FireOrNotToFire

Ok, so simple scenario, it comes to the end of the battle and you have a low amount of energy (0-3ish). Do you fire or not?? I've noticed that none of iileys bot's do (i don't think albert's do either). However i remember reading something David Alves had written that said that it was a waste of time as it lowered average. Currently i choose firepower by getEnergy()-2 (i think it was mentioned in the moebius code) so that when i have lower energy i fire lower powered bullets.

I was just wondering what everyone else thought. -- Brainfade

Currently Jekyl keeps shooting to the point he often disables himself. I am torn as to wether I should change this or not. I would like to know if the energy / match points returned on a Bullet strike is dependant on damage caused? If it is then shooting is prudent for the simple fact you are denying the enemy a scoring opprotunity. If not then waiting around to see if Jekyl wears himself out is the wiser course. =^> --jim

I would suggest shooting yourself with lower and lower power down to very near zero, and then implementing a dodging algorithm that also doesn't allow opponents to close, as many bots ram non-firing bots. Generally speaking, however, becoming disabled guarantees a loss, staying alive with a little health gives you the chance to wear an opponent down until they're close to your health, and then you can attempt to close and fire off a last-ditch shot. I believe iiley's new bots actually do something like this, though they wait for you to close. The other big option is to stop when you've got around 3 and then try to let your opponent wear down to about the same, then let the timeout kill one of you off and hope he went down lower than you. So either really low and try to dodge them until you can pull out a win, or stop at the top end of low and hope you can outlast them until robocode's timeout knocks them off for you. However, again, becoming disabled guarantees a death, so it seems like a poor idea at best to me. Perhaps if you've got bad wall avoidance code and can't prevent yourself from becoming disabled, then shooting yourself to death is an option. -- Kuuran

Addendum: While I don't know the quote, I suspect David Alves was probably refering to firing less than three power bullets at general levels of health, as that is when depleting your health pool as well as ensuring maximum damage done per shot (the increase is not wholly linear) is the best option. For more in-depth discussion of that (and a more detailed explanation of what that means) see WhenToFire. The things in that thread have mostly been independently come to by many many people (I was surprised to find some conclusions I came to myself in there, as well as around the wiki in general), which to me tends to support their logical validity. Of particular note is Albert's first contribution to that page. -- Kuuran