Overall league thoughts

[jknilinux]

Moonfisher-

But what else could we put in a blank-bot league besides NNBots and cheaters? Besides, although SSbots are hard, that hasn't prevented a whole league being dedicated to them.. So I don't see why a NNbot league would be any different.

And how can we run a NNBot league w/o mutation protection and with non-point mutations? Sounds like a really hostile environment for a NN. I still think mutation protection and numsgil's idea are the best for this league. If we allow global mutations, especially if they aren't point mutations, we'll completely destroy the network. So maybe I misunderstood you.

And yeah, definitely, I'd like to see your NNBot soccer-ecosystem. Sounds cool.

Finally, I definitely see your last point. Maybe we should have a working BP-NNbot before we make a whole league for it.



Numsgil-

Good point. That works too.

[Moonfisher]

My point was in a way that a NN structure doesn't need to be specificaly multiplying weights and such... in a way 50 .repro store is just a very short conection with no hiden neurons or crossovers or anything...
So any structure that does nothing could be considered as eligible as any other NN...
Basicaly allow people to build simple structures or different kinds of structures than in NN's, but encourage the complex NN like structures through the rules.

But the issue I saw was in allowing complex genes that don't get triggered... I think this could ruin the league, so I was sugesting that nothing is allowed to be written into sysvars... or generaly that something needs to hold no value.

So stuff like :
*.nrg 0 >
0 .repro store

*.eye5 0 >
0 .shoot store

or
50 0 mult .repro store

would be allowed.

But not :
50 .repro store

and such...

The problem with this is that something like -1 .shoot could be hard for a NN to hit... it would probably at best swing back and forth in a short range from 0 to -8... but even this could take a while.

So the questions are :
-Should it only be allowed to push 0 values into sysvars even in genes that don't get triggered.
-Or should there just be a limit to how complex a gene is allowed to be.
-Should regular conditions be allowed at all, or should all logic evolve or arise through the use of the network/structure.
-Should there be rules about the use of mutations protection. If so what kind of rules ?

And I'm sure other stuff will come to mind

And you can definately run a NN bot without mutation protection, you may not be able to run a league, but you can run an evo bot... the one I was running didn't have mutations protection, it only used point mutations but the way it was set up you could use most kinds of mutations, as long as you make sure they're very rare (Adjusting the overall mutation rate was not enough in my case, I had to lower the point mutation rate individualy, by a lot, but this was also due to a very large field with very few veggies and the size of the network (More code = more mutations) and generaly that it takes a lot less to cause changes in the network, neural networks don't normaly evolve at a celular level)
I'll post the base bot and the sim and the evolves bots and all that stuff in the NN Chalenge topic as soon as I get around to it.
The whole trick is just to make the weights into long lines, so mutations are more likely to affect weights than the structure of the network... and I but some weights in there manualy to make it move, shoot and reproduce, it could barely survive, but it managed long enough for evolution to step in...

[abyaly]

- No agressive use of ties. That means no tieing to enemies or alge, no tie attacks, no tie defences. If you use .sharenrg and such then you need to have a condition that makes sure you're tied to one of your own.
- No memmory shots of any kind.
- No use of venom.
- No viruses.
- No sexrepro. (Although the lack of mem shots should prevent raping anyway)
- Very large field, possibly without toroidal borders and with some shapes in there (Could be cool if we had some coustom maps, maybe with designated spawn points, both for bots and the initial veggies)
- Low veggy cap.
- Medium fluid resistance.
- F1 costs, possibly a litle more expensive, like set a 1.5-2 multiplier or something like that. And maybe cut the code execution costs completely.

The only uses of ties that lead to trivial strategies are tie info attacks. All other uses of ties are either capped or time delayed, so we really don't need to limit those.
I agree with scrapping venom, info shots, and viruses.
Sexrepro doesn't matter one way or the other, so I'd go against adding an extra rule for it (just fo the sake of not having as many rules).
A very large field would be a good idea, but regarding the veggy cap. The thing that makes food too easy to find in the current league format is that veggies repop very many at a time and very often when they go below their threshold. Perhaps rather than lowering the veggy cap, we lower the number of veggies in a repop event to 1 and we increase the repop delay.
Definitely more fluid resistance. We want the maximum speed to be very hard to obtain.
We don't need to fool much with the costs, except for movement. Code execution costs are fine as they are, since any complexity we add that can't recoup the currently negligible execution costs is pointlessly burning processor time.

[jknilinux]

- No agressive use of ties. That means no tieing to enemies or alge, no tie attacks, no tie defences. If you use .sharenrg and such then you need to have a condition that makes sure you're tied to one of your own.
- No memmory shots of any kind.
- No use of venom.
- No viruses.
- No sexrepro. (Although the lack of mem shots should prevent raping anyway)
- Very large field, possibly without toroidal borders and with some shapes in there (Could be cool if we had some coustom maps, maybe with designated spawn points, both for bots and the initial veggies)
- Low veggy cap.
- Medium fluid resistance.
- F1 costs, possibly a litle more expensive, like set a 1.5-2 multiplier or something like that. And maybe cut the code execution costs completely.

The only uses of ties that lead to trivial strategies are tie info attacks. All other uses of ties are either capped or time delayed, so we really don't need to limit those.
I agree with scrapping venom, info shots, and viruses.
Sexrepro doesn't matter one way or the other, so I'd go against adding an extra rule for it (just fo the sake of not having as many rules).
A very large field would be a good idea, but regarding the veggy cap. The thing that makes food too easy to find in the current league format is that veggies repop very many at a time and very often when they go below their threshold. Perhaps rather than lowering the veggy cap, we lower the number of veggies in a repop event to 1 and we increase the repop delay.
Definitely more fluid resistance. We want the maximum speed to be very hard to obtain.
We don't need to fool much with the costs, except for movement. Code execution costs are fine as they are, since any complexity we add that can't recoup the currently negligible execution costs is pointlessly burning processor time.

Okay, so:

- You can only tie with your own species.
- No memory shots of any kind.
- No use of venom.
- No viruses.
- Sexrepro allowed (like moon said, lack of mem shots should prevent problems.)
- Very large field. (what size exactly?)
- Walls (non-toroidal), since that tends to break up big orgs.
- Low veg repop threshold (let's say 30), Veg repop 1.
- Medium fluid resistance.
- F1 costs, with lower movement costs.

Question: why increase the repop delay? Just have no delay, keep the repop at 1, and keep a low veg repop threshold. That should keep the vegs constantly at a low number.
Also, I don't think we should have a custom, non-changing shapes map. That's just waiting to be exploited.

So, Moonfisher, what do you think? And what size field should we have?


Moonfisher-

Anyway, I'm sorry, you might have lost me with the NNBots...
I'm willing to say that if it does nothing to begin with and all subsequent behaviors arise through matching a + stimulus with a random behavior and/or a - stimulus with another random behavior (cannot be pre-programmed behaviors, MUST be random) all within the bot's lifetime (aka not epigenetic like the fruitfly), then it qualifies.

This bypasses the problems you saw, right?

Maybe we should change the name too, since we're not looking for specifically NNs anymore- GAs, HMMs, etc... Basically any pattern-recognizing bots should qualify too, right? Although I don't know why or how someone could implement a GA or HMM in a bot, but that's their choice...

So maybe the Learning League? No behavior league? Einsteinbot/Geniusbot league? (LOL)

Thanks!

[Peter]

Well, I'm not sure where all these leagues are heading too, but have you checked thisBot Challenges.

[abyaly]

Okay, so:

- You can only tie with your own species.
- No memory shots of any kind.
- No use of venom.
- No viruses.
- Sexrepro allowed (like moon said, lack of mem shots should prevent problems.)
- Very large field. (what size exactly?)
- Walls (non-toroidal), since that tends to break up big orgs.
- Low veg repop threshold (let's say 30), Veg repop 1.
- Medium fluid resistance.
- F1 costs, with lower movement costs.

I see no reason to ban any use of ties aside from memory attacks and maybe tie feeding.
Tie feeding is less effective than shot feeding, and is capped at .body/10, so tiny bots wont be able to use it effectively, although it does slightly make up for their complete shot feeding deficiency.
Sharenrg is even less effective as an attack, since in addition to a rate cap there is a 20 cycle delay before it can be used. In the interest of a minimal ruleset, we should only ban things that warrant it.

On the topic of movement costs - jknil, you may not have realized that the goal is to make movement more difficult  

Question: why increase the repop delay? Just have no delay, keep the repop at 1, and keep a low veg repop threshold. That should keep the vegs constantly at a low number.

The number of veggies isn't the issue. With current F1 settings, veggie production rate scales up with veggie death rate. The faster you kill the veggies, the more veggies appear. This is bad. The goal is to prevent this. A repop delay of 100-200 with the current repop amount should be plenty for bots that don't squander their nrg.

[jknilinux]

Oh, that's what you meant by "... except for movement." I thought lower movement costs would let the bots use new and unusual movement strategies, unless the settings mean .up, .dn, etc... specifically. So in that case, I maybe agree. However, Antbots, for example, need to pull food from across the map to surround the queen with food. Having high movement costs makes this difficult...

Also, when you have interesting behavior, you'll inherently have more code. So, I also agree with moonfisher- lower code execution costs.

And, on second thought, tieing to algae shouldn't be outruled. That eliminates batterybots, etc... Ditto for tieing to enemies- maybe a crazy new batterybot?

Anyway, rules 0.3:

- No memory shots.
- No venom.
- No viruses.
- Very large field.
- Walls (non-toroidal), since a torroidal environment tends to break up big orgs.
- Low veg repop threshold (let's say 30), Veg repop 1, long repop delay.
- Medium fluid resistance.
- Modified F1 costs...


Peter-
And how many bot responses were there to challenge #5, with eusociality?

[Moonfisher]

Some objects could also be cool to have in there, so bots can use them as defence or decoys if capable...
And tie feeding is ok as long as counter leeching and such isn't allowed.

Could just say that only negative .tieloc values are alowed, that should prevent all the realy dirty tricks.

Also a league that promotes interesting behavior is more fun than a bot challenge I think, the current leagues all promote quick interaction and simple clever behaviors... could be fun to have a league where complex behavior is actualy an advantage

[jknilinux]

Rules 0.4:

- Add 20 random shapes at beginning of tournament.
- No memory shots.
- No venom.
- No viruses.
- Very large field.
- Walls (non-toroidal), since a torroidal environment tends to break up big orgs.
- Low veg repop threshold (let's say 30), Veg repop 1, long repop delay.
- Transitory fluid resistance.
- F1 costs, with slightly higher movement costs, no code execution costs.
- Only negative tieloc values allowed.

Clarification 1: What size field, exactly? Maximum sounds good.

Clarification 2: What should the veg repop settings be, exactly?

Clarification 3: How much higher should the movement costs be?

Moonfisher: What do you think of what abyaly said about DNA exec costs?



By the way, just looked over what I wrote before, and it's unfortunately evident I wrote some of it late at night... LOL.

[ikke]

One comment: for a more compex strategy to be usefull the locust strategy (population explosion, get and kill all resource must be a loosing one, or at least not guaranteed to win. Therefor the cost of looking and finding food must be higher than the gain by eating the veggies as quick as possible. This forces a hoarding/growing strategy.

[bacillus]

That's a good point. One way to reduce this could be to eliminate the costs for body and up aging costs; this would encourage large bots to form without being "immortal", forcing them to reproduce one time or another (99 .repro store would fix this, but make it exposed for a few cycles, which can make all the difference.)

[Moonfisher]

The large field, few veggies, slow veggy repop and medium fluids should accomplish that...
And even if you can marginaly survive by eating everything on sight you won't survive nearly as well as those who store their food source.

One thing though... maybe the veggy cap should be very high. Start out with only few veggies and a slow repop, but have a very high cap.
This way you can't just starve out other species, hamstering food will help you expand and keep your enemies weak, but you would still need to kill the oponent or controll the entire field.

[Moonfisher]

Eliminating body costs in an environment with no dirty tricks will encourage big titan bots even more than we already are.
As it is bigger is already a lot better, I don't see why big bots should have even more advantages... I like the idea of using increasing age costs though...

[abyaly]

This also means that complex MBs, if we get any, would have to be regularly rebuilt, which is their weakest link. I don't like the idea.

[Moonfisher]

Well I could go either way with the age costs... in the end I think it's more or less the same, and organism needs to be able to regenerate or it won't last long. I don't think most cells will die of old age before something else gets to them or some tie breaks or something else goes wrong...
If I had to make a MB I would immagine going for a fungus like body, moving in a slug like maner using ties and fixpos and drawing alge towards it center... so basicaly a moving fungus that just grows bigger all the time... at best the blob could build an outer shell, or some tentacles or something... but even adding limbs to a blob will probably be hard work.
I think it'll be hard to make any specific shapes and such... the more dynamic and adaptable the organism is the better I think...
So I think most good MB's will be blobs or worms... espeicialy with the way ties currently work... I don't know what other things people may have in mind, but the more complex and specific the shape is the harder it will be to maintain...