what's the secret to making a good robot in robocode

Hmm. But if you're already tracking stats from the enemy's perspective, isn't it more effective to just use the same model as they are and avoid the dangerous spots? I don't need any symmetry tricks to know the enemy will shoot at GF 0.5 (from his perspective) and not go there.

I'm curious what MN and Rednaxela have to say. :-) I'm thinking it might be exploitable by a non-surfing movement, but for a surfing movement you are sacrificing more than your'e gaining.

Im not saying my system is a particularly good one, it just shows that using relative GFs should technically be exploitable. What you are saying, knowing enemy will shoot at .5, is basically using a flattener.

I don't know, I think to me the definition of "exploiting" means you can use it to improve your system. Tweaking a random movement to have a non-symmetric profile could be an improvement. With surfing, your goal is to model the enemy's targeting data model, which is done correctly by assuming symmetrical GFs. It seems to me a surfing movement is already aware of the GF symmetry and taking it into account as best it can.