Dive Protection

A technique used both in Wave Surfing bots and in bots with Random Movement. The purpose of Dive Protection is to prevent your bot from approaching the enemy bot at too steep an angle, thus making it an easy target. An added side effect is that your bot does not get too close to the enemy, causing accidental ramming, or making bullet dodging ineffective.

Several methods exist for implementing this technique. In Random Movement bots a typical approach is to change direction if the approach angle is too steep. In Wave Surfing the options are more diverse: they can either use a distance-based method, where they see how much closer they are to the enemy than their starting point, or an angle based method, where extra 'danger' is added if the approach angle is judged too steep.

When a Wave Surfer takes accurate consideration of Bot Width into account (with Waves/Precise Intersection for instance), it can imply a level of Dive Protection automatically. This is because the wide bot width at close ranges, will increase the calculated surfing danger of such close ranges significantly.