Okay, I'm now getting a very consistant 25 cycles/sec +/- 5 cycles/sec (video disabled) over periods of hours running your sim on 2.43.1g. I've made some changes to how memory is reclaimed as bots move from bucket to bucket, which addressed the perf fall off in 2.43.1f and I have also enabled the bucket code for bot-bot collisions in 2.43.1g. This later change should provide another incremental performance boost beyond what was done for 2.43.1f (even for blind bots) and like the first change, should be more pronouced the larger and sparser the sim.
One important implication of this new internal algorithm is that it results in a fairly dramatic change to the shape of the performance curve as a function of bot population. That is, the performance impact from adding additional bots to a sim should move closer to being linear. Once I get this turned on for all the applicable areas, the incrimental perf hit of popualtion spikes and simply running larger, more populated sims in general should be much more tolerable.