Distance vs BFT?

Out of bullet power (1), distance (2) and BFT (3), you need two of them because the third one can be deduced. For example, if you have bullet power and distance (1 & 2) then BFT (3) can be calculated from those. The same applies if you choose (1 & 3) or (2 & 3). So it doesn't matter that much which ones you choose, and using all three of them doesn't add any information... at least that's my theory :D

At the moment, Firestarter uses bullet power and distance. I tested adding BFT and removing distance or using both of them and I couldn't really find a big difference.

I agree with above that any two is sufficient. But I would argue that the bullet speed is better than the bullet power. Knowledge of the bullet speed and the lateral velocity alone, gives you analog of the linear targeting. Which one can understand without any nonlinear math. It probably also give strong diagonal/linear zone in the segmentation matrix outcome. So maybe lateralSpeed/bulletSpeed is sufficient.

I am using only BFT out of 3 choices in Cb's list. Now I see why I am at the bottom of the ranking :) From other hand, many bots would change something in their motion within fixed number of tics, so BFT lets you gauge if it is going to happen or not within the flight time.

That’s true ;) Using two is enough. And I’m quite surprised by the fact that the choice doesn’t make noticeable difference.

Although by information any combination of two is equivalent, for ML to perform good you not only need to provide enough information, but also to preprocess them properly. e.g. make the variance to 1, average to 0.

the relationship between bft and distance & bullet power is not linear. the higher the power, the bigger 0.1 difference in power affects bft. (plot 1 / (20 - 3x), you’ll see ;) ) therefore if you use power&distance, when power is high, it is weighted too low, and when power is low, it is weighted too high ;) the same thing happens to bft&power though, but anything don’t react to power should be more relevant with bft imo.

Then it may make sense to preprocess power to 1 / (20 - 3 power), whether for distance & power or bft & power. But since power is not distributed evenly, this may not work. Or preprocessing based on the real distribution of bullet power makes sense.