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Leagues

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Numsgil:
Suggestions for leagues:

*  Costs are sort of weird right now, and encourage bots to be built that are simply gross, but still manage to game the system.  Like Guardian.  I'd like to see just costs from DNA length.  Something really modest like 1 nrg per 100 bps per cycle.  Get rid of costs for conditions and stores.  Stuff like Guardian is really a specialist league (conditionless).
* Also, I'd include a cost per body point, as a way of balancing small and numerous bots (which each get charged for DNA costs) and large behemoth bots.  1 nrg per 1000 body points, or something like that.  We should try to aim for a good balance between DNA costs (anti small bot) and body costs (anti big bot).
*  Field size, especially with the larger bots of modern versions, is really tight.  I'd like to see it increased to 4, which is the largest field that won't overflow the xpos and ypos sysvars.
*  Corpse mode enabled, with no decay.  Instantly killing veggies is fine, but the energy shouldn't just disappear.  Attrition shouldn't be that easy.
*  Waste threshold dropped to something like 1000 or even 100.
*  Max veggies to 100 or even 1000.
*  Max velocity allowable (not sure if it's set to this or not).
*  Light friction.
*  Drop the cost of slime way down, to, say, .01 as the default.  Leave shell costs alone.  Ideally a 1000 body bot should shoot a shot that costs the shooter the same or greater amount of nrg as it costs the defender to repair the damage to shell.
*  Slow the decay of slime to about a tenth of what it is now.  (This and the above will require some trial and error to find good values).
*  Tie formation cost to 100 nrg.
*  Shot formation cost to 20 nrg.
*  Get rid of the current SB league and replace with a conditionless league (NC).  Rule being that bots can't have any commands that modify the bool stack except for their initial start command (obviously store commands, etc. not counting).
*  Get rid of the current MB league.  I just think the program has evolved too far for it to make sense.  Most "MB"s these days are more mass colonies than segmented worm.  Which is a Good Thing, since it follows actual biology rather closer.  It just doesn't make any sense as a competitive league.  The older bots are all lame with the new physics anyway.
*  All bots that are entered in any league are automatically entered in the F1 league.  This rule hasn't been followed in the past, though it should be.
*  Rerun all the leagues by taking all eligible bots in the beastiary, in chronological order, and running them.  Rerun leagues every time there's a new version of the program.
*  Always use the newest version of the program to run leagues.  This means buddy drops.  If the standings change dramatically, that's a good indication of a bug to look for, so it's a good stress test of new versions anyway.  Also, this way, new bots using new features get in the league quicker.
*  Max league size to at least 100.  We have about 200 bots listed as either F1 or F2, not counting short bots, of which there are several.  I don't know that we want to put every bot in a league, though.  We could use Animal Minimalis as an entrant requirement: the bot must be able to beat Animal Minimalis in a contest to get placed in the league (Animal Minimalis is fairly stupid so this shouldn't be too hard.  We could use any bot someone likes for this, of course.  I just think it provides a good link between the bot tutorials on the wiki and getting a league placement).  Obviously NC and SS leagues wouldn't need a gate keeper like this, though I do think some sort of "is able to survive" requirement would be good.
I'll try to list any others that come to mind.  The current league settings are mostly legacy, and I don't think they reflect a good proving ground for modern bots.

abyaly:
>>  Costs are sort of weird right now, and encourage bots to be built that are simply gross, but still manage to game the system.  Like Guardian.  I'd like to see just costs from DNA length.  Something really modest like 1 nrg per 100 bps per cycle.  Get rid of costs for conditions and stores.  Stuff like Guardian is really a specialist league (conditionless).

Yes! The whole point of condition costs is to limit the benefit of more complexity. If it isn't limiting complexity, we need a new measure.


>> Also, I'd include a cost per body point, as a way of balancing small and numerous bots (which each get charged for DNA costs) and large behemoth bots.  1 nrg per 1000 body points, or something like that.  We should try to aim for a good balance between DNA costs (anti small bot) and body costs (anti big bot).

Whatever you do there, there will be a specific size of bot that optimizes these costs (for a specific dna length). I don't think this puts a very large disadvantage on small bots, as long as the dna cost is slightly more modest than 1 nrg per 100 bps. 1 per 500 or so would be more appropriate.


>>  Corpse mode enabled, with no decay.  Instantly killing veggies is fine, but the energy shouldn't just disappear.  Attrition shouldn't be that easy.

I don't like this idea. There is a difference between trying to eat something and trying to kill something. This adds a recognition element to the match: "I want to eat veggies. I want to kill enemies unless they aren't much danger, in which case I want to eat them." This gives more importance to what decisions a bot makes instead of letting it to the same thing in all cases: kill, then eat.


>> Drop the cost of slime way down, to, say, .01 as the default.  Leave shell costs alone.  Ideally a 1000 body bot should shoot a shot that costs the shooter the same or greater amount of nrg as it costs the defender to repair the damage to shell.

Right now:
27 shell lost from a 1000 robot's shot (costs 2 nrg to fire)
2.7 energy to replace the shell.
Assuming the shelled bot is shooting back, this still confers significant advantage to the shelled bot.

>> Tie formation cost to 100 nrg.
>> Shot formation cost to 20 nrg.

That's huge. Simple survival becomes a huge ordeal with those settings - I bet you most of the old bots won't be able to do it.

>> All bots that are entered in any league are automatically entered in the F1 league.  This rule hasn't been followed in the past, though it should be.
>> Rerun all the leagues by taking all eligible bots in the beastiary, in chronological order, and running them.  Rerun leagues every time there's a new version of the program.
>> Always use the newest version of the program to run leagues.  This means buddy drops.  If the standings change dramatically, that's a good indication of a bug to look for, so it's a good stress test of new versions anyway.  Also, this way, new bots using new features get in the league quicker.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Numsgil:

--- Quote from: abyaly ---Whatever you do there, there will be a specific size of bot that optimizes these costs (for a specific dna length). I don't think this puts a very large disadvantage on small bots, as long as the dna cost is slightly more modest than 1 nrg per 100 bps. 1 per 500 or so would be more appropriate.
--- End quote ---

I'm thinking in these terms: suppose a 1000 body bot produces 100 children from itself.  Suddenly the amount of nrg that large bot represented costs 100 times as much to maintain.  I imagine that's not advantageous.


--- Quote --->>  Corpse mode enabled, with no decay.  Instantly killing veggies is fine, but the energy shouldn't just disappear.  Attrition shouldn't be that easy.
I don't like this idea. There is a difference between trying to eat something and trying to kill something. This adds a recognition element to the match: "I want to eat veggies. I want to kill enemies unless they aren't much danger, in which case I want to eat them." This gives more importance to what decisions a bot makes instead of letting it to the same thing in all cases: kill, then eat.
--- End quote ---

I can see your point.  Mostly this is important with the increased costs below, because bots will need more nrg.


--- Quote --->> Drop the cost of slime way down, to, say, .01 as the default.  Leave shell costs alone.  Ideally a 1000 body bot should shoot a shot that costs the shooter the same or greater amount of nrg as it costs the defender to repair the damage to shell.

Right now:
27 shell lost from a 1000 robot's shot (costs 2 nrg to fire)
2.7 energy to replace the shell.
Assuming the shelled bot is shooting back, this still confers significant advantage to the shelled bot.
--- End quote ---

In my mind last night I was imagining placing a disadvantage to attacking relative to defending, for various reasons.  But now I think maybe it's better to give the advantage to the attacker, to encourage more ruthless fighting.  So let's take this 2-3 relationship between cost of attacking and cost of defending as a base point.


--- Quote --->> Tie formation cost to 100 nrg.
>> Shot formation cost to 20 nrg.

That's huge. Simple survival becomes a huge ordeal with those settings - I bet you most of the old bots won't be able to do it.
--- End quote ---

Certainly the dumb ones won't.  I Flamma, etc.  Things like Dom Inv should be able to.  The idea here is to put more strategy in to when to shoot.  Forming ties to everything and shooting whenever something comes in range are both rather un-strategic.  I'd like to see bots weigh the benefits of moving closer to veggies when feeding to reduce unhit shots vs. time to move closer.  I guess we do some tests.  I do think that ties should cost significantly more to form than shots, since they're far more versatile and far more permanent.

-----  Stream of conciousness -----

The current shot vs. shell balance seems fairly good.  We should try to lock that relative relationship together.  The tie vs. slime is seriously bent towards ties.  Ties are cheap compared with slime, which has to be constantly maintained.  Likewise viruses are way overpowered against slime.  A bot has to spend a lot of nrg to maintain a slime shield to stop viruses.

The amount of damage a tie does to slime should be opened up as a sysvar, I think.  Same way powering up a shot works.  The base damage should likewise be related to the base damage a 1000 body bot can do to a slime covered.  Obviously, though, the tie damage isn't actually related to robot body.  That way big bots are better off with shots, and small bots with ties.

Finally, find the cost to produce the tie and the cost to produce the slime degraded by the tie.  Then factor in a healthy margin for the cost of maintaining that slime shield.  Virus effectiveness against slime likewise needs to be evaluated.

abyaly:

--- Quote from: Numsgil ---I'm thinking in these terms: suppose a 1000 body bot produces 100 children from itself.  Suddenly the amount of nrg that large bot represented costs 100 times as much to maintain.  I imagine that's not advantageous.
--- End quote ---
Suppose a single bot reproduces into N smaller bots.
The species DNA maintenance cost would increase by N-fold.
The species body maintenance cost would decrease depending on the scale the species uses to balance the nrg-to-body ratio. Since small bots tend to have this very low, we can assume close to 0.
The advantage this system creates peaks somewhere in the mid-sized bots, with the exact size depending on the body ratio and the dna len. I'm arguing that I would rather see just DNA cost implemented (although a small amount) rather than body cost and DNA cost. I think it's more straightforward and the change of advantage is more direct and predictable: less repro = less costs. Since you've claimed that small bots currently have the biggest advantage, this is the exact type of balance change we would want, anyway.




On the subject of balancing ties vs shots:
Since offensive ties are restricted to the F1 league, there is no reason to try to balance them against each other. F2 is the domain of shot bots.

Moonfisher:
I like the idea of using DNA length to measure costs, but I don't think it's a good idea to mess too much with ties and shots.
You can boost your shots at a high cost, so if a bot wants to use 100 nrg shots and make sure they count it's still possible.
Also corpses would realy favor bots that use body shots. It just seems like all these changes would turn the leagues upside down, a thing like the shot and tie costs would probably cause all the strong bots to loose to bots that do almost nothing, because doing nothing is better than shooting and tieing.
Generaly agree that the changes shouldn't bee too radical, just take it one step at the time and see what works. 100 nrg cost to ties is not tweeking the value, it's 50 times the current cost...

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