So I was thinking about giving KotH a go in a week or two (i.e. hosting one). I've got three ideas around which it could be based. Using all of them seems like too much ,but maybe combining two into a challenge could be interesting. So here are the ideas (if it's not obvious, I'm asking for feedback, what you find interesting and might be worth expanding on):
a) In the KotHs I've seen, submission whose only purpose was to support other submissions were disallowed. I think strategically that could be very interesting though. So I thought making a KotH where each player may submit a main bot and, say, up to two supporting bots could be interesting. I'd limit the way in which they can communicate, but the helpers could for instance be used to gather some form of (cartographic?) information for the main bot.
b) A KotH where you have to choose a "class" for your bot (in the RPG sense). So you the KotH lets you choose between one of, say, three classes that have different skills. This could be hard to balance but would also expand the strategy space, I think.
c) Less of a conceptual thing, I'd like to do a 3D-sequel to Rusher's survival (with his permission and/or co-operation if interested). That is, it could be underwater or something. On its own just extending the rules to a 3d grid is probably not interesting enough to not be marked as a duplicate, but I was thinking about combining this with idea b).
@Geobits yes that's one option. Or the main is just quite slow and needs faster scouting bots to map out the area so he doesn't waste precious moves.
The supporting bots could also work more in a fighting context as well, I don't have any fixed ideas about it so far. I just thought it could be interesting to not only stage bots against each other but also introduce multiple bots communicating and working together.
In general, I prefer simple rules and emergent features of games... which is why I prefer Go to Chess. ;) So I don't want to overload any single KotH with complex rules either.
@m.buettner Ok, in response to your first idea - if you allow up to three submissions and you allow support, keep in mind that now every competitor will feel obligated to write three submissions (which can be tedious) in order to win
@m.buettner I like the class idea if you can do it correctly (i.e., provide balance). Rock-paper-scissors is a game of perfect balance, so use that as a baseline?
@m.buettner This post has some interesting insights about "come from behind" mechanisms and avoiding situations where certain players simply have no chance of winning.
The one I like most is "If you take me out, I'm going to make it so that you can't win afterward."
btw an alternative to the multiple bots thing, which would also introduce the communication thing would be to just let people write one bot, which can communicate with other instances of itself.
@Rusher Thanks, bookmarked, I'll give that a read later.
@m.buettner I would LOVE to cooperate on a 3d game board. In fact, I had one written (the board that is) but no rules or any kind of interesting idea to go with it. I also wrote an alternate 2d board with "elevations" thinking about height advantage. Both of them lacked an interesting "game" to go with the board.
@Rusher Oh sweet, I really like the height map idea as well.
Well, I've got one more exam next Wednesday... until then I don't really want to procrastinate with implementing anything. But after that, should I just ping you so we can sit down and try to come up with some interesting set of rules?
