Metabolism currently works using body and nrg. -1 or nrg shots give the bot mainly nrg and to a much lesser extent body.-6 or body shots give the bot primarilly body, requiring conversion (.fdbody) into useful nrg. Ties can be used similarily to feed using .sharenrg and/or (-1 .tieloc store). This gives the bots only nrg, typically requiring some form of conversion into body. (.strbody)
Waste is produced based on the amount of nrg a bot takes in. Plants can receive this waste and convert it back to nrg via (.sharewaste inc) or -4 .tieloc store. When bots die they either are simply gone or depending on settings remain as nrg-less corpses, for bots to feed from.
Slime helps prevent tie feeding attacks, but washes off over time and depletes when it is attacked. Shell is similar but doesn't wash off and is used to block shots.
Please take a look at either the help portion ingame or the various tutorials/wiki's about this stuff. I seriously don't like re-writing the same info over again.
You can check the dna of yourself and others to some extent, and delete unwanted genes with *.thisgene, *.genes, and *.dnalen; but the specific viral cell can not be dected with this method. I rigged up essentially a gene length checker some time ago, ironically for better producing viruses. It might be an idea to modify it for dna integrity checking or add a specific *.genelen to the sysvars.
Shvarz: So the only thing keeping real dna from growing too much is cost involved and chance mutations? It's kind of surprising the geneome isn't bigger considering even a small rate of one retrovirus addition per generation. Are real cells better able to defend themselves or r-viruses having more difficulty replicating? The bots seem swamped by even a small virus.
I'd taken a look at retro-elements and was actually thinking additional forms might be interesting to add somehow to DB. Kind of wanted a more natural addition though, not sure what would be the equivalents.
Speaking of Wiki's whatever happened to the link the our wiki on the homepage? Might be an idea to post a direct link on the forum also.
www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual