3 ms·

Depending too heavily on the radar free drones is risky, because they are blind if the radar drone is destroyed. Also the enemy can tell by your starting HP whi

Depending too heavily on the radar free drones is risky, because they are blind if the radar drone is destroyed. Also the enemy can tell by your starting HP which ones have radar or are drones, so this tactic would be easy exploit.

dragontamer 4y ago
Risky yes, but "wave surfing" bots can keep track of when the enemy takes a shot, how much energy was used in the shot (0.1 bullets travel faster than 3 energy bullets), and calculate where drones need to position themselves to protect the radar drones. (Actually, good bots use wave-tracking on the offense: to collect statistics on how the *enemy moves* in relation to your own shots, and use those statistics to try and predict the enemy's movements) "wave surfing" is necessary to beat AI-guns (statistical learning) to ensure your bots are "flattening the gun curve", to minimize the gradient, minimizing any system (be it statistical or neural-net) from learning your patterns. Extending the wave-surfing principle to a team-setting means using drones to purposefully protect your radar bots. --------- Advanced single-player 1v1 dueling bots can already shoot 0.1 bullets to "protect themselves" (the 0.1 bullet travels to "block" out any bullets that are on their way to the planned destination), by using this principle. Stationing a "shield drone" to perform the job would be much much simpler. --------- https://robowiki.net/wiki/Wave_Surfing https://robowiki.net/wiki/Wave_Surfing https://robowiki.net/wiki/Waves https://robowiki.net/wiki/Waves All you gotta do is: 1. Detect the wave as the enemy shoots (Bots can't see bullets, but they can see the loss of energy from 0.1 to 3, indicating a fired shot) 2. Plan out where your bot is going to move when that wave intersects your bot. 3. Shoot a "protection bullet" along that wave, blocking any enemy bullets that would intersect with your planned location on the wave. Alternatively, #3 could be "station your high-HP radar-free drone" to be in that area instead. Case #1: Your enemy predicts where you are. In this case, the drone (or protection bullet) will cancel out the enemy bullet. Case #2: Your enemy fails to predict where you are. In this case, the drone / radar-bot / 0.1 bullet will missed entirely. Since 0.1 is the minimum energy spent per shot, you will have more energy than the opponent by the end of the game, and you can kill them once they're unable to fire. ------ It seems that with a good enough radar-network (such that you have 100% vision of the entirety of the enemy forces), you could accurately track all waves. Of course, enemy forces could move in such a way to try to escape your radar vision. Etc. etc. In any case, the "meta" for the team-game is unknown and untested. There's questions like "how many radars are needed to effectively fight (probably more than 0, probably less than an all-RADAR team). --------- Because 1v1 duel-bots are so good at tracking waves, the multiplayer meta almost certainly will be about finding "nodal points" and coordinating fire, so that enemies cannot avoid the mass-fire from these droid-bots. Similarly, moving in such a way that you position your bots far away enough to minimize overlapping vulnerable zones is another point. Alas, most "team games" are just an off the shelf Melee-bot x5 with very basic "friendly-fire" awareness. I think part of the reason is that the default rulesets (the size of maps and whatnot) are insufficient to develop a fun meta. The Robocode community must first find a good set of rules (map size, in particular) that will create a fun environment to experiment a variety of different strategies.
- snovv_crash 4y ago
  You're referring to 'bullet shadows', this is pretty well known in the Robocode community. It can work well, (all the top bots do in 1v1) and even more so in the team context where you have more perpendicular angles to increase the shadow size, but in the heat of battle with multiple bots it is very difficult to correctly track every energy drop. The timing of detecting the energy drop is very sensitive, and if you only have one bot with radar then you'll definitely be missing exact timestamps. Even in Melee context there are only a few bots (top 3 or 4 I think) that even attempt wavesurfing, and the accuracy is far from 100%. In Neuromancer, for example, it keeps earliest and latest timestamps for energy drops to try to account for this, but this wouldn't be anything close to enough for making bullet shadows to get a high amount of coverage. In my experience here, the 20% HP bonus isn't worth the impact on your strategy and reduced timestamp accuracy of radar events. Allowing every team member be able to take on any role depending on the field layout is much more valuable.

dragontamer 4y ago

Risky yes, but "wave surfing" bots can keep track of when the enemy takes a shot, how much energy was used in the shot (0.1 bullets travel faster than 3 energy bullets), and calculate where drones need to position themselves to protect the radar drones. (Actually, good bots use wave-tracking on the offense: to collect statistics on how the *enemy moves* in relation to your own shots, and use those statistics to try and predict the enemy's movements) "wave surfing" is necessary to beat AI-guns (statistical learning) to ensure your bots are "flattening the gun curve", to minimize the gradient, minimizing any system (be it statistical or neural-net) from learning your patterns. Extending the wave-surfing principle to a team-setting means using drones to purposefully protect your radar bots. --------- Advanced single-player 1v1 dueling bots can already shoot 0.1 bullets to "protect themselves" (the 0.1 bullet travels to "block" out any bullets that are on their way to the planned destination), by using this principle. Stationing a "shield drone" to perform the job would be much much simpler. --------- https://robowiki.net/wiki/Wave_Surfing https://robowiki.net/wiki/Wave_Surfing https://robowiki.net/wiki/Waves https://robowiki.net/wiki/Waves All you gotta do is: 1. Detect the wave as the enemy shoots (Bots can't see bullets, but they can see the loss of energy from 0.1 to 3, indicating a fired shot) 2. Plan out where your bot is going to move when that wave intersects your bot. 3. Shoot a "protection bullet" along that wave, blocking any enemy bullets that would intersect with your planned location on the wave. Alternatively, #3 could be "station your high-HP radar-free drone" to be in that area instead. Case #1: Your enemy predicts where you are. In this case, the drone (or protection bullet) will cancel out the enemy bullet. Case #2: Your enemy fails to predict where you are. In this case, the drone / radar-bot / 0.1 bullet will missed entirely. Since 0.1 is the minimum energy spent per shot, you will have more energy than the opponent by the end of the game, and you can kill them once they're unable to fire. ------ It seems that with a good enough radar-network (such that you have 100% vision of the entirety of the enemy forces), you could accurately track all waves. Of course, enemy forces could move in such a way to try to escape your radar vision. Etc. etc. In any case, the "meta" for the team-game is unknown and untested. There's questions like "how many radars are needed to effectively fight (probably more than 0, probably less than an all-RADAR team). --------- Because 1v1 duel-bots are so good at tracking waves, the multiplayer meta almost certainly will be about finding "nodal points" and coordinating fire, so that enemies cannot avoid the mass-fire from these droid-bots. Similarly, moving in such a way that you position your bots far away enough to minimize overlapping vulnerable zones is another point. Alas, most "team games" are just an off the shelf Melee-bot x5 with very basic "friendly-fire" awareness. I think part of the reason is that the default rulesets (the size of maps and whatnot) are insufficient to develop a fun meta. The Robocode community must first find a good set of rules (map size, in particular) that will create a fun environment to experiment a variety of different strategies.

snovv_crash 4y ago
You're referring to 'bullet shadows', this is pretty well known in the Robocode community. It can work well, (all the top bots do in 1v1) and even more so in the team context where you have more perpendicular angles to increase the shadow size, but in the heat of battle with multiple bots it is very difficult to correctly track every energy drop. The timing of detecting the energy drop is very sensitive, and if you only have one bot with radar then you'll definitely be missing exact timestamps. Even in Melee context there are only a few bots (top 3 or 4 I think) that even attempt wavesurfing, and the accuracy is far from 100%. In Neuromancer, for example, it keeps earliest and latest timestamps for energy drops to try to account for this, but this wouldn't be anything close to enough for making bullet shadows to get a high amount of coverage. In my experience here, the 20% HP bonus isn't worth the impact on your strategy and reduced timestamp accuracy of radar events. Allowing every team member be able to take on any role depending on the field layout is much more valuable.