Barracuda

Barracuda is just FloodMini with a gun based on the concept of Mako and Gouldingi's guns - just averaging the bearing offset. It learns quickly, therefore, and it doesn't need to save much information (it can save data on twice as many robots as are in the EternalRumble currently). It seems to be weaker against most robots than its brothers, FloodMini and Teancum, but against others it does better. Actually, it's the best gun I have against SandboxDT (so I actually win about 20% of my rounds against him with Barracuda).

What's special about it?

Third robot that could have been named FloodMini. I suppose if I wrote MakoHT or GouldingiHT myself, it would have come out like this.

Great, I want to try it. Where can I download it?

https://www.robocoderepository.com/BotDetail.jsp?id=1535

How competitive is it?

Not as competitive as FloodMini or Teancum in my opinion, but may do well still against most bots.

How does it move?

Same as FloodMicro, GouldingiHT, FloodMini, and Teancum, approximately.

How does it fire?

Uses the recent average bearing for each segment of data to aim. Variations (i.e. - various levels of rolling averages and weighting to saved data) of this aiming seem to work well against different combinations of bots, I chose a combination that I thought was good in general. A few variations of this gun will probably exist in FloodHT.

How does it dodge bullets?

Reacts to some bullets by changing direction and speed.

How does the melee strategy differ from one-on-one strategy?

Doesn't have one, it's currently only made for OneOnOne.

How does it select a target to attack/avoid in melee?

luck.

What does it save between rounds and matches?

DynamicDistancing factors, the bearings for each sector, and how many rounds the bearings have been accrued for.

Where did you get the name?

Other robots I knew with this aiming were named after dangerous fish.

Can I use your code?

If you feel like it. Let me know what you do with it, though.

What's next for your robot?

Not sure. Find room for more segmenting? I was surprised that this gun took about as much space as FloodMini's.

Does it have any WhiteWhales?

Oh, a ton. This just doesn't work well against double-spiked robots.

What other robot(s) is it based on?

FloodMini, Mako, Gouldingi

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Comments, questions, feedback:

Interesting. Though Gouldingi is a quite harmless fish (even if it is a Piranha). I have shrinked Mako's gun code some while making more room for segmentation. I'll check your code and see if the same can be applied to your variation of the theme. Maybe then you could find a way to handle double spikes. -- PEZ

I think the best way to handle double spikes is to just use a stat gun (only slightly slower, anyways). Another thing I experimented with is just doing a "rolling average of 1" - always just firing at the last angle that was entered for that segment. The funny thing is that it works about as well as what it has now in general, at least against my test bed of about 60-80 bots. Then, of course, saving data is much less useful. It just worked well against a different combination of opponents. I expect that various tweakings of this gun would do well in a VG array, even if they are a little weaker in general (of course, that's what you've been saying about angular guns the whole time).-- Kawigi

I might have said that yes, =) Interestingly enough Mako has 16 virtual guns in each of it's 9 segments. These guns are of three types, with different rolling average depth. Mako tells me that it's almost alwyas the shallow history guns that are the best. -- PEZ

Barracuda's guns are a semi-deep history genre that starts out shallow (really shallow even) in the early rounds. But I got a similar result when doing some experiments on an old dev version of FloodHT. -- Kawigi