General > Biology

A question about the age costs

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EricL:

--- Quote from: Numsgil ---The start aging at X means the robot's age, not necessarily when you select the aging cost.

IE: set it to 20000 cycles and bots will begin aging when they are 20000 cycles old.

The increase cost log(age) does indeed indicate that the costs will increase as the bot ages.

More specific details I don't know.
--- End quote ---

This is correct.  For example, if you set the age cost to 5 nrg/cycle and configure it to begin at 1000 cycles, then once bots reach 1000 cycles of age, the system will begin charging them 5 nrgs/cycle from that point forward.  If you choose to increase the cost log(age) then the cost charged to the bot will be 5 * log(age) or at 1000 cycles,  15 nrg/cycle.  At 10k cycles, this will have increaed to 20 nrg/cycle.  At 100k cycles, to 25 nrgs/cycle.  Note that log(age) is the log of the age of the bot since it came into being, NOT the log of the number of cycles since the cost began being charged.

EricL:

--- Quote from: Welwordion ---(this is also quite useful to limit the number of bots
--- End quote ---
Exactly.  If you find a sim had a population explosion and want to drop the numbers down, just set the the cost to 100 or something and step a few cycyles then set it back.  It's an easy way to kill off the weak (I.e. low energy) bots.  

One of the things I would like to implement are a bunch of built-in script-like settings which one could set to automatically adjust such things as age costs and the autotrophic energy coming into the sim so as to automatically try to keep the bot population numbers within a specified range.  As bots became better adapted, the system coudl increase the age costs (or potentially other costs) to keep their numbers under control.   Similarly, if the population dropped too much, the system could reduce costs for a while to avoid everythign going extinct.   I'm also toying with the idea of environmental variation such as occasional single-cycle burst costs which could simulate particularily harsh winters...

Testlund:
No wonder I don't see any effect of the age cost then. I have it too low. On the General tab I have the energy set to 12 NRG PER Kilobody point, wich means I should set the ageing cost to 13, if I understand correctly.

It's night in the sim now, so I have to wait until the sun goes up before making the change, or the sun will go up as soon as I click change in the GUI, wich whould disturb the day/night cycle rythm. I think it's a little annoying that the sun resets whenever I click change in the GUI or when I load up a sim but... We've allready been through this. I can live with it.

EricL:

--- Quote from: Testlund ---I think it's a little annoying that the sun resets whenever I click change in the GUI or when I load up a sim but... We've allready been through this. I can live with it.
--- End quote ---
No, no, no, I really appreciate you bringing these things up.  It's pretty easy to fix little things like this, but I can only fix them if I know about them.  I'll put this one on my list.  Keep finding those bugs!

Testlund:
Thanks, Eric. Well, it looks like I set the ageing costs too high after all. All my veggies have been exterminated. I will reload a previously saved sim with a much lower cost, maybe 1 instead of 13. Maybe it is very difficult to find out the right value to keep it balanced.

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