Bots and Simulations > DNA - General

Are viruses overpowered?

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Jez:
Firstly, if you could spare the time and have an idea about which bots use viruses, could you glance at the F1 league table or even better the F1 bestiary and name any bots which use viruses but don't have the 'vir' tag in the type/league part of their name. (I run stuff with video disabled most the time so am unlikely to pick up the ones I've missed) I think the two DIN bots should have (vir) added for instance

Secondly, do you think viruses are overpowered?
Seems to me that they are, it seems a pretty free way to gain a great advantage over your fellow bots, I've been wondering recently if there is a relative disadvantage to the advantage they gain for using viruses. I'm all for equality, every method, ties, shots, viruses, even MB's (in the future maybe) being pretty equal with the programming being the key to success.

If you do think they need an added disadvantage for using viruses then what should it be?
Cost, time, perhaps even a better defence against them (1G bots are the best defence atm) or something else?

If you think they are balanced at the moment then what do you think the balances are?

Light:
I dont find viruses very effective in the leagues which is why I dont use them, whenever I have played around with adding a virus to a bot it always seems to perform worse, but that may be down to my design philosophy

Numsgil:
In my experience viruses are a sort of zen art form.  Viruses which instantly kill another bot generally are only going to be marginally effective.  However, viruses which dampen the host or makes it lame are very effective.

The question in my mind isn't if viruses are overpowered, it's if slime is underpowered as a method to stop them.  Someone should try doing a cost analysis of slime vs. viruses.

Jez:
Other than the time taken to make a virus, which I didn't think stopped a bot doing anything else in the meantime, or the cycle needed to fire a virus, don't know if it can still feed through a tie while firing virus, I didn't really think there was a cost imposed on viruses.

Good point about slime maybe being not effective enough v viruses. If I knew how to do a cost analysis of viruses v slime then I would, instead you'll just have to wait until I've finished the leagues and I'll play about with a slime bot v a top virus bot and take a guess.

If you can enlighten me on the cost of firing a virus then I'll have a better idea, certainly a bot can spend a fortune on making slime.

Light:
When you do 100 .vshoot store to shoot the virus, you are using 100 energy units, also its direction is random and a bot with no slime still seems to have a 50%ish chance of stopping the virus.

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