Shell question

[shvarz]

How much shell can a bot have?  And how much protection that gives?

The reason I'm asking is that I inserted the following gene into Alga minimalis, but the Hunter can still feed on them using shots:

cond
*.shell < 100
start
10 .mkshell store
stop

Or did I make some stupid mistake and this gene does not work?

[PurpleYouko]

That would be because shots erode the shells faster than they can be rebuilt at that rate.

Shell used to be limited to 100 but one of Num's recent releases upgraded it to have no limit at all (I think) other than the overall 32000 cap.

[Numsgil]

Shell also currently limits only -6 shots.  If your bots are feeding with -1 shots, you'll need poison to stop them.

There is a 32K limit on the different substances, from Body to Venom.

[shvarz]

Ahh, that makes sense.  Can you give me an approximate amount of shell necessary to stop a shot coming from a fair-sized bot (say with 10,000 energy)?  And how much that shot would degrade the shell?  I don't want exact numbers, just an order of magnitude.

[Numsgil]

Maybe 2 or 3 per shot?  Remember the limits used to be like 200, so this stuff is really potent.

I think you need like 1 shell for every 400 body of the shooting bot per shot it shoots.

So if you're being pummeled by a bot with 3000 body, you'll probably need to be building something like 8 shell per turn to be made.

[Old Henk]

There's a small error in the gene, which (I think) stops it from functioning:

cond
*.shell < 100
start
10 .mkshell store
stop

should be:

cond
*.shell 100 <
start
10 .mkshell store
stop

[shvarz]

Thanks for spotting that!