Somebody should name MobyNano as theirs, since it's named after Moby Dick. :-) Seriously, mine is SandboxDT. I'm especially out to beat it since Duelist 0.1.6 beat SandboxDT 1.21 about 60-40. Then came 1.41 which was about as good as Duelist, then 1.31 which was better, and SandboxDT has been untouchable ever since. I'd like to knock it off the top spot in melee, too. :-D --David Alves
Actually, MyFirstRobot was my white whale for quite some time. I just couldn't hit that thing at long range. Go ahead... laugh at me ;-p -- Dummy
I'm not laughing... I still can't hit it at long range. :-D --David Alves
What do you mean? Duelist has a very high hitrate against MyFirstRobot! :-) --Dummy
My white whale was PrairieWolf. I have burnt gallons of midnight oil until Marshmallow now can beat that robot. For a while my focus has been more on SandboxDT really and it's starting to drive me nuts. Whatever I come up with SandboxDT takes at most 50 rounds to figure out. Whatever I do SandboxDT easily takes his 66% of the rounds. Gah! -- PEZ
Another white whale of mine is DuelistNano. How those 249 bytes of a robot can beat my megabot is truly beyond me. -- PEZ
I have to say my white whales have been Fermat 1.6 since the rumble and DuelistNano recently. In the distant past there were some others, like Shadow, Tron and Vapour (vapour alot immediately after the rumble), but they've all subsided, plus I'm pretty sure I could take a good chunk of them now. I'm sure SandBoxDT? will anger me eventually, though ;) -- Kuuran
Just looking at the ER battles, it looks like FunkyChicken can win over Fermat 2.0 fairly regularly (in a series of 10-round matches, anyways). So you're not the only one wondering how you get beaten by 249 bytes, PEZ. -- Kawigi
Not that it's likely that the author of Fermat knows, nor wonders. =) And I wouldn't think DuelistNano has that edge on Marshmallow left. But I haven't tried, so I don't know. -- PEZ
BerendBotje? shoots really weak bullets (0.5 on average) so you can stay quite close (try distance 200-400) and fire with HeadOnTargeting. Marshmallow has eight (8!) VirtualGuns, including HeadOnTargeting, PatternMatching, LaserTargeting and RandomTargeting. Of these guns HeadOnTargeting is best against BerendBotje? - about 20% at these distances. From what I can see the secret with its movement is that it is an oscilator with some randomness to it, but it's using short distances so it often changes direction. This makes LinearTargeting and AngularTargeting fail utterly. Many, many bots, including Marshmallow are weak against HeadOnTargeting so adding such a gun to your bot is not only easy, it adds competetiveness. -- PEZ
The point at which you have a really strong set of guns is basically when you no longer use your HeadOnTargeting gun against anyone but SittingDuck, WallsKiller, or a bot entered into the PatternMatcherChallenge. And you know you have an extremely strong set of guns when you stop using it against anyone after the first round. -- Kawigi