And also see SelectingFirePower. It seems that Jimmy and Albert take completely different measures. Yet Both Aspid and Booring are competetive robot's. EmpiricResearch of my own indiciates that Albert's approach is the most winning one. Anyone else that have experimiented with this? -- PEZ
Aspid is more competitive than Booring, but that's probably due more to Albert's pattern matcher than firepower selection code. To compare the two methods of firepower selection (or "energy conservation" if you prefer) you have to hold all other variables constant - in other words, you have to try out two bots that are completely identical except for the firepower selection code. --David Alves
True - Aspid uses the simple principle "if you don't know which power to use, fire power 3". And that is what it does. In the other hand it is true also that the bots use completely different approaches: Aspid is an all-out bot (fire as soon as possible, max power), but Booring (at least form the article) is a very conservative one. Fire power mananagement can imporve a lot in Aspid (in fact, in the latest test versions, Aspid scores more damage to Sandbox than Sandbox to Aspid, but Sandbox wins just because of survival - so it means Aspid wastes to much energy). The only bot I have that uses some energy management principles is Mamba (you can only download it as a team: MambaTeam) -- Albert
My EmpiricResearch has not been about comparing Booring to Aspid. It has been about conserving energy or using full power bullets. I only mention those bots since they are the creations of Albert and Jimmy who I have seen proposing different energy management approaches. -- PEZ
I'm copying a question I asked at the Robocode Repository forum: Ramming is for collecting kill-bonus. Shooting an enemy to death gives 20% of all damage you have inflicted on the enemy as a bonus. Ramming gives 30% of total damage as a bonus. This does not mean that it is better to ram than to fire since it remains a secret (at least to me) if you get a higher damage score from firing max power bullets than just the power needed to finish the enemy. Scenario:
I've tried to figure this out from the info on the Robocode help site: https://robocode.alphaworks.ibm.com/help/scoring/scoring.html but I still don't know.
If robocode does not give more damage score than what life is left in the enemy then ramming must be the best thing to finish a disabled enemy. Else, firing a power 3 bullet is better. If the enemy is not disabled, but has 0.1 left you have the choice of ramming it and taking one or two weak blows or firing high or low powered bullets. It's tough to make an intelligent descision without the intelligence! =) -- PEZ
I made some tests... You get your points on the damage made to the enemy. Thus, if you fire a bullet more powerful than necesary, the exceding energy is lost. You get a 20% bonus by finishing a bot by firing at it, or a 30% bonus by finishing a bot by ramming it. The bonus is on the total damage made independently on how you did it (that is, max bonus is 20 when you finish if by firing and 30 by ramming). The bot rammed gets no points at all for the damage made to the ramming bot. In the example before:
-- Albert
-- FnH
Check out [Cake] on the repository; it calculates the scores itself in its log, which was very useful back in the days before RobocodeGLV014 did it for you. Cake is open source; look in the file cJaiScore?.java for the scoreboard source code. -Vuen
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