Polylunar

/VersionHistory

Team Name

Polylunar

Bot Names

Luna, Phobos, Io, Europa, and Charon. All of them are the same except color however.

Author

Rednaxela

What's special about it?

Great, I want to try it. Where can I download it?

[here]

How competitive is it?

It's getting there... ;-)

How does it move?

The team members team up into tag-teams to gang up on enemies like LunarTwins. Unpaired team members move with a very simple AntiGravityMovement with no randomization or bullet dodging (yet).

How does it fire?

Well, slightly fancy LinearTargeting. I plan to add some better solo guns as well though.

How does it dodge bullets?

Well, it doesn't at all. :-)

How does the melee strategy differ from one-on-one strategy?

Well, it doesn't really. Well, except that unpaired team members don't fire unless they're the only one left or are in very close range (which they try not to be in).

How does it select a target to attack/avoid in melee?

Whichever configuration that allows the optimal creation of tag teams (shortest total distance necessary for team members to travel). :-)

What does it save between rounds and matches?

Nothing at all!

Where did you get the name?

For the team name:
Well, it's tactics are derived from LunarTwins, and it works for things besides 2v2 with no limit on the numbers so... Polylunar.

For the various bot names:
I thought it would be cute to name them after various moons ;-)

Can I use your code?

Like RougeDC, I'm releasing it under the RWPCL, but I strongly advise that the best way to really fully understand algorithms is to implement them yourself... ;-)

What's next for your robot?

Plenty of things!

• Better solo-targeting
• Better solo-behaviors
• Make chasing slightly predictive (instead of chasing a 2-tick-old 'shadow' which is delayed one tick by scan delay and a second tick by team communication)
• <strike>Bulletpower selection (just does 3.0 right now)<strike> Done.
• And whatever else comes to mind

Does it have any WhiteWhales?

Well, as of 1.2, the only teams it doesn't seem to beat in the long run, are PhoenixTeam and Xmen. As of 1.3, they seem somewhat fixed, but wins against kid.team.OmegaSquad, PhoenixTeam, Xmen, and GarmTeam are more frail than I'd like.

What other robot(s) is it based on?

The larger part of it is from scratch, but in concept is a descendant of LunarTwins. Also a little bit of event handling code from RougeDC.

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Comments, questions, feedback:

:-)

Well then... it isn't faring quite so well on the field and I think I know why. In my earlier tests, I was using the default 800x600 field when the team RR uses a 1200x1200 field. It seems like the larger field causes Polylunar some very serious problems. The main issues seem to be:
--- Larger distances to travel mean that Polylunar is in a vulnerable situation for significantly longer and that chasing based on an enemy's current location becomes increasingly inefficient.
--- The AntiGravityMovement that's currently in use for unpaired robots often tends to cause the bot to end up moving along right against the walls. In the large field this means that it takes far too long to get into the action if it becomes required for a pairing.
--- At these larger distances, linear targeting with nothing preventing firing out of bounds is far less effective.
--- In the larger fields, the other bots tend not to be cornered so much
--- Only firing 3.0 power bullets is probably more of a problem on the larger field size.
This is a little disappointing. Hopefully I'll manage to get these problems solved...
-- Rednaxela

Well, despite the setback due to the larger field, Polylunar is not dead in the water. I've been using Valkiries as a TestBed and have made some notable improvements that I think would hold true against most if not all bots. Here's a pretty graph of the incremental improvements I've been making:

I'm too tired to write about what changes I made in each increment right now, but in each revision, I did make an improvement which is uplifting (as opposed to changes in RougeDC more often than not degrading performance). Between the first (red) and last (orange) the difference is certainly notable. I think I'll make a 1.1 release soon based on the improvements, but first I want to get the missing battles in the rumble filled in. -- Rednaxela

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Oooh... version 1.3 is sitting at the top of the [PremierLeague]... ;-) -- Rednaxela

Congratulations! I'm also working in a new team. [Enjambre] is only a proof of concept but the new one is intended to be another ProblemBot for the TeamRumble? :P -- Jab?

Thanks! It seems that position was somewhat frail though, because after further battles, Polylunar seems to be beaten by kid.team.OmegaSquad. So my next goals? Not fail so much against OmegaSquad, and make how much I beat PhoenixTeam and Xmen by a bit more robust. After that I might being my first MeleeBot, partially with the intention of brining what I learn back to the team scene to improve Polylunar. -- Rednaxela

Well... released 1.4 now, which after just a small change beats PhoenixTeam with considerably more robustness (average score of 57.5 instead of 52.5 in my 150 trial tests). We'll see how this goes... :-) -- Rednaxela

Well then... version 1.4 is sure doing quite well... Xmen appears to be the only thing I don't get better than 55 against and I've put some rather ugly looking [red] [marks] in the details pages of the only teams with over 1900 points. :-) -- Rednaxela