Shadow/ShadowsMeleeGun

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... :)

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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

Just a question, how can you do a PlayIt? Forward with missed scan? Or you just interpolated? And does this work for GF, too? --Nat

Yes, you can interpolate. If you use a 'fast' play it forward method that uses uses absolute locations you can just linearly interpolate because any error will be completely corrected the next time a real scan is read. I wouldn't suggest using GF for melee, although it definitely works... Kev's bot for example. -- Skilgannon

I'm trying some DC-GF in melee. I know it definitely works because of Conriantumr?, which do interpolate, too. About the "And does this work for GF, too", I don't mean interpolate, I mean to project each GF and do same thing as ABS mentioned. Another thing, if I put 100 Shadows into one 1000x1000 battle, will it skip a ton of turns? --Nat