Myself and the rest of the engine devs have had a discussion around this and will investigate possible changes to make this feel more balanced, I would just like to point out that while your bot and the one at the top left have seemingly less food nearby, they also have quicker access to
wormholes that opens up the map to them.
Just ensure that you’re using the latest version of the starter pack, 2021.1.1.
I have not read the team’s replies, but I did think that Wormholes could be a possible counter to a bad start.
Though I have not written any AI yet, i did notice some maps where one half of the map is mostly astroids and gas while the other half was pretty much promised Territory.
So I do think you might have a point.
Perhaps mirrored is not even needed, but maybe try and distribute astroids, food and gas more evenly across the map itself.
The seed is {“TotalTicks”:536,“Players”:[{“Placement”:1,“Seed”:5001,“Score”:50,“Id”:“711271da-6f46-4146-bb17-bd0fb9398bb4”,“Nickname”:“BossBot2”,“MatchPoints”:8},{“Placement”:2,“Seed”:24763,“Score”:51,“Id”:“8360e0dd-5fb1-4d07-9734-a7b5ed0730ce”,“Nickname”:“JSNickName”,“MatchPoints”:6}],“WorldSeeds”:[48315],“WinningBot”:{“Id”:“711271da-6f46-4146-bb17-bd0fb9398bb4”,“Size”:43,“Speed”:4,“GameObjectType”:1,“CurrentHeading”:136,“Position”:{“X”:249,“Y”:-235}}}
Im uncertain how this world will change iof you added example 6 more bots (less random generations)
But it does seem that the East side of this map is much harder to play than West.
If we add more players I do feel this could balance out, But thought a second map might help.
Thank you for your response and insight, I agree with the fact that wormholes could be used to your advantage if you have a less than optimal start and the maxSize for food consumption would ensure that any possible advantage of having more food in close proximity at the start is balanced out fairly quickly.
As mentioned we are looking into balancing out obstacle spawning and making adjustments where needed to take all of these factors into consideration.
Each time you run a game there are 2 log files created in the logger-publish folder. _GameStateLog_xxxx.
Write a program that reads in that data and plot away. You may have to do some sizing alterations to make the big map fit onto the screen.
This should address some of your concerns around potential food advantage. We noticed most of the food in your examples was spawning underneath gas clouds and asteroid fields, causing it to seem like your plan was being disadvantaged. We’ve made a change to minimize this, and think it’s got a good balance to it now.
Excelent, thank you, I had one strange map where one half of my map was empty almost, but it could have been a disk writing issue or something,
Will let you know if I see anything,
Im only really going into depth this weekend.
I built something great on paper but its dumb as a rock. Realised its because theres a “round delay” on moves that threw off my logic substantially,
From a food perspective I might finish my bot today.
Then I have the pleasent task of optimising
Edit: It sounds like sarcasm but I actually love making performance optimisations to get some extra cycles out
Im doing my own spinoff of “Machine Learning” if thats even a thing.
Its an idea I got while reflecting on last year.
But thats just how my side goes, I never learned AI apart from what I either read or developed while messing around with the Entelect Challenge.
**Though I do admit I did actually do some reading up on Genetic Sequences.
Im still just a guy whose good with Array manipulation, if statements and for loops
But will see what I can hash out this year. There was some interesting changes from the norm.
Getting back to my own bot now, Hoping that my next update session leaves me with something better than the reference.