Performance Enhancing Bug

Against surfers, yes. Real waves are more meaningful since surfers react to waves.

Against flatteners, no. The more data you use, the harder it is to flatten all statistics.

I'm not sure I agree it won't help against flatteners. I think you're saying that because flatteners are specifically surfing your firing waves, it might help to use virtual waves so they can't surf as well. But it's kind of an arms race where the gun always has the advantage, so using firing waves may still help your gun more than it makes your gun more surfable.

I'm saying that because flatteners avoid GFs that were used before, and before being hit there. The gun doesn't have an advantage, at least in the beginning of a battle. After a while, classification kicks in and it becomes harder and harder to flatten the specific data subset the gun selected using k-NN search or VCS.

I've wondered about a random targeting scheme that only shoots within precise MEA. Have you tested that vs. your anti-surfer?

No, but I've been curious about that too, only for one bot in particular... ;)

I've found myself wondering about the reverse recently... if a sufficiently advanced (I have some tricks in mind...) random-movement surfer (note, not active flattener) could outperform usual methods against some of the strongest anti-surfer targeting that a few bots have...

This I actually have spent a substantial amount of time working on. All sorts of extra randomization of surfing stats, fully random surf stats that get completely regenerated each time you get hit, or every so often, mixes of random and normal surf stats and flatteners, and so on. I thought a totally new movement profile every time you get hit would have a lot of potential, but I just didn't get it close to outperforming my existing stuff.

Pure random targeting is sound according to game theory, assuming there is only 1 wave flying at a given time.

With 2 or more waves, shooting at all GFs with the same probability may not be the optimal strategy. A weighted random targeting might be stronger.

True, although I'd hate to have to evaluate that function. It could probably be done with Monte-Carlo though, although it would be VERY VERY slow due to the precise predictions that would have to take place. Maybe some sort of high-speed precise prediction lookup table could work here.