multiply and LF seems to co-exist/co-evolve pretty well together. LF can take on a bunch of multiply's, but too many and LF gets overwhelmed. Neither seems to be able to wipe the other out completley in my sims.
But I'm wonderring how they will do longer term without a ready source of easy nrg from fat, stupid veggies. Shrinking Violet has largly displaced stickerbush. There's a bunch of other veggy species from new or periodicly connected sims, but I predict they won't last. It's just a matter of time before SV displaces them, particularly once 2.43w comes out (a day or two) and omnieye navigation works on larger fields. In EricL for example, which is running a pre-release 2.43w, the population has fallen to the point where the cost multiplier is 0. Multiply and LF survive in low numbers, preying on each other and the occasional teleported in veggy or mutated SV beg bertha. Catching a live SV is rare and generaly a function of luck, trapping it against a shape for example (still have to fix wide-eye shape recognition).
My goal with SV is to raise the stakes on what it takes for a bot to be successful in IM. No more fat, easy veggies lying around providing easy nrg for relatively stupid bots. People wanted full function veggies, you got em. Now to be sucessful, your bot has to either prey on non-veggies (which themselves have to exist in soem numbers and get their nrg from somewhere) or catch SV's. Someone is goign to have to catch SV's - no easy task. I suggest strategies such as herding cooperation between multiple hunting bots, ambushes from behind shapes, corning in the corners of non-tooridal sims and so on. Good luck.
I told you, veggies are too powerful...
