Shadow/ShadowsMeleeGun - Robo Wiki -= Collecting Robocode Knowledge =-

How did I get a big boost in melee gun performance without changing the fundamental way the gun works?

Glad you asked! :)

If you have a working DynamicClustering melee gun, here's the recipe:

Speed it up. A KDTree (Simonton's is what I used) and a fast play-it-forward method are good bets.
Compute the 10 best firing solutions for each of the enemies on the field, yes, all of them.
Collect them all in a big array of angle/tolerance. Also keep the hitting distance for each one.
Select the angle with the biggest probability of hitting, weighting them by the inverse distance.
Fire at the best one, it will hit someone somewhere... :)

Just watching this gun work in a SampleBotMeleeChallenge is a treat. If you ever watched some melee battles, you will realise this gun implements several ideas you already had when watching them:

Swarm targeting: Why does my bot always choose that lonely target when it could be targeting that tight pack in the other corner?

Prey on the weak: Why waste my energy trying to hit Aleph when SittingDuck is there just a little bit further asking to be killed?

Wasting energy is bad for survival: If it doesn't hit Aleph, will it still hit someone behind him and give you your energy back, or will it got to waste against a wall?

Simple (20 minutes work), effective (10% hitrate increase), cool to watch. This is why I love this game! :)

-- ABC

Amazing how you can see the problems, but the answer just doesn't click. I bet if you did some heavy BinSmoothing it would help even more for hitting those clumps. -- Skilgannon

Brilliant! My not-so-super-secret melee DynamicClustering minibot is currently being modified to use a play-it-forward algorithm, so I'll see if I can fit this in without making the ultimate SlowBot. =) -- AaronR