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While you're at it, detecting if they're surfing at all might be good to have. One thought I've had on that is detecting if their attack angle is relative to you or the wave sources.

Current virtual gun systems seem to do a pretty good job deciding if they are surfing or not: until they start flattening.

Combat heading is not perpendicular to either bots or waves. It's heading aims to maximize MEA instead.

How do you determine the best attack angle to maximize MEA?

According to MEA formula, heading should be perpendicular to a bullet path targeted using head-on targeting. It IS perpendicular movement, but keep moving straight until the wave hits, instead of turning as in orbital movement.

When there are 2 or more waves flying in your direction it becomes more complex, but Combat assumes there is only 1 wave.

If close to walls, then heading should create the longest path which would hit the wall at the same time the wave hits. Combat calculates which point in the wall coincides with waves hitting it with PPMEA. It could also be calculated with precise MEA.

The side-effect is dynamic distancing becoming hard to perform.

"One thought I've had on that is detecting if their attack angle is relative to you or the wave sources."

That doesn't work with all robots, some surf relative to the enemy robot, rather then the wave source (such as Seraphim).

So it's obviously not perfect, but I still think it's a useful signal. A reliable surf-detection system would probably need quite a few of them.