Okay, been looking at the code. It's not quite what I thought.
For simgle bots, venom, poison, shell and slime are all converted linearly relative to the user-specified per unit conversion cost. I was mistaken above. There is no implicit, underlying conversaion rate independent of the human specified costs. Thus, the nrg required to make any of them is simply the amount made multplied by the human defined cost per unit multiplied by the cost multiplier. This is for single bots. For shell and slime, for bots where .numties > 0 (not necessarily multibots) the nrg cost is devided by the number of ties. Thus a bot attempting to make 100 shell for example that happens to have 4 ties to other bots is only charged 25 nrg (assuming the cost per unit is 1 and the cost multiplier is 1). A smart bot, even a single bot, could use this to advantage to make shell or slime cheaply. Just fire a bunch of ties or even make it befor ethe birth tie drops. Having ties has no impact on making venom or poison.
Attempts to umake shell or slime (by storing a negative value) are ignored. They don't cost anything and the amount of substance in uneffected. Unmaking venom or posion is allowed, but it costs the same to make as unmake. That is, you spend nrg at the same rate either way. In no case other than body to you get nrg back from reducing the amount of a substance.
Note that in all cases, the appropriate safegaurds are in place so that bots only get charged what they actually make if thier request would have taken them over 32000 (or below 0 for venom or poison). Note also that as of 2.43k, the amount a bot can make (or unmake) of any substance per cycle will be capped at 100. Note thirdly that waste is produced when substances are made (at the rate of 1/10th the nrg cost for shell and slime, and 1/100th the cost for poision and venom. Body conversion produces no waste.).
The conversion rate for body is 10:1. Takes 10 units of nrg to make 1 body. Similarly feeding on body is the reverse. This conversion appears to be lossless and indepedent of any costs though it is capped at 100 nrg equivalent either direction per cycle.
My personal opinion is that converting nrg to any substance should take nrg proportional to some fixed conversion rate for that substance even when all costs are zero.
I propose 1:10 for shell and slime. That is, 1 unit of nrg makes 10 units of shell or slime. Why so cheap? Because they each have their implicit downsides. Slime degrades. Shell makes you heavy and shots degrade it.
I propose 1:1 for venom and poison. Bots would be accessed the conversion rate of the substance they are making PLUS whatever the per unit cost was for that substance. We might want to dial down the F1 per unit costs for certain substances as a consequence, say to 0.01 per unit.
I propose keeping the 10:1 rate for body though potentially adding a human specified transaction cost.
Unmaking body gives you nrg at the conversion rate. I propose that unmaking all other substances should be possible but that as with venom and poision today, it shoudl take nrg, charged at the conversion rate to do so. Optionally, we could make unmaking somethign cost 1/10th the forward conversion rate or similar. I think we want bots for example, to be able to lighten up on shell if they so desire. Think of it as the hermit crab making a run for it.
I kind of feel that we should stick with straight nrg conversion for all substances and not involve a two stage process I.e. convert nrg to body then body to something else. Easier for evolved bots to hit upon substance use and also keeps things simple. I do however, think we should have a consistant substance conversion model.
As far as slime effectiness goes against viruses, the virus gets through if the power of the shot is greater than the target bot's slime * 20. If it does not get through, it degrades the slime by that amount.
As far as shell effectivness agaist venom shots, nrg feeding shots or body feeding shots, its the same as above, degrading shell in the same way. For feeding shots, if a shot gets through, whatever shell was there still helps by diminishing the shot's power accordingly.
