Survival and the PL

It seems that lower bullet power is a real boost against upper bots... methinks some sort of adaptive bullet power really is the way to go.

I can only speak for melee but it was very rewarding to put a rule within my bots where i only shoot 0.1 bullets if i have more energy than the other bot (endgame 1v1). This worked against every kind of bot. If the bot is weak he will drain his energy anyway (bad hit ratio) and i get the win score. And if the bot is strong there is a good chance that he will also drain his energy and i can't hit him anyway. If i have less energy than the opponent i just shoot with normal bullet power to prevent the stronger bot to score more bullet damage. I guess this is working because in melee you have mostly significant less energy for 1v1 as in normal 1v1 and therefor the stronger bots have not much time to adapt the movement and weapon.

I'm sure this is not working very well in 1v1 but i guess it shows that it is worth to think about because there are a lot of bots with bad energy management.

That would make sense, as most of the time only the strongest bots get to the endgame. I wonder if it would help even more if you only shoot 0.1 against everybody in the endgame...

I have tried to shoot 0.1 only, but it didn't work very well, because if you have less energy than the other bot it is most likely that you lose anyway. But you give the other bot the chance to collect more bullet damage. If you have a weak opponent you have a good chance to hit him and get on some point more energy and a good chance to win, and if it is a strong bot you deny him the additional bullet damage.

I had played with the energy slope to detect when he might be at zero and adjusted my bullet power to this value. The energy slope was quite nice to react on bullet hits and other energy losses and worked very well but it turned out that you have to react on some battle situations where it is better to shoot normal otherwise the opponent get to much bullet score.

I think the thing to remember is that you don't have to maximize energy difference once you're certain you'll win the battle. From that point onwards it is possible to maximize bullet damage.