Neophyte

Historic page copied from the old wiki.

The Neophyte series started with two things I saw on the wiki: segmentation, as used in guess factor targetting, and rolling averages. I put the two together and came up with NeophyteSRAL. The SRAL stands for Segmented Rolling Average Linear (targetting). Sorry, but I can be a bit literal at times. Movement started with simple Stop and Go bullet dodging, then added some randomness to help against pattern matchers and finally became pseudo adaptive when I saw the inspired nano-sized direction * mode; onBulletHit? mode = -mode; stuff in Freddie.
NeophytePRAL (Predictive Rolling Average Linear) takes a similar idea, but changes the segemntation to what the enemy was doing the last time I fired, so it can better hit oscillating movement.

Both bots exhibit quite a high specialization index, because their targetting is strong against some movement and weak against others.

Initially I did my best to come up with something new and original. I tried hard to resist copying Weekend Obsession too closely, so it wasn't until SRAL and PRAL had gained a decent rank that I allowed myself to copy Eric's cool and small pattern gun to see how it would go with my modified Freddie movement. Though NeophytePattern is the strongest, I am prouder of SRAL and PRAL as they contain more of my own ideas. Needless to say I was a little upset when later careful analysis of some other good nanobots revealed that SRAL's targetting was not that original after all.