Aging bots?

[Greven]

What about giving the bots a age limit?
 
I know that I have argued against arbitary limitations etc., but still this could be a very good way to sort out in the bots now and then.

If we say a bot at max. can live 5000 cycles or a userdefined limit, or a bot max can execute 5000 genes or execute 5000 instructions?

My point here is:

We get ride of all those annoying spinning low-energy-use bots that dont give sh*t to evolution!

With a limit on age, we get a flow of new bots all the time and old tired bots could go to rest in the eternal botheaven :D , meaning new genomes, with new DNA-matrial and with possibly better fitness.

I cant write it better, so I hope you understand.

[shvarz]

There is a more accurate way to age bots and it is already implemented - bots accumulate "permanent waste" over time.  When that reaches over certain threshold levels it starts writing random values into random cells.  That essentially leads to death.

Another idea was proposed later and I like it as well: random death from "accidents".  This would be set somewhere in options and it would randomly kill a bot every N cycles.    Long-living non-reproducing bots (called Big Berthas) would be eliminated by this mechanism as well.

[PurpleYouko]

And don't forget the already existing (though still somewhat limited) script system!
You can set the scripts to eliminate any bot you like that doesn't meet specific criteria. At present this is limited to DNA.
Anyone who has looked at the settings file that I posted earlier will see that it contains a script to kill any robot that mutates .sexrepro as one of its commands. This was added because the buggers kept evolving it then crashing the program while trying to reproduce. (That routine really sucks still)

[muse]HMM? Do scripts save properly in settings files? I think so.[/muse]

Anyway the point is that you can kill big berthas by eliminating any robot that does not contain the .repro command. (Not a perfect solution since I have evolved robots that still reproduce quite happily without it, but works in a pinch)

[ashton15]

iF YOU WANT TO INSTANTLY KILL A BOT AT A CERTAIN POINT GO TO THE PHYSICS & COSTS TAB THEN SELECT CUSTOM COSTS. fROM THERE YOU CAN PUT 32000 ENERGY COST FOR AGE ENERGY CONSUMTION INCREMENTATION WHICH STARTS AT WHICH EVER POINT YOU SPECIFY.