Overall league thoughts

[jknilinux]

Peter-

The reason I asked if it sounded good was my PC broke at the time. Anyway, it's fixed now, so I'll check the settings on my own soon.

Numsgil-

I may have misunderstood your post, but I was suggesting putting shapes in the new interesting behavior league, not F2.

Abyaly-

I see your point... If a rule is not necessary it starts to become an obstacle...

OK, you convinced me.

Rules 0.7 (almost, but not yet, 1.0!):

- No memory shots.
- No venom.
- No viruses.
- Very high (10x?) Poison costs
- Very high (10x?) shell costs
- Size 12 field.
- Non-toroidal
- Alga minimalis, Low veg repop threshold (0?), Veg repop 1, long repop delay (5x?), high veggy population cap (100?), low energy cap (), fed 8 nrg per turn, fed per kilobody, day/night cycles enabled. (We'll want the veggy population to remain around 20-25 constantly.)
- Thick fluid resistance.
- F1 costs, no/low code execution costs (0.5x?), and low (0.1x?) age costs.*
- Only negative tieloc values allowed.

*I see these rules as removing obstacles to complex behavior, not forcing contrived behavior... Feel free to disagree, though.

So, abyaly, did I miss anything?

[Peter]

Please state the reasons for every rule.

Why 10x Poison costs. Any reason? Just skip the 10 if it lacks a reason.

- Alga minimalis, Low veg repop threshold (0?), Veg repop 1, long repop delay (5x?), high veggy population cap (100?), low energy cap (), fed 8 nrg per turn, fed per kilobody, day/night cycles enabled. (We'll want the veggy population to remain around 20-25 constantly.)

Why a treshold of 0?
Why repop of 1?(and the use when the treshold is 0?)
Why a delay of 5x?
Why 100 as a pop-cap?
Why around 20-25. It sounds awfully low.
What do the multiplications come from? (F1-conditions?)

[bacillus]

Poison can give a significant advantage if every bit of nrg counts. Creating 10 poison for 1 nrg (not sure about this bit, but will do for now) can easily stop a bot from feeding for 10 cycles, in which time food could be gone, either way, nrg loss will be greater than 1. Multiplying the cost by ten will even out this disadvantage, although not completely, and reduce the effectiveness of poison.

[jknilinux]

Please state the reasons for every rule.

Why 10x Poison costs. Any reason? Just skip the 10 if it lacks a reason.

- Alga minimalis, Low veg repop threshold (0?), Veg repop 1, long repop delay (5x?), high veggy population cap (100?), low energy cap (), fed 8 nrg per turn, fed per kilobody, day/night cycles enabled. (We'll want the veggy population to remain around 20-25 constantly.)

Why a treshold of 0?
Why repop of 1?(and the use when the treshold is 0?)
Why a delay of 5x?
Why 100 as a pop-cap?
Why around 20-25. It sounds awfully low.
What do the multiplications come from? (F1-conditions?)

Threshold of 0- If a bot drives the algae population to 0 and kills itself, it's not too interesting, is it?

repop of 1*- I quote abyaly:

"-Veggy repop reduction is there to prevent the "sit and wait" strategy that becomes viable when large numbers of veggies are always appearing."

Delay of 5x*- If they can't keep a 5x delay without going on a murderous rampage and killing everything, then they aren't exactly intelligent-behavior bots, are they?

100 as the pop cap- if the bots can hoard their veggies and garden them, so much the better. However, the veggy population should still be reasonably low, even if none are killed.

population@20-25- Moonfisher evolved IB soccerbots based on neural networks that maintain a population of up to 3000 in a size 13 field with only 25 veggies. So, if evolved NNbots can survive in a size 13 sim with 25 bots, hand-made bots should be able to survive in a size-12 sim with 25 veggies as well.

Yes, the multiplications come from F1.

*- The starred explanations are indeed pointless if we adopt a threshold of 0. They're only there incase we don't.

Moonfisher-

What do you think of removing these rules? Are there any you think we should keep?

Abyaly-

You said:
"We already have a way of dealing with random chance. It's a pretty good one. We don't need another."
a bit earlier. What was that? And how does moving algae force contrived complexity, exactly?

[Peter]

Poison can give a significant advantage if every bit of nrg counts. Creating 10 poison for 1 nrg (not sure about this bit, but will do for now) can easily stop a bot from feeding for 10 cycles, in which time food could be gone, either way, nrg loss will be greater than 1. Multiplying the cost by ten will even out this disadvantage, although not completely, and reduce the effectiveness of poison.

It is 1 poison for 2 nrg...
Why it should be 10x poisoncosts isn't clear to me.

Threshold of 0- If a bot drives the algae population to 0 and kills itself, it's not too interesting, is it?

Why not?

Delay of 5x*- If they can't keep a 5x delay without going on a murderous rampage and killing everything, then they aren't exactly intelligent-behavior bots, are they?

Why 5 times. Why a delay of 5 cycles instead of 1 cycle. Doesn't matter much anyway.

100 as the pop cap- if the bots can hoard their veggies and garden them, so much the better. However, the veggy population should still be reasonably low, even if none are killed.

Why should it be reasonably low?

population@20-25- Moonfisher evolved IB soccerbots based on neural networks that maintain a population of up to 3000 in a size 13 field with only 25 veggies. So, if evolved NNbots can survive in a size 13 sim with 25 bots, hand-made bots should be able to survive in a size-12 sim with 25 veggies as well.

If those bots can do it, it doesn't have to mean, all bots need to do it.

Abyaly-

You said:
"We already have a way of dealing with random chance. It's a pretty good one. We don't need another."
a bit earlier. What was that? And how does moving algae force contrived complexity, exactly?

Possibly he means the way the leagues are running right now.

[bacillus]

Default F1 costs (physical/morphological only, no genetic):
0.05 nrg per bang
2 nrg per tie
2 nrg per shot (base)
0.01 nrg per unit venom/poison
0.1 nrg per unit slime/shell
0.1 nrg per 10000 body per cycle

Unless my definition of "one unit of poison" is wrong, that means 1 nrg can be used to make 100 poison.

[abyaly]

We can deal with random chance by running more simulations.
On the issue of moving veggies: that reintroduces the sit and wait strategy, so I am against it for that reason also.

[jknilinux]

Sorry, I don't know how the current leagues are run- could someone explain? If bot x is up against bot y, is the winner the one who wins 2 times out of 3 or something?

The "Leagues" entry on the wiki wasn't too helpful... What's the purpose of all that code anyway?

I see your point on constantly moving veggies, but what if they just moved for a few cycles after birth?

[Numsgil]

Bot X wins against bot Y if it has 50% + sqrt(#matches) wins.  There's some math behind the reasoning, but basically it means that it's unlikely for one bot to win from a fluke.  Matches can last anywhere from 5 to several hundred rounds, depending on how evenly matched the bots are.

[jknilinux]

Okay, then I'm alright with regular veggies.


Peter-

What are you suggesting? What rules would you keep?


You said:

"Why should it (the veggy population) be reasonably low?"

Uhh...
Wasn't the main point of this league to have a low veggy population?

[Moonfisher]

I think 0 repop could have some interesting outcomes... if 2 oponents both hamster and breed alge, then a clever bot would be able to tell when to gather alge and when to kill them in case they're in enemy teritory.

And not sure about poison costs...
And I'm realy tired and need some sleep... so didn't have time to read or think about everything here...

[jknilinux]

Veggies:

Threshold of 0

-or-

repop of 1

Delay of 500

---

50 as the pop cap

population@20-25

10x poison/shell costs
---


Btw, what about slime?

[Peter]

Veggies:

Threshold of 0

-or-

repop of 1

Delay of 500

Repop 1 and threshold 1.

50 as the pop cap

population@20-25

No, no, a high pop cap. I'm more thinking of around 500.

10x poison/shell costs

And why 10x, why not 2x or 5x.

Btw, what about slime?

Just allow it as it is right now.

[Peter]

Peter-

What are you suggesting? What rules would you keep?

Any rule that has a meaning. I didn't test any spectaculair ant ants in the settings. It could be an idea to test some ant-bots with some settings and look if they can survive instead of random guesing what rules could be good or bad.

You said:

"Why should it (the veggy population) be reasonably low?"

Uhh...
Wasn't the main point of this league to have a low veggy population?

No, it was to have interesting behaviour. I don't feel like putting pop caps to the veggies. I want to give them as much freedom as possible. I don't know how a low pop cap could turn interesting behaviour on. I put farming veggies out too, a pop of 50 could be held pretty fast.

[jknilinux]

50 is a high pop cap when your bots can survive with 20.

If we want the population to be 20-25, and the bots are too stupid to control the veggies on their own, then we should make the threshold 20.

10x because it's a big advantage, and making it cheap is not going to encourage intelligence.

I think all these rules have meaning, and the main point of this league was to encourage interesting behavior through having few veggies. Farming is one example of interesting behavior.