Code center > Old Suggestions Awaiting Programming

Veggie Energy

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Shen:
Suggestion for improvement of the way veggies get energy.

I would like to see a proportional veggie feeding system similar to the old system. The reason I say this is because it would give a lot more control over exactly how much energy goes into the system. Im having a bit of trouble stablising my bot populations because fixed feeding doesnt give as much flexability as the old way, even though its A LOT easier to understand. Something along the lines of this...

A value, say 500, is specified by the user. That value is then distributed amoungst the veggies directly. So if I have 10 veggies they each get 50 nrg per cycle, if I have 100 veggies they get 5 nrg.

I never did understand the old feeding method completly but I knew that more bots/veggies meant less energy, and thats what Id like to see. Maybe we could use both systems? Like the way shot damage has the option of fixed or proportional.

Numsgil:
The point of stabilization should just be at a different place than before.  I notice that alot of the time the stabilization point is with alot of vegs and fewer robots.  Which is actually not necessarily a bad thing.

Still, if people would like a constant energy input level I guess it could be set up.  But I'm still of the opinion that you'll get more realistic simulations in the new system.

Shen:
My problem is with the growth/death cycles of alga. Im currently running a size 12 sim with 1000/200 max/min veggies and 3 nrg/cycle and Im having several problems.

When the alga grows to 1000 thats essentially 3000 nrg per cycle which is far to much. But when the alga is 200 thats only 600 per cycle. Its the opposite of what is needed to stablise the population. I need maximum growth of veggies when theres few alga to boost it back to normal levels, and minimum growth when theres to much alga about. What I get in reality is max growth when minimum is needed and minimum when max is needed.

Also IMNSHO I think your wrong about the realism of the fixed system. In real life if there is overcrowding of a population growth is slowed not accelerated.

Whatever the base source of energy veggies are supposed to draw from, be it soil nutients or sunlight or whatever, it might be a renewable source but its still delivered at a finite rate. Think rainforest canopy. You have loads of trees competing for sunlight, the ones under the canopy dont get sunlight and therefore either stay small or die off. But when a hole appears in the canopy there is a spurt of growth from all nearby trees to fill the gap and claim the sunlight.

shvarz:
Maybe I should reply to Shen, as I pushed for the current system for a long time.

This system is much better than the old system.  The problem you are having stems from a wrong assumption that you need a stable population of predator.  But this is wrong - population of predators almost always goes in cycles: predators grow large in numbers -> wipe out a lot of prey -> their numbers go down due to scarcity of food -> number of prey goes up.  This is normal.  And this is what I am getting right now, also on size 12 sim.  

With the old system that was impossible to achieve.  The most stable situation was when predators became so numerous that they covered most of the field, leading to either constant re-population or to small numbers of veggies receiving huge amount of energy and feeding the whole crowd.

Your analogy to rainforest ecology is not valid, because you don't get even close to 100% coverage of all area of a sim.  Take any other system and you'll see that new system is more accurate.

I don't mind having the old system (or something like it) as an option though.  It might be useful in some simulations.

Numsgil:
Shen, the field, in a way, is getting a constant amount of energy per cycle.  It's just whether there are enough vegs to take advantage of it or not.

If you pretend the simulation is a top down look at a forest, and the vegs are trees, then I think the new system models real situations very well.  Most simulations I run end up with ~10 times as many vegs as animals, which is actually pretty close to reality.

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