Bots and Simulations > DNA - General

Too Big / Too Small

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EmperorNero:
A friendly hello!
I have some questions regarding the tendency of simulations to turn out bots with a energy/body mismatch; i.e. huge body and low energy or tiny body and high energy. This seems to always screw up the simulation sooner or later, for me anyways. I either get big berthas or masses of tiny, frail bots.

So I have two questions, I appreciate any input since I'm new to db.
- Why do bots live forever? Real organisms get weak when they get old, that isn't implemented in db at all. That's why bots that lose their ability to reproduce don't go away but rather grow huge and eat everything in their path. Without any limitations on age, the whole simulation essentially becomes a race to losing your repro gene and becoming the childless killer-oldster.

- Why aren't bots with weak body strength sufficiently disadvantaged? In reality weak organisms would die, but in db masses of frail bots are fast and agile and can feed themselves by grazing the map.

Thanks in advance.

Numsgil:

--- Quote from: EmperorNero on July 13, 2010, 01:32:24 PM ---- Why do bots live forever? Real organisms get weak when they get old, that isn't implemented in db at all. That's why bots that lose their ability to reproduce don't go away but rather grow huge and eat everything in their path. Without any limitations on age, the whole simulation essentially becomes a race to losing your repro gene and becoming the childless killer-oldster.

--- End quote ---

Real organisms could live forever.  See biological immortality (actually not a great article, but read the part on bacteria).  The fact that most organisms aren't immortal reflects more that there isn't evolutionary pressure for immortality than some fundamental rule of the universe.  Or actually maybe there's even evolutionary pressure for aging.

That said, there is the concept of "waste" in Darwinbots.  You can set the waste threshold in the options.  When a bot accumulates enough waste it triggers "Alzheimers", where random values get written to random memory locations.  This usually results in death fairly quickly.  You can also set up "aging costs" which will charge increasingly larger amounts of energy as a bot ages.


--- Quote ---- Why aren't bots with weak body strength sufficiently disadvantaged? In reality weak organisms would die, but in db masses of frail bots are fast and agile and can feed themselves by grazing the map.

--- End quote ---

Large bots have stronger shots, and have more energy reserves to use during a fight.  Smaller bots are lighter so can maneuver more efficiently, and they're harder to hit with shots, but they don't have very strong shots and they don't have large reserves of energy.

...

The 1000 body that most bots default to when a simulation starts probably represents an unstable point, with pressures to have bots move to either larger body values or smaller body values.  If all your bots end up as big berthas with no reproduction going on you might have mutations set too high (as a rule of thumb, if you have 1 mutation per generation or more your rates are too high).  If you have lots of small bots, but they're reproducing successfully, that's probably the most efficient form for the environment you've set up.

With veggies at least, you can discourage cancerous, tiny veggies by feeding them per kilobody point.  But it's hard to set up a stable equilibrium where the veggies don't die out.

bacillus:
If you want to simulate an aging process, try the cost settings; I think you can make the costs of a cell increase with age.

EmperorNero:

--- Quote from: Numsgil on July 13, 2010, 02:00:10 PM ---Real organisms could live forever.  See biological immortality (actually not a great article, but read the part on bacteria).  The fact that most organisms aren't immortal reflects more that there isn't evolutionary pressure for immortality than some fundamental rule of the universe.
--- End quote ---

Certainly immortal organisms do exist in nature, but organisms that don't reproduce don't become immortal killers just like that. A simulation about evolution with immortal organisms is kind of pointless.

Numsgil:
Yes, but by the same token arbitrary rules to prevent it would be... arbitrary.  The aging costs and waste stuff is nice since you can pretty much turn it on/off, and even then waste is sort of a tack-on.

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