Grudge

My robot Grudge. I know we discussed it many years ago. But I was wondering if you were all okay if I entered it into the melee rumble. It is basically a rambot with a list of who shot it in what order, and it goes after enemy robots in that order.

My guess is that it would usually end up targeting the strongest robots first since they usually have the best targeting. They will notice it not moving very much and take the free shot. It definitely harms their competitiveness in the battle. Shadow went from #1 in my test battles to #6-#7 after it hit Grudge first.

Sure, it sounds like it would just mess up the strong bots and possibly aid weak bots, which is really no different than what a 1v1 rambot does.

I don't have any problem with rambots in 1v1, but in melee if you depress the score of a particular bot it also depresses their score against everybody else. Ie. it doesn't just affect your pairing, but also the pairings of all other bots in that battle. So, while I wouldn't mind it being added as a temporary fixture to see where it scores, I would prefer it if it didn't stay, because it skews scores in other pairing as well and we would have no way of isolating that it is just Grudge causing these scores.

I wonder if there isn't some way of figuring out each bot's contribution to the score over a large number of battles, and then award the appropriate score? If we had something like that instead I would have no problem with Grudge being entered, because then it wouldn't affect other pairings.

Hi mate. There is nothing wrong with putting the bot in the rumble. As long as it has no 'hard coded' names, and it does not look like you did this, it is a completely valid concept. Beside, it effects the score not like you guessed, in fact it is quite the opposite.
Generally ram bots have a very hard time in melee match ups and your bot will have an even harder time to survive. Most bots (even the strongest) target the nearest target (especially at round start) and so it depends who is the nearest bot to you at start. This effects the score in no way so it is valid. The next round you run all the way through the field to reach your first target - let me say this, you never reach the target because you will die on your way with a very high probability. This also effects the score no more than every other bot would. And you start a new list for every battle, most bots maintain a 'danger/target' list to decide which bot might be worth to engage.

I had some test runs with my usual melee test battle files and could not see any influence at all. Maybe you can say something about your test run with Shadow, there might be something i don't see right now.

Anyway, I woud say 'bring it on' and good luck :)

Well it depends on who hits it first. If a bot that usually does well hits it first (it prints out a grudge list, so you can see the order of who it is going after), it tends to greatly lower their score.

Since it will go into blind rage and go after it. Sometimes yes, it has to cross the field and will die. But other times it is right near the enemy, or far enough away that the said robot targets other robots first, but there are no other robots between it and its target (this seems to happen a good amount).

But I saw it get quite a few kills of Shadow, since it didn't care one way or another about dying and just wanted to harm Shadow. Shadow has other problems to worry about usually. So while it ends up dicing up Grudge pretty quickly its lost 50% of its health, which greatly harms its battle.

Yes, but this is no difference to any other RamBot that enter the rumble. The question should be how much (more?) change your bot the score compared to any other RamBot. Any RamBot tends to lower the score for most bots. I would say your bot is less of a threat than 'normal' RamBots because he has to move to much to harm other bots even a short straight line movement at round start generally means a great loose of energy. And the odds are very small that you find the same bot over and over again as first target in your 'grudge' list and even if so this could also happen with normal RamBots.
I once tried to maintain a 'weak' list in Numbat and it turned out that it is not rewarding to shoot, lets say always at SittingDuck first. The problem is you shoot 3.0 bullets at the other side of the field and if the first bullet hits the target all other bots near SittingDuck have killed him already. Basically this means you wasted quite a bunch of energy with almost no gain and the bot next to you hits you in the meanwhile for free - gains energy and you have a harder time to bring him down. If Shadow had a few kills at you, could this also mean he targets you if you are at low energy. You should look out if he is more often as usual the first in your grudge list.

I also have no problem with any behavior that doesn't involve hard-coding opponents to go after. As far as bringing down scores of top bots, a few thoughts. First, I'm skeptical of how much it will bring their scores down, for the reasons Wompi said. I'm also skeptical it would bring any of them down more than the others, which is what really matters. And even if it does bring some down more than others, that just means there are strategies to deal with the Grudge strategy that are better than others, which is fine and totally legit.

Vengeance melee targeting strategy. Interesting.

How well it works depends on how many bots are also doing the same in the battlefield. If many competitors start using it, swarm targeting will no longer be the most effective strategy in melee.

I've actually tried that, by introducing a factor into the enemy's targetability which increased the better their survival was and the bullet damage they cause (to everybody, not just me, since I track that). This way I hoped to take out potential threats before they reached the endgame, but it ended up giving me less energy reward, so hurt my score overall.