Article 1653 of rec.games.corewar: Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: Re: Newbie questions about strategy Message-ID: <1993Feb25.090428.1@acad.drake.edu> Lines: 200 Sender: news@dunix.drake.edu (USENET News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: acad.drake.edu Organization: Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, USA References: <1993Feb25.055842.12548@ucc.su.OZ.AU> Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 15:04:28 GMT In article <. . .> andy@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Andrew Miehs) writes: > > the faq indicates that paper-type replicators (mainly imps) are the bane of > stone-type bombers, right? so what's the best defense against a paper attack? > what are the chances of survival of a very small bomber with some sort of > imp-gateway? what are the likely weaknesses of such a program? > > also, would someone kindly explain the use of reflections. i think i > understand what they are, but it would be handy if you could make it clear, > perhaps with an example or two. > Paper's strength is in existing at so many locations that a bomber can't kill it all. Eventually it will overwrite the stationary bomber and kill it. But it is susceptible to various attacks incorporating the 'spl' command. Vampires drop 'jmp' instructions all over core to make the paper jump into a 'slave pit' like: trap mov bomb,<-50 spl -1 jmp trap which grow cycles rapidly and slows the rest of the paper down. However, as W. Mintardjo pointed out, it is possible to design paper that can overwhelm a simple trap. Cmp-scanners and B-scanners search for the opponent and drop stun-bombs like: spl 0 jmp -1 or spl 0 spl 0 . . . <- a 'carpet' of spl-zeros spl 0 which also slow the paper down. Under continuous attack, most of the replicators will be stunned, and the rest will be destroyed in the core clear. Other fighters just drop the stun bombs in a pattern and trust to chance to catch the paper - usually a successful strategy. By-the-way, contrary to what was believed a year or two ago, a single spl-zero will not be a successful stun bomb against today's paper. Another strategy is to aim for a tie. If your warrior can beat some group of others on the Hill, but loses to paper, then maybe it could settle for tying paper. That is what imps do. Also, Return of the Living Dead seemed to tie paper a lot. ---- A reflection is a copy of your active code that is placed X locations away. It's sole purpose is to hide your code from a cmp-scanner which uses X as the cmp-distance. Reflections are very successful against scanners like Charon where the cmp-distance is half the inc-distance, but only half as successful against Agony-type's where the cmp- and inc- distances are unrelated. To demonstrate reflections, try running this version of Charon against this version of Eloquent and see how long it takes Charon to drop a bomb on Eloquent. Eloquent is a quad of replicators that stay together and reflect one another at 34 and 49. At one time it was winning up to 80% against Charon and No Mucking About. ;redcode ;name Charon v8.1 ;kill Charon ;author Cisek,Strack,Kline ;strategy (strategy lines deleted) STEP equ 68 ;scan constants: DIST equ 34 ;small, so can be reused in core clear DJNOFF equ decr-DIST FIRST equ DJNOFF+149 ;optimal offset to DJN train attack add switch,@compptr ;switch A- and B-fields mov jump,@comp compptr mov split,