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Veggies are too powerful

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shvarz:

--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---

How is that going to work? If a veggie with constant supply of energy does not have enough to run and hunt, how can a predator survive at such costs?

MacadamiaNuts:
Yah, true, I was thinking about veggies that do not hunt other veggies.

EricL:

--- Quote from: shvarz ---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.
--- End quote ---
The problem I see with this on/off switch is that being able to instantly switch in and out of plant mode when food is scarce or when not being pursued or when your nrg is low, etc. is such a huge benifit that any hand authorred bot that does not do this will be at such a tremendous disadvantage that it will be obsolete and unable to compete.  Similarly, I worry that it will dramatically increase generation times and otherwise reduce competition in evo sims since runaway bots and other strategies can easily become imortal even int eh face of heavy costs.  There are other issues such as with population control (just switch out of veggie mode to reproduce then switch back).

IMHO, being a veggie should be a long term strategy decision and it should be rare that a DNA-line switches once a working strategy is hit upon.   While switching should be possible and under DNA control, it should not be possible to turn it on and off all at once like a light switch.   Rather, I would like to see it related to the production of some costly substance with some per cycle production limit where under typical sun conditions it takes many cycles to reclaim the nrg lost in making it.

Similarly, IMHO, there should be some on-going morphological cost proportional to the amount of the substance a bot is carrying (and thus proportional to the amount of free nrg it is receiving per cycle).  Num's veggy-body for instance.

Plant biologists will tell you that plant morphology and the defensive strategies that have evolved there from thorns to posion ivy to the ability to grow back after grazing are just as interesting as offensive animal preditor strategies.  I'll make the case again that placing morpholigcal restrictions on veggies may result in such interesting adaptations which we would not otherwise see.

Note that this still allows for hybrid organisms where different stages in the lifecylce of an organism use the different modes - e.g. the veggie that spawns hetertrophic mobile spores, the spore that becomes a fixed veggie only after being fertilized, etc.

Peter:

--- Quote from: EricL ---Similarly, IMHO, there should be some on-going morphological cost proportional to the amount of the substance a bot is carrying (and thus proportional to the amount of free nrg it is receiving per cycle).  Num's veggy-body for instance.
--- End quote ---
Any thoughts on inplenting something like it, seems nice to have any bot start at desame conditions.

EricL:

--- Quote from: Peter ---Any thoughts on inplenting something like it, seems nice to have any bot start at desame conditions.
--- End quote ---
Not sure what you are asking.  As above, I have many thoughts on this subject.

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