@Alion, that would be me :)

fixing now

The main issue right now is multi-bot stun attacks

They're extremely overpowered

My fix would be a way to block stunning, not sure how that would work

It would also be massively game-changing

Or maybe just let shields take ~10 damage from blocking stuns

@dzaima What do you think about this?

Either we cater to those who think this is against the rules and make sure the rules clearly state something to that extent or it should be allowed for everyone.

"allowed for everyone" would have to be no "no spoofing"

there is no spoofing

The teammate calculation is based off of globally scoped information

Allowing random IDing of bots allows for targeted attacks, which leads to an infinite number of "one-up" changes

(the health and shield of other bots)

@Poke see this edit: codegolf.stackexchange.com/revisions/189470/2

But if I mimic the same behavior, there's no way to determine if I'm who I say I am

@RedwolfPrograms and that's entirely the point?

you're taking advantage of a strategy which is directly allowed by the rules

Hmm, true.

But that doesn't fix the issues of teaming completely

Say I had two bots, AttackBestBot and StunBestBot

They both will either attack or stun the bot with the highest total worth

They are still working together with an extremely overpowered strategy

(and yes, it is my fault it's overpowered)

I think that's just how the cookie crumbles

I think there should be a way to stop the stun/attack mess

without altering the core of the challenge i'm not sure if that's possible

I don't think there's one without making anyone at least a little angry.

if you say stun has a 1 turn cooldown, it's going to throw off peoples' existing submissions, for example

Is there a battle log to show who performed what action

Sort of

maybe a bot uses that to see who is stunning other bots

and targets that bot

Not for the bot to access, no

well if you added something like that it wouldn't affect existing submissions

@Poke Teacher is doing that... I think.

They only get effective HP, UID, attack level, and worth

and could add more submission possibilities

Still changes the game, and would be OP in lots of ways

We are talking about quite a drastic possibility shift right before the bounty deadline.

I think this is why KoTH challenges are hard to do correctly

haha

Again, I don't think there's a good way out. It just should've ever happened in the first place.

In my next challenge (which will be similar), I'll make sure teaming is either impossible or not OP

Teacher goes for the highest attack value

but that bot isn't necessarily attacking other bots

just upgrading itself

Nobody would spend gold to upgrade if they weren't going to use it

Instead, they'd upgrade farm or heal or shield

maybe?

@Poke Ah, my bad.

deterrents are strong

maybe I don't attack the bot with the highest attack because I fear retribution

The main deterrent is HP

that's an opinion

Plus, the bot doesn't know who attacked it

sigh

And it's not an opinion, I know most of the strategies of the bots

s/an opinion/subjective/

I've done enough debugging to see how bots react to certain things

Higher HP bots don't get attacked much

that's not the point...

but it doesn't matter

my main complaint is that "yeah, write teams" was added literally yesterday with the bounty ending in 2 days. And without clear rules on what comprises a "team" it is trivial to flood the list of bots with a collective that can out-compete any non-team bot

Maybe the rule should just be "Bots cannot be designed work together, by being designed targeting the same bot, or identifying each other"

@Draco18s makes sense

Resource sharing would've been a cool concept, maybe shielding for other bots

I think my next KoTH will be designed so that teams or solo players will be able to play

definitely sandbox it

I will

And maybe ping one of us if it starts rotting away without having had any activity.

Got it. It'll probably be a few weeks, but I'm hoping it'll turn out well

@Alion Can you ping someone if they haven't already commented?

you can ping in chats

including starting a new chat room with a user

Meta Post

My second bot is almost finished, just need to test it with 10,000 game runs (the hardest part). Should I even do this or wait until a decision on teaming rules is made?

Teams might be about to get removed, see Draco's answer on the meta post.

Ironically, a hot network question right now (worldbuilding) is "How to realistically stop shield users?"

I'm very temped to post "attack them repeatedly and hope Barbarian Man or Serial Killer start attacking too, then let everyone else eliminate it"

Or stun them I guess!

Stun is so last week...

Level 15 attack is so much more stylish!

I have a concept for my next challenge: the build action. Buildings will do things like automate farming

Fun fact: The equation for the cost of an upgrade was designed in order to make the costs of upgrades follow the pattern 10 [+5], 15 [+10], 25 [+15], 40 [+20], 60 [+25]...

@Draco18s

@dzaima

@SuperStormer

@Night2

I think I've decided that teams are not going to be allowed

If you'd like more information on my reasoning, the answer by Draco18s sums it up pretty nicely

Is there a definition of teaming anywhere? If I take advantage of another bot's mechanics to help my bot, is it teaming?

or are teams only bots made by one person?

@B0RDERS I think it's fairly case-by-case. If you're mutually assisting each other, it's definitely teaming. If you're just being strategic about when/how to perform certain actions, that's fine

👌

@B0RDERS "by one person" definitely crossed a line for me. But yeah, what Redwolf said regarding mutual assistance applies just as well to bots by two different people