If you win, you receive <edit>your points and</edit> twice the loser’s points. But to do that you have to spend precious time worrying about making the opponent score less, and not letting the opponent bother you. That’s maybe the biggest difficulty of the game: your two opponents.
If you talk to the “enemy” alliance before the match and set that you are going to tie in a very high score, then you don’t have opponents anymore: you have 3 allies. Just like in 2001.
It will be easy to do an excelent score with half of the boxes and one robot at the platform, and you won’t need to worry about the opponents bugging you: they will HELP you to do the same score. And then you get your score PLUS their score, wich will be A LOT of points and it won’t be a very difficult thing to do.
When some teams realize that that’s the best way to score points and start doing it several times, watching and playing the game won’t be fun anymore.
Think about.
I can imagine people saying “they won just because they rigged their matches! that’s not fair with us! that’s not gracious professionalism!”
And the other people will say “there’s no rule against doing that!”.
To prevent us from this big problem, we could ask FIRST to set some tiebrakers through an update.
Examples of tiebrakers:
1-Highest stack
2-Most robots on the platform
3-Most scoring boxes
4-Most boxes on your side of the field
5-Flip of a coin
Or any other way FIRST wants.
If we don’t do something before it’s too late to change, the teams that manage to convince the other 3 teams will be in advantage of points, and the ones that are against that and in favor of “fair play” will be more likely to loose.
If you win, you receive twice the loser’s points. But to do that you have to spend precious time worrying about making the opponent score less, and not letting the opponent bother you. That’s maybe the biggest difficulty of the game: your two opponents.
I thought if you won the match, you got your score, plus 2 times the losers?
If you talk to the “enemy” alliance before the match and set that you are going to tie in a very high score, then you don’t have opponents anymore: you have 3 allies. Just like in 2001.
It will be easy to do an excelent score with half of the boxes and one robot at the platform, and you won’t need to worry about the opponents bugging you: they will HELP you to do the same score. And then you get your score PLUS their score, wich will be A LOT of points and it won’t be a very difficult thing to do.
When some teams realize that that’s the best way to score points and start doing it several times, watching and playing the game won’t be fun anymore.
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Excellent point.
FIRST was probably hoping that people behave and keep in the spirit of Gracious Professionalism in this issue. Unfortunately, I bet there is someone out there that is willing to attempt this. Hopefully this will be prevented.
While it’s quite true that it is possible to get more points by doing everything for your two teams instead of tieing with the most amount of points, it involves getting a stack of ~22 high which is HIGHLY unlikely since the boxes tend to get VERY unstable at even 8 or 10 high.
I think that earning both of your scores is a problem. Going away with your tied score (not added together) might be better since it’s easier to score above that with just your one teammate.
*Originally posted by Digo *
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If you talk to the “enemy” alliance before the match and set that you are going to tie in a very high score, then you don’t have opponents anymore: you have 3 allies. Just like in 2001.
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I believe i remember Dean Kamen saying that FIRST involves cooperating as much as competing. So, if you can win more by cooperating, then I say its fine.
Hmmmm, could this be a creative way on FIRST’s part to demonstrate how cooperating is better than fighting? We will have to see if teams who cooperate to tie will do well
well i dont know about you guys but when you are talking about stacks and knocking bins around the scores could very easily be off by one especially when you cant see the other side easily so Im think there would be a whole lot of hurt feelings even if no one decides to backstab anyone
Although I really dont think the 4 teams would all agree to rigging the match, I would like to bring tiebreakers back. It causes strategys to become a bit more involved. The bad side of tiebreakers is the coin flip. I think then it should go to giving both alliances the match points.
Plus, remember the tiebreaker last year when the coin didn’t land flat
If you use this strategy you decide that the best strategy is not to go after your competition but to work together and share the victory. I don’t understand how that isn’t gracious professionalism. It may not be pleasing to the spectators but it seems to embody the spirit of FIRST in every way.
In many occasions cooperation is better for everyone than competition: some scenarios
Red 50
Blue 10
= Red 70 QP’s
= Blue 10 QP’s
Red 50
Blue 50
= Red 100 QPs
Blue 100 QPs
in this case both alliances would want to tie
Originally I thought using this idea in every match, after some thinking I now feel thats a bad idea, this should simply be part of the playbook, and since (in my mind anyway) it does not violate the spirit of FIRST, but rather encourages it, I see no reason to enact rules prohibitting this style of play.
Just like every other FIRST game of the past, there are loopholes in the rules that need to be patched up. This is one of those times, I say, contact FIRST and express your concern with this issue!
WHAT FUN IS A GAME IF EVERY OTHER MATCH ENDS IN A TIE???
I think doug said it best. All you have to do is bump 1 robot of the platform and you have broken your promise. Backstabbing would be to tempting because of a potential gain of over 250%. I think the new tie rule would cause too many bad feelings between teams.
Ah yes, but say a team who has to qualify for nationals ( team number ends in an even number ) Earns their way to nationals by tying every match? When I am in Houston…I sure as heck don’t want to see divisions and ultimatly the finals decided by teams who got there by repetitive ties.
I’m with most of you guys- it’d become a game just like 2001 where everyone worked together- I believe 2001 was the only year FIRST had a 4v0 format- for a good reason…
without competition this wouldn’t be the FIRST robotics competition-
I have to agree, there should not even be the temptation for strategizing a tie. Our team was the one at the Nats which had the tie. Coincidently it was against another team from LI, and both of our teams are quite friendly (Team 28). Now, obviously we didn’t plan to tie down in Fla. but when the coin leaned on the teather of our mouse (to further the anxiety), the adviser of the other team and I agreed that, at that point, the win was not as important as the amount of fun we had in getting there.
I have seen at least one match at a regional “plan the match” when one alliance was obviously out matched. They scored almost a perfect score, and the losers were still happy with what they got because it was higher than there previous average.
I think FIRST will realize their goof. BTW I now like coin tosses–only because we won it
