What is this thing

[Houshalter]

I was running a sim when the strangest bot ive ever seen appeared out of no where. The sim i was running was with semi-zerobots. I used a program to generate them. They started as 256 lines, each line with 40 random numbers between 1 and 1000. Anyways after 13,400 cycles, after the bots had begun to reproduce and went through 2 to 3 generations, this thing appeared. Its apperently tied to 8 other bots and i have no idea how. I thought a bot could only have up to 3 ties. Even if it can have more, what are the chances a 2nd generation zerobot has advanced tie feeding genes that let it track down 8 other bots and tie to them, not using the same tie number twice. Its not its offspring it somehow managed to harden ties to either. Stranger yet, i checked its philogeny and apparently its related to a veggie, even though the veggies don't sexually reproduce (so it couldn't have somehow impregnated a random bot with a .sexrepro gene). It changes colors frequently (probably because frequent mutations), and when its off the screen the ties disapear (maybe their not ties at all, but what are they?)
PS: any way to insert pictures better?

EDIT:  Oh this is important to. The dynamic costs aren't working either. Wierd. Occasionly it adusts the costx by several decimal points and then does nothing for a long time even though sensitivity is on max and the population is 3 times larger then what it is set for.

EDIT2: Now its inside of a veggie. It still has all those bots on a leash. Is it even possible to get inside another bot . I thought the bots collided not passed through each other.

[Numsgil]

You can have more than 3 ties.  I'm not sure what the actual limit is anymore, but it's quite high.

If you zoom in on the "ties" near the bot, they should have the same thickness as the bot that made them.  If they don't have any thickness, they're probably not ties.  I know Eric played around with different visual feedback mechanisms for different things, so it might be one of those.  I'm not sure.

The rapidly changing colors and the fact that you got them to reproduce after a few thousand cycles tells me that your mutation rate is really high.  Your bots are basically changing their entire genome every few thousand cycles, so any behavior you see is probably random.  Natural selection can't work under that sort of scenario.

Generally speaking, you don't want more than 2/3 generations per mutation.  The exact rate really depends on a number of factors I don't entirely understand myself, but that's a good rule of thumb.

[Houshalter]

The mutation rate for point mutations is fairly high. I originaly had the other mutation rates high. Every time i got a reproducer it would produce offspring so mutated they were sterile. So now i have all the mutation rates lower, except for delta mutations so when they do start to reproduce they can lower point mutations and raise copy errors on their own. Also i have a negative costx to feed them nrg. I was hoping that once they reproduce they would raise the population, raising the costx and forcing them learn how to either compete against each other or eat the veggies or both. Doesn't matter, though, if the dynamic costs arent working.

[Numsgil]

Unfortunately Eric was the one who made the dynamic costs.  I don't know how they're supposed to work well enough to know if they're broken.

[ikke]

Unfortunately Eric was the one who made the dynamic costs.  I don't know how they're supposed to work well enough to know if they're broken.

I don't think you should condiser it broken. I think a lot of the behaviour is deliberate design and part may be unintended consequences. It may be that the costX is only increased if the population rises. If your bots don't (or no longer) reproduce costx may be stuck. Another possibility is that conflicting or unintended behaviour arises from weird combinations of setpoints