The way Dookious adjusts its distance is similar to what you describe: if it is far from its desired distance, it will dive (or move away ... climb?) at a sharper angle, but if it's at its desired distance (or close to it), it will move perpendicular (or close to it). It still evaluates clockwise, stop, and counter clockwise, as normal, but it applies an attack angle (offset from perpendicular) formula to those options based on current vs desired distance. If the PointBlankCompetition gets going again, that would be an excellent place to test this idea. =) -- Voidious
Actually the recent activity on the PointBlankCompetition page is what made me think about this. I was also thinking about one thing that made my old bot Mervin not-so-horrible in actual battle despite it's simplicity. One on Mervin's movement patterns was an "Intercept" movement, which would try to intercept where the enemy was moving, using the same accurate circular predictor as the gun. Against bots with strong perpendicular movement (i.e. Reiko or WaveSurfing style), the result of moving to intecept, would have meant that the enemy's guessfactors would have been "copied" in a sense (keep in mind the actual angle would be "compressed" by how it's a diving movement instead of perpendicular), thus leading a diving pattern that weaved around bullets very effectively so long as I was firing at a similar time as the opponent. I'm pretty sure this explains why many high level bots seemed to have some issues hitting Gwynfor when it was diving. I think this "Dive Surfing" thought would essentially produce the strong movement I was seeing in Mervin without relying on firing at the same time or strong enemy movement. -- Rednaxela
A simple drone I put together (see [1]) implements a very straightforward "dive bombing" movement, ending up circling its target. For a simple drone with no real targeting or bullet power logic, and developed just to be a "drone" for target practice, I am pleasantly surprised at both how well it does (against the sample bots and other example bots, like the AntiGravityBot?) and how easily the really good bots (like Yngwie etc) really whack it. -- Excession