OK, here are the results of 57 million cycles of simulation, trying to evolve a robot that can live in highest friction environment possible in DB.
I started with Dominicus Invincibalis as hunter and Alga grexa as food. The mutations in Alga grexa were disabled, but I tweaked it here and there at different times and at the end it changed so much, that I decided to give it a different name. Now it is called Alga ternia.
I am attaching the archive with 4 files:
1. Alga ternia
2. Dom ternia E (this is the final result of evolution)
3. Compare.xls file to easily see the changes between starting DomInv and Dom ternia
4. Ternia evolution.set settings file for you to see the conditions
The original bot had genome of ~370 commands, the new bot has ~490 commands. There are some deletions, some replacements, but most of mutations (from ~170 total) are obviously insertions. Whether that is the way mutation algorithm works or it is just the fact that insertions are less likely to disrupt an efficient pre-designed DNA is not clear (I am inclined to beleive the latter).
There were no Big Berthas or cannibots for a very long time. Big Berthas never appeared. The final version I am posting actually is cannibalistic. I have some intermediate evolution steps saved, so I can go and check when that developed.
The final version easily beats DomInv in sims and it is not due to the fact that Dom ternia can eat the DomInv, the non-cannibalistic versions were also able to do that. How it beats it, I am not sure. Those who like to pick through robot DNA may figure it out and tell us :) One of the most curious things that I noticed was that the bot lost the ability to produce -4 shots at some point, but later gained it back. Very strange...
Well, let me know what you think.