If you plan on leaving them on for a while, it's sometimes better to just buy a new stripped down computer with a core i7, in terms of the energy consumption. Each DB instance is single threaded, but you can run multiple instances simultaneously. So one of the new 6 core processors can run 12 instances (6 cores with hyperthreading = 12 hardware threads) pretty effectively.
In an ideal world, this is precisely what I'd do. Sadly at this stage in my life I'm an impoverished student, so it'll be a while before I can just fork out on a hobby number cruncher xD
If they don't get a lot of nrg from being a veggy, they should learn to feed as well, to supplement their meager nrg income. Pretty soon after that all the non feeding vegs should get eaten. Then you lower the veggy feeding some more, and introduce dumb bots to feed the animals by getting eaten. You keep lowering the veg nrg until you can turn it off entirely. Then start the sim with that species not marked as vegs, and you can introduce in smarter and smarter vegs.
Ok I get where you're coming from with that - how do you give them a meagre nrg income? I have my veg feeding at 1 nrg per kilobody point, and anything withat least a few hundred body seems to be doing fine - in fact most of them have 32000 nrg - that is until the age cost catches up with them and kills them off.
Heh, that's a funny way to evolve locomotion.
I don't think I'll credit them with having evolved this on purpose to get around, but I suppose there's the possibility that a bot might use this as a means of locomotion if movement was exceptionally costly and body wasn't an issue...
Incidentally, the latest update: so far there is no sign of sensible reproduction evolving, however I feel we are getting closer. I have attached a few curiositied which have mutated along the way. The first is a robot that compulsively ties to anything in front of it. It doesn't do anythig further, but it's has a little cluster of other bots attached to it now, and it's at least a step in the right direction.
The second is a massive (32000 body) bot which constantly shoots (I'm not sure what it shoots either), but from the once-over I've given its DNA, I can't work out why it shoots constantly, nor why it's so big.
The final curiosity is another behemoth (32000 body) which again I haven't been able to ascertain the reason for its massive size. Please feel free to pick apart the coding for each and discuss, I'd be interested to know what makes these guys tick.
I find the discovery of these behaviours heartening - for a start it shows that a wide variety of interesting behaviour is possible from these bots, and secondly, all I need is for one of them to start reproducing again, and I could have the makings of a rudimentary self-sufficient bot!