Vtimer is actually rather useless from a viruses point of view. It mainly just saves energy for the host. (yes, I admit this could help the virus preserve the host, but most of the time they don't seem to care about wasting the bot's energy)
I "think" there may be an internal race going on between the viruses within a bot, prompting a continual reproduction attempt on the part of the viruses. Haven't figured out a good way to actually test my theory though.
Kind of surprised the virus hasn't lost the rest of it's "junk" dna. You'd think that a streamlined virus would be more favored. Might be another virus out there though, or prehaps the virus found it better to let it's hosts live longer.
I know little of how bots can defend against viruses. What are the possible antiviral strategies?
Had one species evolve to store a huge negative number into vshoot(the viruses used .vshoot inc). For a long time these bots were able to take virus shots without making any more. Eventually though, the infected veggies allowed the virus to overpower the bot's defenses.
Might be cool to create a virus that attempts to delete other viruses in a bot.