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Veggies are too powerful

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shvarz:
Hey Eric, are you planning to do anything to deal with veggies getting their energy for free? Any ideas on long-term solutions or quick fixes?

Here's my thinking for a quick fix: Let's allow bots to become veggies through DNA commands. Keep the current system for now, but plan at some point in the future to turn off the program-defined veggie status.

But we need some kind of counter-balance for this "energy-for-free" state. I'm thinking something drastic, like at the end of DNA execution if a bot is scheduled to receive energy for free, then all other functions are suppressed in this cycle. No movement, no repro, no shots or ties. Just set all memlocs to zero.

EricL:
I would very much like to do something about veggies - to institute some implicit cost to balance out the receipt of nrg for nothing.  Today, the only such cost is that of being restricted from reproducing when at the pop limits.

I have proposed several ideas akin to what you suggest (though not quite so severe) but people (including you) have consistently opposed any restrictions on veggy morphology.

The concept of putting veggieness under DNA control, perhaps via the manufacture of a substance is something I support and seems to be widely acceptable, but what the cost of this would be has not been well discussed.

Failing some broad consensus on this, I probably won't push it in the near term, having tried and failed to get consensus and having other things to work on, but if you want to champion change here, please do.

Numsgil:
You can always implement "veggy-body", ie: chloroplasts or something similar.  It wouldn't power up shots like regular body does, or help other functions like that, but it would provide nrg based on the amount of chloroplasts you have.

The disadvantage would be the increase in volume (easier to hit) and mass (harder to move) without the corresponding increase in strength.

To maintain backwards compatibility, if a bot is marked as a "veggy", it means that commands that operate on body (like .fdbody and .strbody) operate on chloroplasts instead.

shvarz:
Yes, I remember that discussion quite well. So let me point out the main difference between what you proposed then and my proposal here: The bots would not be permanently labeled as veggies and they will have no permanent handicap.

In my system they will only be handicapped for the cycle when they are receiving the energy. That is a bot can be a hunter when there are bots around it, but switch to veggie when food is rare. Veggies can sit and get energy for free, but when enemy appears they can drop the photosynthesis and start running.

I am open to imposing other handicaps associated with getting energy. I don't think my system is ideal in any way. But handicaps should be generic and allow bots to be "partially veggies".

I am against labeling a bot as a veggie once and for all and setting separate rules for it. All bots should be created equal!

MacadamiaNuts:
I'd suggest manually lowering the energy input for veggies and raising the base costs so the sun input cannot offset the costs of fighting.

Even if only for a proof of concept, we can tweak our IM sims with a repop threshold over the max veggies so some dumb veggies are respawned often, then raising the base cost and lowering the sun input until the dumb veggies become more successful than Shrinking Violet.

(As a matter of fact, feeding from veggies like Shrinking Violet is possible, but it needs proper venom, chasing and targetting.)

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