Okay I'll start this off with a short bit about the use of ties I've seen in bots. Feel free to add whatever you feel like in response.
I've seen several different species develop constant ties in enviroments like zero momentum, and maximum brownian motion, flying, and gravity well(Pit) enviroments. Presumably for varying reasons such as increased height(Pit), extra motion(zero momentum), and stabilized motion(flying and max brownian). In the brownian motion sim I actually witnesed the evolution and de-evolution of tie usage, with the comming of a canni into the group; in other sims all the bots were Canni's, but seemed to be more or less distributing the burden around allowing constant tiers to thrive.