CassiusClay/Real vs Virtual Waves
A long way back in CC's history I thought it was a good idea to weigh "virtual" waves lower than "real" waves (i.e. waves that follow a bullet fired by CC). The rationale was that it make the stats usable against bots that react to bullet fire while still being able to learn quickly against bots that do not alter their movements on enemy fire. Now, many years later, when discussing the anti surfer gunning of Dookious it struck me that I might have overlooked the fact that up-weighting the real waves might be almost the same as not using virtual waves at all. I'm not sure that is entirely right, but there is some truth to it and it does matter (a little) in combat.
What I did to check this was to add a Virtual Gun that weighs real and virtual waves equal. Then I managed to blur the experiment with some other stuff, but now I have repeated the experiment without bias from other changes. I've made three versions of CC with some different gun configurations, like so:
| Rumble entry | Guns | APS | Survival | Wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2rho.02nc | Virtual + real waves | 82.8% | 91.7% | 97.0% |
| 2rho.02nd | Real waves | 82.4% | 91.3% | 97.1% |
| 2rho.02ne | Virtual waves | 82.4% | 91.0% | 95.6% |
Granted, it's not a world of difference between the versions, but still, a .4% APS gain is a .4% APS gain. =) I'm not sure what conclusions I dare draw from this, but my gut says it might be something like so:
- The fast learning gained from using virtual waves only is worth exploiting. I've noticed that this gun is often stronger against surfer than the other CC guns. But there are enough bots in the rumble that do react on bullet fire in a direct way so that a gun using real waves (or weighing real waves significantly higher than virtual waves is worth exploiting too.
Or:
- Maybe it is more a question of the virtual wave gun being string the first few rounds and then the slower learning guns can pick up from there?
Or:
- ... Your thoughts here. =)
(Note that all three versions have a partner gun with really fast rolling of stats. It weighs real waves > virtual waves. I might conduct some more experiments later investigating what this gun contributes or not.)
