fear and courage

[Gambit]

a fear rating. you'd build up fear and then shoot it at the enemy. causing them to run away from you or even enrage them against you depending on thier courage (another rating which would take twice the energy to build up that fear does)

basically

shell is to body shots as courage is to fear

[Peksa]

You can already make a bot flee with

cond
conditions here
start
.dx .shoot store
*.maxvel .shootval store
stop

or you could  make the enemy put more effort into killing you with (or potentially kill themselves with high enough value)

cond
blah blah
start
.shootval .shoot store
64 .shootval store
stop

[bacillus]

This could be achieved with emulating simple hormones in the form of shots. The problem is that a scary racoon might not scare away a crocodile eg. there is some problems towards compatability. Making lots of tiny bots to scare away the huge ones seems silly.

[gymsum]

I think this already exissts in the form of pain and pleasure..

[bacillus]

That's energy gain and loss; it could play a role, but I don't think that's what he means. Btw. it's bot cruelty to refer to .pain in a bot's DNA  

[Numsgil]

The core issue here is that the concept of "fear" is an emotion that our brains give us to keep us alive.  Meaning that it's something a bot writer (or evolution) needs to actually build.  There's no way to add a concept of fear to the program and have bots respond by running away or whatever, because "run away" is too nebulous a concept to enforce on the actual program level.  Of course, there's nothing to prevent someone from coding in something like fear in their bot and having their bots run away when out numbered or out gunned or whatever.

[gymsum]

The core issue here is that the concept of "fear" is an emotion that our brains give us to keep us alive.  Meaning that it's something a bot writer (or evolution) needs to actually build.  There's no way to add a concept of fear to the program and have bots respond by running away or whatever, because "run away" is too nebulous a concept to enforce on the actual program level.  Of course, there's nothing to prevent someone from coding in something like fear in their bot and having their bots run away when out numbered or out gunned or whatever.

I agree with you 100%. Thats why I mentioned pain and pleasure, they can be implemented as emotions, since what they mostly are in tangible manners.