Author Topic: Sexual Reproduction Issue  (Read 5492 times)

Offline NotARobot

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Sexual Reproduction Issue
« on: January 08, 2019, 08:27:01 AM »
Hi everyone :)

I'm new to posting here, but I've been using DB, and browsing the forum, for the last couple of months. I'm currently trying to set up a basic predator-prey system using modified versions of the Animal_Minimalis_Connubialis. The idea is to have two populations of mobile robots- one population serving as predator, one as prey-  with repopulating Alga_Minimalis as food for the prey organisms. The issue I have been encountering is that the predators, who are necessarily more sparse and have slower breeding times, keep getting impregnated by the prey. This leads to offspring that are ostensibly predator robots, but act like the prey. This problem is self-solving to a certain point, as the predators often eat these offspring, but it wastes the resources of the parent organisms and alters the overall dynamic to an unacceptable degree. I am wondering if anyone has a good technique for avoiding this, short of making one species asexual. I have already altered the DNA of both organisms so that they should not seek to breed with each other, and the prey has been designed to flee from the predators, but I think that the predator robots are getting hit by stray sperm shots when they get too close to the prey while they are having their reproduction orgies lol

Thanks for any help. And my apologies if this question has been asked before. I checked through older threads but didn't see anything on this topic

Offline Numsgil

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Re: Sexual Reproduction Issue
« Reply #1 on: January 11, 2019, 06:14:10 AM »
Alga_Minimalis normally reproduces asexually.  Did you modify it to reproduce sexually?  I tried a similar sim years ago but that was before sexual reproduction.  I would think your bigger problem is keeping the prey from taking in predator DNA and becoming a photosynthetic predator, which would cause a lot more problems.

Either way, I don't have any off hand ideas.  We were talking about a minimum similarity measure with sexual reproduction to prevent vastly dissimilar species from sexually reproducing but I don't know if it was implemented.

I wouldn't worry too much about the cannibal predator species producing dumb babies from time to time.  The energy loss from producing a child then eating it aren't as high in Darwinbots as in the real world.

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Sexual Reproduction Issue
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2019, 12:10:13 AM »
well i haven't been here a while.. the issue you are having is that your bots are too closely similar to each other. the need to be different enough that the program won't let them breed together forming the nightmares. i've had the same issues as well. try adding a bunch of random numbers and switch the dna around and such in the dna or even re make one of the bots in a different style all together to try to make them different enough to stop breeding together. it's basically the only thing you can do with sexual repro. i've tried to make a male and female and run into similar issues where both male and female are in the same bot in weird ways. i kinda want to retry it though and see if i can come up with something.