Multi-Mode Success

Now that I've successfully tempted Skilgannon to add bullet shielding to DrussGT, it could be argued that DrussGT is now multi-mode to an extent. And of course, XanderCat is most definitely multi-mode; I specifically designed my framework to support it, and XanderCat now has anywhere from 5 to 8 modes, depending on what behaviors you count. I think I have finally succeeded at demonstrating that multi-mode can be a successful strategy, and now consider the matter closed. :P

I've always thought that there was merit to the idea, but what still grates me is the hard switches between the two modes: I'd rather work the logic of what makes them work into a single, overarching movement technique. Hence my idea of using the anti-mirror targeting attribute: it isn't as good as a pure anti-mirror movement against mirror bots, but it adds a little bit of score against all bots that have some sort of distancing and orbiting movement. Unfortunately, sometimes those solutions are just so complicated that in order to spare our brains and CPUs we go with the easy, hard-coded version =)

Note that among MicroBots, multi-mode was already king (Stop And Go before falling back to Random Movement). And I also consider a flattener to be multi-mode, though flattener surfing and normal surfing are obviously a lot more similar than bullet shielding to wave surfing.

But you certainly deserve the credit for bringing the bullet shielding bug, and "real" multi-mode, to the top of the rumble! I'm not sure the advantages of this type of bullet shielding could be brought into any continuous mode.

It's going to be hard for me to resist cracking open Diamond to add it, but I'm pretty heads down on BerryBots right now. :-)

Splitting the gun into a crush-the-weak GuessFactor gun and a crush-the-king Anti-Surfer gun is Multi-Mode too.

Splitting the movement into a crush-the-weak Wave Surfing and a crush-the-king Flat Movement is also Multi-Mode.

In the past, Musashi Trick/Flat Movement combination was considered state-of-the-art Multi-Mode movement.

Competitive Multi-Mode exists since the early days of robocoding. Only the most successful combinations are changing over time.