Thank you!
Running more simulations with Preybot I realized I had possibly made the territories to small, causing unlucky populations to die out quickly and succesful populations to starve themselves to death because of their eating habits.
I changed territory from 500 units to each side into 2500 to each side (giving the bots a 5000 by 5000 territory)
After about 2500 cycles I noticed the following pattern:
Of course 2500 cycles is a small period of time, but still the resemblance to the ant bots struck me. If my assumptions are true then
Prey bot is the first non-queenbased antbot!I base this on several observations:
- The highest concentration of bots is near the territory center, much like the queenbased antbots are concentrated around the queen.
- Foraging raids are carried out. Bots wander outside their territory if they see there's food outside their territory, and return when they can't find more food.
- The energy that is retrieved is given to the collective (in a sense), because it is used to reproduce and create more bots
I will continue to run this simulation to see if my assumptions are still true after a longer period of time.
EDIT: the following screenshot is taken at about 7000 cycles. The center of the population has expanded, and is taking up quite a lot of space in the simulation now.
This expanding territorial center is due to the fact that all bots base their territory on their own birthplace, which isn't the same for every bot, obviously. I am planning on removing that, and making the population center a heritagial thing. Furthermore it seem obvious to me that this bot needs a good predator (Wraith), or else it'll conquer the simulation eventually.