Make body<->nrg conversion limit a function of size

[EricL]

Today there is a hard limit of 100 nrg equivalent on the amount of nrg that can be stored to body or body converted to nrg per cycle.  Bots can loose much more nrg than this per cycle to preditors, costs, etc.

I propose making upper limit on nrg<-> body conversion be 100 nrg equivalent or the nrg eqivalent of 5% body, whichever is greater.

Thus, a bot with a body of 100 would be able to convert up to 100 nrg per cycle to body and vice versa as today but a bot with 1000 body would be able to convert up to 500 nrg to body per cycle or more importantly, convert up to 50 body per cycle to nrg.

Opinions?

[Numsgil]

I think 5% is too high.  You want to make sure that during a dog fight, one bot or the other will win before either runs out of body.

Maybe 1% or so?

[Testlund]

I like the idea. Sounds realistic to me.

[EricL]

1% doesn't change anything for bots with body less than 1000.  I kind of thought the knee in the curve should be lower.

How about 2%?

[Numsgil]

I'd have to see some experiments to decide for sure.  You want to make sure that roughly equal bots dogfighting will result in a winner with a lot of spoils (that is, the winner gets a corpse to eat that's about as big as it is.)

A fight of attrition is far less interesting.  If both bots can burn all their body while they fight, fighting at all becomes rather pointless.  Even if you win, you're almost dead with no reward.

So maybe rig up some experiments at different body conversion rates to determine the effect it has on dogfighting so we have something to go on.