Would agreements, if everyone was allowed to make them, be unfair to YOUR team. (If your opinion).
EDIT:
Clarifying that by agreements I meant agreeing not to destroy HP stacks. No more than that.
If the “agreements” involve protecting HP stacks, and we busted our butts building a stacking mechanism - I say such agreements are unfair to my team.
If the “agreements” involve a free pass to the top of the ramp, and we struggled with having enough power and friction to battle our robot onto the top - I say such agreements are unfair to my team.
If the “agreements” make it clear that this is not a competition, but rather a scripted exhibition of robots dancing around a floor - I say these agreements are unfair to all the teams who embrace FIRST with the goal of building competitive robots within all of the rules and maintaining Gracious Professionalism.
I find it interesting that the title of this thread contradicts the question in the poll - that doesn’t seem fair either!
I’ll abstain from voting in this poll, but be assured: our team will abstain from making “agreements”.
The title/question inconsistency was a mistake. This poll is intended to find out if teams are actuly harmed by this strategy (if it would be validated). My opinions are posted in other threads. Please do not assume that I want to cheat the competition, or get higher QP points. I just think allowing this strategy would compensate for the game having one clearling dominant strategy this year. Our robot is designed to steal stacks BTW, so I do not think I am biased.
Edit:
Also, I would like to see the actual impact on teams, not the impact on hypotheticle teams. I think there are a lot of people out there who are trying to help teams that might not really exist. If some teams come out and say that it is unfair to them. I think everyone (or at least I) would agree that this practice should cease.
I’ll say that “agreements” are unfair to all teams - including those that make them. They have no place in FIRST - the result of these agreements is a tainted product. After a morning of watching teams struggle to build and/or defend stacks of 3 or more then seeing two giant HP towers untouched - it just looked and felt wrong.
Members of more veteran teams (68, …) were appalled by this. An AZ team next to us in the pits took a vote whether to withdraw from the competition. That team invested six hard weeks of robot building, plus fund raising and other personal sacrifices to get to Phoenix. I’d say considering withdrawing from the event in your own backyard is a very strong statement of the values that the teams in FIRST carry when it comes to ethics and credibility.
Just because the teams that are harmed by this are “hypothetical” doesn’t mean it’s right.
There are teams out there that can stack, there are teams out there who would be better off denying an “agreement”
but where does that put them? if they deny an agreement, and they end up with a stack of 8, they’re now at the same level of those who agreed and built a HP stack of 8. the only people that lose are those people who were unlucky enough to be seeded against a stacker team, because they can’t maintain a stack or 8 like the stacker team, or the teams who were in the agreement.
I would argue that the game, as it was played at Sacramento, was not what FIRST had intended. Stacking was quite frankly useless. This made the bins undervalued. I thought allowing agreements would in a way patch up the game. FIRST should make an officiel statement saying wheither or not they want this. That would settle everything once and for all.
we shouldn’t need FIRST to make moral judgements for us.
*Originally posted by Aonic *
**Just because the teams that are harmed by this are “hypothetical” doesn’t mean it’s right.There are teams out there that can stack, there are teams out there who would be better off denying an “agreement”
but where does that put them? if they deny an agreement, and they end up with a stack of 8, they’re now at the same level of those who agreed and built a HP stack of 8. the only people that lose are those people who were unlucky enough to be seeded against a stacker team, because they can’t maintain a stack or 8 like the stacker team, or the teams who were in the agreement. **
If the teams are hypotheticle, it means there are no such teams.
**
There are teams out there that can stack, there are teams out there who would be better off denying an “agreement”
**
I’m wondering whether such teams actuly exist.
*Originally posted by Aonic *
**we shouldn’t need FIRST to make moral judgements for us. **
This is no where near a moral dillema. I specifically seperated it from that. There is nothing immoral about making agreements if ALL teams agree that it is in the spirit of FIRST. I am simply trying to convince people that this would be good for the competition this year (my opinion). If I succeed(doubtful) it will be moral. If teams start making “agreements” when other teams have agreed not to, THAT is immoral.
Our team is far from “hypothetical” - go check out our bot at our website:
There are thousands of hours and thousands of dollars invested by our team to build a robot that would meet the challenges of the game. We won our first quarterfinal match 46-45 using every bit of capability we built into the robot. You don’t need astronomical scores to have an exciting game, just two hard working alliances with quality robots and good drivers.
Then its settled.
Such agreements would be unfair to my team because we would not enter into any.
Teams that agree to leave large stacks untouched would benefit from the inflated points they bargained for before the match (rather than earned on the field). Those teams would place higher in the standings after qual matches. We would then be at risk of not being selected by one of those teams because we don’t play the game the same way as they chose to play it.
This would indeed harm are team, because one of our goals is to compete and win to the end. I voted yes…
i would completely agree that it makes th game all more exciting and fun and even more ethical…
i have to say that it would be great if we dont have these agreements and pacts…
but as long as they are going on i hope my team will keep doing them too…
if it just all stopped cold turkey, then i would totally agree with stopping them ourselves because our robot just rocked all the other robots at the AZ regional…
we especially disliked the fact that the #1 team made #1 in Qualifying Rounds because of these agreements and their point average was 50 ahead of the 2nd and 3rd teams… (however they just dropped out in the 1st quarter match so it was ok, yet what happens when a copmetent robot makes deals like this AND is made to do well in the finals?)
The real question is, HAVE agreements helped are team and the answer is no. We were supposed to have an agreement with one team and they blew it off and we lost big time. :mad: We still were chosen as alliance partners for quarter finals but that loss dropped from 7th or 8th place down to 15th. Play your own game and nobody elses, that’s the best advice i can give.
Our robot is one that has the capability to stack, and it would be very unfair to us as well as the people making the agreements. We can’t make a stack as tall as the Humans can, but we can make stacks, so we wouldn’t have a reason to enter an agreement, even if we thought they were OK.
Agreements are worthless. Last match of quals at stl, we were against our pit neighbors, and we had been pretty friendly with them the whole time, and we were both ranked pretty dismally so they approached us about leaving HP stacks alone and I thought, wth, it could get us out of the 30’s. Anyway, early in the match I was shoving them around (their bot was light and fast . . . and weak) and killed their drivetrain(without realizing it) so they hit our stack because they could no longer turn. It called for retaliation. I got their stacks. their alliance partner wasn’t doing so well, so we won by a decent amount to a little. We got more points out of non-agreed matches, so we decided the whole practise is flawed, moral considerations aside . . . . .
If you agree to leave your opponents stack intact, no matter what
then you HAVE agreed to possibly loosing the game, when you might have won if you used all your machines capibilities.
I dont see any problem with any/all teams choosing to leave stacks intact until the last few seconds, as a strategy to maximize Q points
but if you agree to forego an legal and valid game tactic (knocking their stack down), even if it means you loose the match - then you are agreeing to loose intentionally under some conditions.
Mo matter what the field situation is, if you can win the match instead of loosing, by knocking down your opponents stack at any point in the game, then you WILL have a higher Q point than you would if you allow yourself to loose.
Intentionally loosing for any reason is poor sportsmanship! Its also against the rules and intent of the games. I have also seen this in the playoffs, where a team will get a very high score in the first round, then deliberately devistate the field in the second round, knowing they will loose, but their opponent will not be able to get enough points to offset the Q points from the first match.
This is also BAD FORM - LOUSY SPORTSMANSHIP!!!
If you play, play your best, play to score, give it your best shot. and give your opponent every opportunity to do his best too.
If you win buy deliberately loosing your second match in the playoffs, dont be surprized if you hear the crowd BOOOOing you! Is your machine so bad that you cant win two rounds in a row?
If you are not going to try to score points to win, then hit the power button on your bots and let it sit dead for the whole round. Are you afraid the other team will beat you? afraid to go head to head two rounds in a row?
Sportsmanship is about taking the high road. Making sure every team, every player, gets a fair chance, all the time, in every match.
Let every team use their machine to its fullest capibilities, and then the best team will win.
in response to IronSlayTallica, i would have to say yes that happens and it happened to our agreement (the second and last one we made), however our robot managed to pull out and we won with a fair amount of point (about 120 or so)…
some one or people have already mentioned that it might even be strategy to have the agreement and then see if anyone breaks it or not (like mind games, you know?)
And then if you hae a stacker, you can rebuild the stack… in fact if you have a stacker then you make breaking agreements kinda pointless… (you build a stack as your ally goes and breaks theirs)
Prior to Arizona, our team never finished better than 18th ranked and we were also never picked to go to the finals until Arizona. At AZ, we finished the qualifying rounds ranked 6th. We are totally stoked about our performance, however, we feel that it is UNFAIR that there are teams ranked higher than us that used collusion in order to get there.
It might sound petty to put so much emphasis on our ranking, but it means so much to us to have achieved what we did legitimately when other teams needed to “bend the rules” in order to do it themselves!
The way I see it, such an agreement is unethical.
It really doesn’t matter how FIRST meant the game to be played; the game is what it turned out to be. My making pacts, teams essentially cheat to raise their scores against those that wish to play competitively and solely by their own merit and skill.
I see agreements to be essentially the same as two alliances planning to boost one alliance with higher QP points by creating a one-point difference between the two sides to maximize scores. You might as well cheat.
Unless FIRST decides that ALL HP stacks can’t be knocked over, there shouldn’t be any agreements that in some matches HP stacks are not allowed to be knocked over.
Give it your best, and if that isn’t enough to win, have satisfaction in what you DID accomplish. Agreements need not be part of the mentality and ideals of FIRST.
And to Libel: Mind games, backstabbing, and such tactics are definitely NOT in the spirit of FIRST nor are they fitting with common courtesy or gracious professionalism.