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Numsgil:
--- Quote from: 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.
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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.
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Exactly. To go to an extreme (lots of small bots, or one huge bot) would have to be for strategic rather than cost minimizing reasons.
--- Quote ---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.
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I'm not married to the idea. I just think it makes a good balance between large and small bots, without favouring either.
--- Quote ---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.
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I'm not saying we balance ties vs. shots. Well, I would like to see something along those lines to help enforce the idea of small bots = tie bots and big bots = shot bots, but that's another issue. Instead I'm saying I'd like to see ties and slime balanced against each other along the same lines as the balance between shots and shell. Slime is severely underpowered in current versions, IMHO.
Numsgil:
--- Quote from: Moonfisher ---Also corpses would realy favor bots that use body shots.
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There's nothing that says you can't use body shots and nrg shots in the same bot. It would favor bots that don't indiscrimantly try to -1 shoot everything they see.
--- Quote ---It just seems like all these changes would turn the leagues upside down,
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Not necessarily a bad thing. Some bots are extremely flexible. I'm constantly amazed by Dom Inv by PY. It's several years old (predates my joining certainly) and yet manages to remain viable after huge changes in the program. Other bots are extremely fragile. Helios used to rule the leagues until he was maimed by physics changes. An ocassional dramatic change is a good thing, I think.
--- Quote ---is amaz 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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We'd have to run some tests, certainly. But I think most current bots would still manage. Maybe some specialty bots like nanite detonators won't make it, but I think most of the core bots should still work fine.
Moonfisher:
What I ment was that bots that indiscriminately use -6 shots would be favored, probably more than those who mix it up, -1 shots would be a bad thing to do to the alge and is most often a bad shot to use against normal bots.
And not saying we can't shake it up a litle, but if half the current bots fall out of the league I know I'll miss them, a lot of them use some cool tricks and behaviors, I like seing how so many different aproaches can work. I think it would be a shame to loose all this diversity. The radical changes to shot and tie values wouldn't promote interesting and original behavior, it would just completely kill off all tie feededs (Since when they come up against bots that break the ties they will spend all their energy in 2 seconds flat, then you would need 100 nrg costs on breaking a tie to make it fair).
And with 20 nrg per shot it seems like being small will be the same as being dead, generaly it just seems like people would just be forced into using a high shootval on all their shots, so why not just make that optional....
Multiply4 beats F2 and also beat F1 when it came out, just using some clever behavior and boosting shootval to 16.
So expensive shots are most definately worth the effort, but with the current solution it's optional, meaning that old bots will still work, but you can still make bots that fire far stronger shots more accurately and gain a great advantage from this. I just have to say I think the way it works now is better and more flexible, people can boost shots with 1000 nrg and only fire when they're sure they're going to hit and if the target is big enough and stuff like that.
I just think it's a shame if the league bots are in there by chance because of the latest changes, I don't mind bots falling out from changes, just not too many at the same time.
It would also be anoying to develop if the changes are too radical and too frequent... you never know what to plan for, so if you try to make something with a cool behavior it'll be out of the league after the next update... would be nice if complex bots atleast lasted long enough for some people to see them...
Moonfisher:
I was thinking, if you want to promote heavy cost shots, then you could make shot boost exponential, so the more energy you spend the greater the gain will be.
Balance it somehow, maybe increase shell loss linearly or something... so 2 nrg shots would deal 3 more in base damage (And then increase that value slightly according to body size) and destroy 5% more shell than normal shots, a 20 nrg shot would deal 60 more damage and destroy 100% more shell, a 40 nrg shot would deal 400 more damage and destroy 200% more shell... and so on...
Ofcourse this is just an example, those values would need to be tweeked carefully before being released, but this would allow the current bots to survive while promoting high energy shots. The values proposed here are probably also too high, maybe more shell loss and less base damage, but you get the idea...
I still think ties shouldn't costs too much, ties are just overpowered, I don't think the solution is to increase tie costs.
I agree that counter leeching is overpowered, Locust is a good example, it's weak and simple but wins by counter leeching the alge to gain great numbers and then swarm the oponent. It's like there only one way to eat alge in F1 now. But you could just limit the amount of energy you can transfer through a tie to 100 or something. Would also be a good idea to limit the ways of killing through ties, seems like the tie should be used to incapacitate, not kill. Theres a lot of ways to kill a bot through a tie, so the best way to fight it is by having greater numbers using the same trick or having enough slime to keep anything off (If thats even possible).
Maybe if the value pushed by the tie acted like a 1 cycle venom and the effect was visible but you couldn't change the value affected. This would make it possible to create tie defence genes that alter other values to stay safe. Although I doubt it'll help, with info shots, venom or several ties you can still instant kill.
I think the easyest way would be to limit the values you can push into certain locations through a tie, or simply block access to all locations who can be used to kill the victim too fast. The last option is obviously the easyest, but I think it might be fun to try and balance some caps on several sysvars so you can weaken the oponent but not kill it with the tie alone.
Numsgil:
Okay, I think we're on the right track here. I think limiting ties to a 100 nrg transfer would be a good start. Also make it totally independent of body. I also think you're on the right track with the idea of a 1 cycle venom. After DNA has been executed on all bots, have values pushed through the ties applied to the bot's memory, before any actions are taken based on what the bot's memory reads (and before the bot can properly respond to it). Or we could have it take a full cycle like at present, and have the tie value get applied again during cycle 2. Depends on people's thoughts. I'd favor the first one. Couple that with a large reduction in slime degredation (what is the current slime degredation rate, btw? I used to know, and I tried looking on the wiki, but no luck :/) and you have a pretty balanced system I think.
I don't want to make shootval more effective, I think it works well being logarithmic. We should also go through and find all the ways to 1 cycle instakills sometime and plug them. The program is really designed around the idea that a dogfight between bots should take a few dozen cycles. Helps model biology a bit better (I think). Lots of really interesting strategies are worthless if it's easier to just kill your opponent outright.
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Another boost for enabling corpses: you could power up a -1 shot, kill your opponent quickly, and then spend time feeding on the body and gaining the most nrg from your opponent.
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