is not intended to prevent an ALLIANCE from planning and/or executing its own strategy in a specific MATCH in which all the teams are members of the ALLIANCE.
Rules C3 and C4 aren’t too hard to understand - don’t get someone to throw a match, and don’t let someone convince you to throw a match. But what does the last portion of the rule mean? Does it mean that you may only sandbag if the match only consists of your alliance (ie. the entire other alliance is a no show/bypassed/etc.)? Or does it mean that within an alliance, throwing matches is okay?
In fact, to have your alliance throw a match, you’d have to coerce them to throw it.
Despite rulings prioritizing rule text over blue boxes (1.6), the blue box text only seems to further complicate this rule:
FIRST considers the action of a team influencing another team to throw a MATCH, to deliberately miss RANKING POINTS, etc. incompatible with FIRST values and not a strategy any team should employ.
I don’t ever intend on using this “strategy” because it’s competitively impossible to use to your benefit. However, in my three years of FRC I’ve never actually understood this rule.
First things first: That “short headline” is a nice shorthand. I think the better understanding comes from what’s right after the headline, and is going to help the understanding a LOT.
A team may not encourage an ALLIANCE, of which it is not a member, to play beneath its ability.
A team, as the result of encouragement by a team not on their ALLIANCE, may not play beneath its ability.
The short headlines completely omit the “not on alliance”, which is absolutely critical here. The “own strategy” line can be read this way:
If an alliance, without outside influence, chooses to play a less-than-best match, then that is their decision, and this rule does not apply.
Also, the reason for this rule is that it’s actually plausible for a loss to benefit you. Back in Ye Olden Days, it wasn’t uncommon for there to be discussions on CD about “if Team A approaches you and says ‘we’ll pick you if you can sandbag Team B who’s with you in our next match so they rank below us’, would you do it?”. When C3 and C4 came in, that discussion went WAY down.
My interpretation of these rules is that your alliance can carry out match strategy even if it makes some teams on their alliance play in what would otherwise be considered beneath their ability.
For instance (from last year), if the alliance decides that they want to ignore the rockets and only score in the cargo ship to maximize points, then they wouldn’t be called for a C3/C4. However, if a specific team on an alliance decided to only score in the cargo ship because another team (not on their alliance) asked them to, then that would be a C3/C4.
Another situation I’ve seen comes up in the last rounds before elimination. A team who is low enough to have no hopes of being an alliance captain may choose to show off some niche ability of their robot in the hopes of being noticed by scouts, even if it keeps them from winning the current match. (This can be very frustrating to a partner who IS a potential alliance captain.)
Would that be under the “dismissal from the event” part of the penalty? That seems just a hair harsh unless it’s the “you’re no longer playing at this event”, probably for repeated.