(Ericl, sorry for the long post, but I read it five times already :-D. Seriously though, I might have to break it away from the sets.
To make for more specialized bot creations and better attack/defense mechanisms, I propose that the randomization of the shot spread by 20 degrees be removed, or moded in a way that it can be disabled.
Doing so would mean that more energy could be allocated not to just the power, but the speed of the shot. Currently the speed is controled at 40 (in terms to bot speed), or 4/5ths the distance of a bot's halfway point of vision. Such a speed limits accuract to only a reading of 60 or greater in terms of the eye; I could see the practicality in specializing for more timid and relaxed agressors, but long range shots are too difficult to perform without having to change the mass of the shot to have it travel farther. The changes of the shot speed should not be cheap, calling for a more stealthy and sleak design of bots to perform such a process; one way would be to limit the type of shot it is, relative to the body (I.e. only body points can be spent to change the speed of a shot at a exponential rate). Then such a system of spending can be setup for an increase in speed X 10, at a cost of some body (see set A).
Despite the outcome of the above ideas, a change in the shot spread would make bots truely controlled, and not so jumpy on the attack. If the idea is to emulate adrenalin, and loss of motor control due top stresses on the processing power of the bot while in combat, perhaps a new tier system could be established to enduce such an effect. (see B set). But mostly I believe that the randomization at least have one activator (I.e. 1999 value .conspreadsht). This could again require great amounts of energy to maintain a set randomization factor of 0, but the reward would have to be worth the stress on a bot. Again, nothing is given without taking in nature, despite the end result for either 'things' be it an element or two beings.
Set A:
Values shown could be - (neg, chng) 100% positive values (body)
.shotspeed change(delta) .body
10 10
20 100
30 1000
40 10000
(under the current structure of the bots value system in 2.43 no faster shot would be possible, but this is for v3)
50 100000
(and so on)The body cost is set to a log of the change in shot speed divided by 10. So to double the speed and hit a bot twice the effective distance of the shot in one second, almost 10%-90% of the body must be used, and for the the bot to do so it must feed itself, and this takes a lot of energy. Secondly, the bot would have to really build up for the maximum possible distance, (not sure, possibly 2X the normal speed), requiring more of a multi-bot to be able to draw enough power to make such a shot. Any other system would have some flaws, not that this system has no flaws, but a bot could be making predicted shots at a bot 10X the distance of normal in one second, for even less making the simulations much more difficult for programers, although I do believe that the .shotpeed(delta) should be returned to normal only once a a value other than 0 is stored in the shoot location, that way a bot could deliver a shot at very high spots after some intensive gourging. I predict that any multibot succesful enough to do such a shot, and is intended soully for the shot, that most of the veggies in the game would be gone and the remaining enemies would destroy the weakened multibot (game setup taken as defaulted). Secondly, I see this tool as being a last resort for a dieing species, one left and it needs a lot of energy to repopulate.
Set B:
.timespentholding .shotspreadc(hange) .shotran .energy
N/A random 1 0
0 random or X 0 0 or X*0=0
1 X 0 (X * 10000)^t
2 X 0 ((X^t) * 10000)^t
3 X 0 ((X^t) * 10000)^t
and so on...In order to make a change in the shotspread values, it only requires that the shotran be set to zero, otherwise there is only a 50% chance that any change is taken in the aiming-correction of the shot (leaving room for things like, sighting in your shots before hand, as to not waste massive shots right away). When the timeholding goes above 0, any time you set shotran off to the current, it requries whatever change desired (relative to the previous change so 0 +/- newshotspread) to the power of time, so the longer you take on a shot the less you are charged, but the more you play with it over time as it remains locked in, the more it costs to reset/move the change in spread. This means bot A follows bot B and sets it to aim 100% perfectly from eye1 direction, so the initial cost would be zero, but say bot B moves too fast and bot A is too slow to turn, now bot B is in eye2, so it goes to reset and move the aimshot to eye2 direction, and it all happens in 5 cycles. Given that Eye2 and Eye1 are a said distance of 20 arc (20 div (360*60) for a circle) so thats a change of 20 while holding the lock for five seconds, this will cost 9.2592592592592592592592592592593e-4, extremely cheap for such a move even after bring to an integer of 9^2 = 81 * radius of the bot. If Bot b were to have somehow reversed the direction of Bot A and bot A new it through some reference checking and specialized memory genes, the bot could perform a 360 turn equal to the radius of the bot. However, this system assumes that all changes are based on the arc of the bot, specialization for smaller bots would make for faster and cheaper shotspread change. Secondly, the shotspreadchange would have to record the distance inherent in changing the aim from the aimshot to something different; this would mean that the cost of holding your aim steady would grow very quickly to a bafooon bot that just ran around with the shotran set to 0, and encounters its first enemy bot after 50 cycles, kaboom. However the same bafoon would have been just fine if it doesn't change the aimshot from the aim of itself (I.e. eye5 defaulted position).
Set C (adrenalin):
Perhaps the easiest method is to first decide if a bot is panicked; has it recieved any loss of energy or body without a value stored in repro or mrepro, is their any value stored in the shoot location, has it been hit? I would suggest going with all of them as a requirement of some sort: nrg/body and repro/mrepro or shoot or/and hit. If all this is returned true, then the effect of the randomization of the shot should go up in a logorythmic rate to the overal value of multiplying and adding the values as seen above to the time the effect has been active: log time(pain * repro + shoot */+ hit). The more affective the agressor on the prey, the less effective the prey is at defending and visa-verca.
Both sets should be effective for use in the game, and would require a greater turnout in energy released. This could be easily done by creating a new energy return array that no longer used the defaulted shot speed, and gave more for shots done at some different end of the slow/fast speed shots. Any objections?
