Melee Scoring and Aggressive Movement
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I was thinking, in melee it is impossible to 'starve' your enemies of points by being a perfect dodger, because they can just shoot other people. The scoring isn't done on how much bullet damage they get against *you*, but against everybody, cumulatively. So getting a good dodging movement doesn't help as much in melee as it would in 1v1.
In fact, in melee the only way to improve your score is to boost your own bullet damage and survival. And what better way to do this than to move aggressively, with some sort of wavesurfing-derived movement? That way you get the dodging at close distances so you live long enough to survive, while feeding off of bots which aren't capable of dodging at close distances because they just want to run away. So you get high hitrates, which boosts your bullet damage and you get energy bonuses which keep you alive. By making sure that you are scanning them when their gunheat is cool you know that you can catch all of their waves, and when their gunheat is high you can scan around to make sure nobody is sneaking up behind you.
Thoughts?
Makes sense. It is a very simple case (the only one I have looked at ...) but it is instructive how well DoctorBob scores in the nano melee. The best defensive bots do a little better, but its aggressive strategy has held a strong third for many years.
Yep, this is a very valid strategy, at least until there are 4 bots left. In the beginning of a round a lot of bots behave like panic, don't know where to go, don't know where to shoot. That is the time to be aggressive and score your bullet damage and up your energy level. But when you're down to 4 (or 5) bots it is time to hold your horses and change the strategy. Although cornering an opponent is a good idea, the journey to the corner will probably be fatal to you. Even in higher weightclasses DoctorBob plays a good game, with a relatively high bullet damage. Its survival is also ok, but he hardly ever reaches the last 3 because his strategy fails at that point (but what do you expect from a nano).
I would like to see a 'micro-DoctorBob' with a secundary strategy for the endgame, although its gun would probably not be very effective at larger distances.
