ok write here about all concepts how multibots might work, which strategies they may use.
I will start with my thoughts.
1There seems to be an agreement , that the movement of multibots is extremely hard to coordinate (that is if there is not a "leader" and the other just adapts there speed and ditance like swarms usually do)
so the easiest way to avoid this is to create a stationary multibot.
Whats the role of a stationary bot?
There are 2 food gaining mechanism for him,
either relying on food that moves into his reaches(he could exploit attraction mechanism, like use a virus to hypnotize prey to come to him)
or managing an source of algae/veggies, which means limiting his energy and protecting his foodsource from extern influences.
To optimize the ratio protection(energy use) and energy gain.The outer surface has to be mimized while the inner surface has o be maximized(you can not feed of algae surrounded by other algae)(large free areas abundant of food would be some quite good saftey puffers against non algae transporting bots)
2A multibot invests quite much energy to reach full growth, such creating full
developed progeny would probably slow down his reproduction to much.
The most practibable solution I think is the production of spores which will always result
in the fact that a multibot will have to go trough different lifephases
3Because a multibot invests so much to complete his structure and his numbers are lower compared to single bots he can not afford to die that easily.
Result is that to be praticable an multibot has to have an really strong and flawless
as possible immune system.
4So far I can imagine three growth patterns :
First after surrounding an single algae, a layer growth with cells alway trying to point outward(where no other bots are), the inner structure then could be formed by letting inner cells die.For example when a cell binds to an algae and has 2 non algae neigbors these could be forbbiden to bind algaes such algae and non algae binding cells would alternate after enough outer layer would have build up the nonbinding cells would die, the binding cells would ensure they are connected to a neigbour of their own species(the outer layer)this new connection partner then would be converted to an algae binding cell, their neigbors to nonbinding.After several cylces of this the inner surface would have grown.
Second concept is the alternation of layer growth and ring extension, inspired by certain tree growth mechanisms. The basic thought is when the outer layer extends
drastical the inner layer connections will be dragged apart the inner cell would register that stress and cut ties if the stress reachs a certain lvl.This would also result in a greater inner surface.
Third an extending ring that grows string from his inner surface, here also could be used an alternation system trigerred by algae.
Well thats what I could think of till now.
