Leagues

[Moonfisher]

Hmmm, well we should atleast fix shootval instant killing, but maybe ties aren't so overpowered...
Dunno just felt that a bot like Locust shouldn't even be able to get a league spot, it's only advantage is the way it eats alge (The swarming looks cool, but isn't realy usefull unless you heavily outnumber the oponent).
I'll just stay away from using that exploit from now on then, unless I have something able to beat EtchII. Working on that F2 rape bot anyway...
Still seems like there should be some handicap to ties when used as a weapon, shorter range on shots, or vision inhibitting, or something to balance them out a litle. Doesn't have to turn everything upside down, just a small handicap of some sort. And I still don't think it takes 30 cycles to drain an alge with counter leeching, seems like no more than 4 or 5 to me, that's a litle fast to drain 3000 nrg, maybe I'm just getting confused by the changes in sim speed during a combat...

[abyaly]

Shots can be aimed. Shots can be powered up. Shots don't have a potentially fatal vulnerability built into the feeding method.
It takes 9 cycles minimum (from tie initiation) to drain a bot the same size as you. Unpowered -1 shots can do it in 5 (from first impact). A -1 shot powered to 3x strength can do it in 1.



On the topic of slime vs ties. Try it, nums. Look at the amount of slime that has to be maintained in order to stop most ties and look at the energy upkeep it requires. I just now played around with it using the console and it seems very reasonable to me.

[Moonfisher]

Didn't know you could kill that fast with unpowered shots. Appart from that good point, shots don't have vulnerabilities (Provided the shootval thing is locked from venom ties and info shots), and they do have advatanges that ties don't... Maybe it's just because a lot of the bots in F1 are from a time where ties didn't work right, so the defences such...

Also I agree that slime is kinda expensive, but don't make it too cheap to maintain, if slime is too cheap then ties and viruses will end up being obsolete. Maybe have a low cap on how much slime you can make per cycle, so it's not too expensive to maintain but it can get worn down faster than you can restore it. I don't think slime is far away from a balanced cost, just a litle too expensive to be worth it.

[abyaly]

Some perspective: Making 2 slime per cycle will keep you at 100 slime. 100 slime costs 20 nrg. 2 slime costs 0.4 nrg. This is the same as 10 store commands. 100 cycles of this will cost 40 energy -- how much venom do some bots spend in 100 cycles?

In order to say "slime is expensive" and really mean it, you need to do it with full knowledge of how expensive it is.

[Moonfisher]

Heh, I'd love to, but where do I find this full knowledge of how things work ?
Do I have to test everything or can I find these details in the forum or wiki ?

Also it's hard to determine how expensive something is, since for that you need to determine it's value... how much nrg per cycle is 100 slime worth to a bot ?
Obviously helps a lot to know the details.

[Numsgil]

I'll try to do some quantitative tests after work today.  Maybe update the wiki while I'm at it.