Grobots - Tournaments - Newbie Tournaments

The Newbie Tournaments are intended to allow new players to compete with each other without the demoralizing effect of being killed over and over by the best sides. They're open to players who have not yet had a side place in the top ten or so of the regular tournaments. They aren't held regularly but when sides arrive - if you want to enter, send up your sides; we'll probably announce a Newbie Tournament for a few weeks later, in hopes of getting sides from other players.

Newbie Tournament 8

(Warren 2012-09-29) Here are the results of the newbie tournament I promised. There were no new submissions, but I ran an old side "exp2" from the mailing list files area that doesn't appear to have been included in any tournaments before. I ran 12001 rounds, which brought the error on each score down to at most 1.3 percentage points. Borg came in first, with Bloopers and Balun tied for second (to within statistical error).

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Nonsterile survival	Early death	Late death	Early score	Fraction	Kills
1	Borg (v1)	Borg	41.2%	44%	49%	13%	20.1%	78%	32%
2	Bloopers-4	Gigatron	37.4%	51%	19%	38%	20.5%	73%	25%
3	balun	elel	36.2%	44%	24%	43%	16.7%	83%	36%
4	Danmaku	Midnight	23.5%	33%	31%	52%	14.4%	71%	27%
5	Focus	Daan	16.4%	23%	25%	69%	12.4%	49%	9%
6	Carrier has arrived	Midnight	12.3%	21%	47%	60%	15.3%	54%	19%
7	Nanomachines Beta1	Midnight	12.3%	17%	39%	73%	8.2%	69%	9%
8	Tomatoes	Zacechawa	10.3%	26%	30%	63%	13.0%	39%	9%
9	Solar->Gatherer->Killer	Ids Braam	7.3%	15%	51%	69%	7.8%	44%	5%
10	Baronator 1.2	Hector	6.9%	15%	29%	79%	11.5%	44%	21%
11	Flower	Tilendor	6.3%	11%	54%	76%	10.2%	45%	5%
12	Hasher	Gigatron	6.1%	11%	37%	82%	8.2%	54%	5%
13	nom nom 1.2	elel	5.7%	18%	31%	74%	11.3%	22%	7%
14	exp2	?	4.8%	9%	67%	73%	6.7%	52%	6%
15	MicroAlgae	Tyson Hoffman	3.4%	10%	46%	81%	8.4%	33%	0%
16	The Borg Cube	Max	2.5%	7%	59%	82%	9.2%	31%	10%
17	Simple-1	James Austin	2.0%	7%	56%	83%	7.9%	26%	0%
18	Mangeurs	Szeety	1.5%	5%	62%	86%	6.8%	27%	0%
19	Swarm 0.6	Raszul	1.3%	6%	48%	88%	7.2%	21%	5%
20	Nova	Tyson & Ryan	1.1%	3%	74%	88%	4.9%	28%	1%
21	StatSpawn	mcmadhatter	1.0%	5%	47%	90%	7.6%	17%	6%
22	Symphony	Zacechawa	0.4%	2%	78%	93%	3.0%	25%	2%
23	Smarter Eater	Analog Kid	0.4%	5%	50%	89%	5.3%	8%	0%
24	T2-base-based	mcmadhatter	0.2%	3%	66%	90%	3.5%	6%	3%
Overall (12001 rounds):				16%	47%	69%			157%

Newbie Tournament 7

(2012-04-23) In the two and a half years since the last Newbie Tournament, five new sides and an upgrade have arrived. Some of them have been waiting for years, so rather than announce a tournament and make them wait even longer, I just ran one.

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Nonsterile survival	Early death	Late death	Early score	Fraction	Kills
1	Borg	Borg	50.7%	54%	39%	10%	22.5%	79%	41%
2	Bloopers-4	Gigatron	48.0%	64%	10%	28%	23.9%	74%	32%
3	Danmaku	Midnight	31.8%	46%	24%	40%	15.5%	70%	34%
4	Nanomachines β1	Midnight	24.1%	31%	21%	60%	12.8%	71%	17%
5	Tomatoes	Zacechawa	17.5%	38%	21%	52%	16.2%	45%	13%
6	Carrier has arrived 2	Midnight	14.6%	26%	39%	58%	16.4%	54%	22%
7	Solar->Gatherer->Killer	Ids Braam	10.7%	22%	42%	63%	9.5%	45%	8%
8	Hasher	Gigatron	8.4%	17%	27%	77%	9.4%	51%	7%
9	Flower 2	Tilendor	8.3%	15%	42%	75%	12.3%	41%	7%
10	MicroAlgae	Tilendor	5.1%	16%	35%	75%	9.6%	31%	0%
11	Mangeurs	Szeety	3.9%	12%	48%	76%	9.9%	32%	0%
12	Simple-1	James Austin	3.6%	13%	45%	76%	10.3%	28%	0%
13	The Borg Cube 8	Max	3.6%	11%	49%	79%	11.1%	31%	13%
14	Swarm	Raszul	2.8%	12%	40%	79%	8.3%	23%	8%
15	Nova	Tyson & Ryan	2.5%	6%	67%	80%	6.2%	30%	2%
16	StatSpawn	mcmadhatter	1.6%	10%	37%	84%	8.8%	15%	8%
17	Smarter Eater	Analog Kid	1.1%	11%	33%	83%	7.5%	9%	0%
18	Baronator	Hector	1.0%	8%	26%	89%	8.7%	8%	18%
19	Symphony	Zacechawa	0.7%	2%	76%	90%	3.2%	25%	2%
20	T2-base-based	mcmadhatter	0.6%	7%	53%	86%	4.8%	9%	5%
21	My Algae	Analog Kid	0.4%	2%	73%	92%	5.6%	19%	0%
22	Death Borgs	Zacechawa	0.3%	1%	78%	96%	3.0%	33%	1%
23	Diagonal Explorer	Marcos Coelho Marín	0.1%	2%	43%	96%	2.9%	3%	2%
24	mini-eaters	Ids Braam	0.1%	3%	34%	95%	1.8%	2%	1%
Overall (2798 rounds):				18%	42%	69%			130%

...yes, we have Death Borgs, the Borg Cube, and Borg by Borg.

Borg has modern syphon-fed dodging fighters, which win a lot of fights, but its centralized constructors are few and fragile, so it often dies early by losing them. (It doesn't help that they sometimes run unprotected into enemy territory.) How well would it do with an economy that lacked this single point of failure?

Bloopers divides territory among its gatherers, and has food sharing, so it grows unusually fast.

The Borg Cube stays rigidly in formation around a central constructor. Like most such sides, it's very vulnerable to losing the central cell.

Swarm has lightly armed gatherers and more heavily armed stationary defenders. Like most stationary defenders, they're often too far from the battle to help.

Baronator has armed gatherers and missiles. Unfortunately, due to a bug it builds almost exclusively missiles, so it doesn't grow.

Carrier has arrived 2 demonstrates the value of fixing bugs. It has only a few small changes from the previous version (diff them and see), but they fix some unreasonable behavior (e.g. turning off the constructor when not eating), making it a much stronger side. Many other sides could be similarly improved by fixing a few bugs.

Newbie Tournament 6

(19 September 2009) Six new sides from three new authors! And one of them is good enough to take on the Top Nine.

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Nonsterile survival	Early death	Late death	Early score	Fraction	Kills
1	Massive Beast 2 test	David Shellard	67.3%	74%	8%	20%	24.7%	89%	54%
2	Nanomachines β1	Midnight	33.6%	41%	20%	48%	16.1%	78%	23%
3	Single bot	David Shellard	33.3%	46%	27%	37%	14.4%	72%	38%
4	Tomatoes	Zacechawa	18.2%	35%	22%	56%	19.8%	51%	14%
5	Danmaku	Midnight	15.0%	23%	38%	63%	11.1%	65%	24%
6	Solar->Gatherer->Killer	Ids Braam	11.2%	21%	39%	66%	10.5%	50%	8%
7	Hasher	Gigatron	6.3%	13%	31%	82%	9.4%	50%	6%
8	Flower	Tilendor	5.1%	10%	45%	83%	12.5%	36%	7%
9	Simple 1	James Austin	3.4%	12%	46%	78%	10.8%	29%	0%
10	MicroAlgae	Tilendor	3.1%	13%	38%	80%	9.3%	24%	0%
11	Mangeurs	Szeety	2.7%	7%	47%	86%	11.6%	37%	0%
12	Nova	Tyson & Ryan	1.3%	6%	60%	86%	6.7%	17%	3%
13	StatSpawn	mcmadhatter	1.0%	7%	43%	87%	8.6%	15%	8%
14	My Algae	Analog Kid	0.7%	3%	69%	89%	6.1%	22%	0%
15	Symphony	Zacechawa	0.5%	3%	73%	89%	3.8%	18%	1%
16	Carrier has arrived	Midnight	0.5%	3%	53%	94%	10.6%	12%	9%
17	Smarter Eater	Analog Kid	0.5%	8%	34%	87%	9.4%	5%	0%
18	T2-base-based	mcmadhatter	0.3%	5%	50%	89%	5.2%	6%	6%
19	Diagonal Explorer	Marcos Coelho Marín	0.0%	2%	42%	96%	3.4%	1%	2%
20	mini-eaters	Ids Braam	0.0%	1%	30%	99%	2.4%	1%	1%
21	Death Borgs	Zacechawa	0%	0%	77%	100%	3.1%	-	0%
Overall:				16%	42%	72%

Newbie Tournament 5

(20 August 2008) Due to a lack of entries, I put off running this tournament for a few weeks after the scheduled time. Eventually a version of Tomatoes arrived that was good enough to win, so I figured this was a good time to run the tournament.

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Nonsterile survival	Early death	Late death	Early score	Fraction	Kills
1	Tomatoes	Zacechawa	81.2%	94%	1%	5%	29.7%	86%	54%
2	Solar->Gatherer->Killer	Ids Braam	22.0%	51%	11%	43%	12.7%	42%	27%
3	Flower 2	Tilendor	20.7%	40%	12%	55%	16.0%	51%	17%
4	MicroAlgae	Tilendor	10.1%	34%	17%	59%	10.5%	30%	0%
5	Simple 1	James Austin	5.2%	26%	23%	67%	13.1%	20%	0%
6	StatSpawn	mcmadhatter	4.7%	37%	3%	62%	13.3%	13%	26%
7	Mangeurs	Szeety	3.7%	17%	28%	76%	12.1%	21%	0%
8	Nova	Tyson & Ryan	2.5%	20%	44%	65%	7.9%	11%	7%
9	Smarter Eater	Analog Kid	0.6%	15%	13%	83%	8.8%	4%	0%
10	T2-base-based	mcmadhatter	0.6%	18%	24%	76%	7.1%	3%	14%
11	My Algae	Analog Kid	0.5%	6%	60%	84%	5.9%	8%	0%
12	Symphony	Zacechawa	0.4%	7%	65%	80%	3.1%	5%	2%
13	mini-eaters	Ids Braam	0.0%	8%	17%	90%	2.5%	1%	2%
14	Diagonal Explorer	Marcos Coelho Marín	0.0%	5%	18%	94%	4.2%	0%	4%
15	Death Borgs	Zacechawa	0%	0%	68%	100%	3.0%	0%	1%
Overall:				25%	27%	66%

Some comments on the sides:

Solar->Gatherer->Killer builds a lot of artillery by the end of a round, but tends to be short on economy as its gatherers get killed. Having them flee from shots would help a lot. The side might also benefit from seeding some gatherers (although there's a commented-out #seed 2 2 2 2 2, suggesting the author tried that).
Flower is vulnerable to long-range attacks. It also has a bug where it occasionally gets confused about its position and sends all its cells to the far side of the world.
StatSpawn is well defended but grows very slowly.
Nova is vulnerable to losing its Relay. It also has a friendly-fire problem - it can't always keep its grenade launchers fed, so by the time it fires at an enemy, the enemy is often close to a friendly cell, and its large grenades are indiscriminate. It could solve one problem, reduce the other, and save energy, by having smaller grenades and moving the robot-sensor into the same cell.
Smarter Eater wastes energy firing its food sensor too often.
T2-base-based has nice fighters, which often rampage across the map and kill far more than they cost. Unfortunately this leaves the base undefended, and the side is doomed as soon as Home gets killed.
Symphony has a nice syphoning system that does no good because none of its types can spend the energy.
Mini-eaters' bombs are impractically small, but its gatherers are surprisingly reasonable. Their main problem is that they grow much slower than a tiny gatherer should, because their eater is too small to keep their constructor fed, and because they often abandon perfectly good food.
Diagonal Explorer tends to run out of energy. (This is a common, annoying, problem.) Its fighters also need more armor - many enemies can kill them in a single shot.
Death Borgs attains an impressive zero survival by simply blowing itself up as soon as an enemy gets close. This is why missiles doesn't work very well as a primary defense (unless the rest of the side runs away fast). Death Borgs could avoid this if it had some other weapon, and if the missiles avoided detonating near their home.

Newbie Tournament 4

(10 September 2007) This time the tournament was actually scheduled in advance, and we got five new sides. 222 rounds:

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Survival	Early death	Late death	Early score	Fraction	Kills
1	Flower 2	Tilendor	43.2%	83%	7%	10%	15.1%	51%	22%
2	Solar->Gatherer->Killer	Ids Braam	33.1%	87%	3%	11%	12.8%	37%	38%
3	MicroAlgae	Tilendor	16.0%	63%	5%	34%	11.5%	25%	0%
4	StatSpawn	mcmadhatter	6.4%	63%	1%	37%	12.4%	9%	24%
5	Mangeurs	Szeety	6.1%	34%	18%	58%	12.0%	18%	0%
6	Simple 1	James Austin	6.0%	43%	7%	54%	14.6%	14%	0%
7	Nova	Tyson & Ryan	5.8%	46%	24%	40%	9.5%	11%	11%
8	T2-base-based	mcmadhatter	1.2%	39%	8%	58%	7.8%	3%	14%
9	Smarter Eater	Analog Kid	0.7%	27%	9%	70%	8.9%	3%	0%
10	My Algae	Analog Kid	0.4%	9%	43%	84%	7.5%	5%	0%
11	Diagonal Explorer	Marcos Coelho Marín	0.1%	9%	9%	90%	5.7%	1%	6%
12	mini-eaters	Ids Braam	0.0%	7%	9%	92%	2.3%	1%	2%
Overall:				43%	12%	52%

Two notes on tournament rules. First, some sides include a good deal of modified code from the tutorial. I think this is okay, because it's hard to build anything out of parts without understanding the parts well enough to write them yourself. In any case the useful parts of the tutorial are not very exotic - an experienced player can recreate them from memory.

Second, I removed Alexander's sides, because his Shield + Cowards is in the Top Nine. If you prefer to leave his other sides in, the results are (also 222 rounds):

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Survival	Early death	Late death	Early score	Fraction	Kills
1	Forest Fighters	Alexander	41.6%	76%	1%	23%	20.2%	55%	41%
2	Solar->Gatherer->Killer	Ids Braam	31.9%	61%	16%	27%	12.8%	50%	23%
3	Flower 2	Tilendor	24.7%	46%	29%	36%	12.9%	49%	15%
4	Bomberz	Alexander	20.5%	84%	7%	10%	13.4%	24%	19%
5	MicroAlgae	Tilendor	9.5%	33%	23%	56%	10.6%	29%	0%
6	StatSpawn	mcmadhatter	9.0%	56%	9%	38%	11.4%	16%	19%
7	Nova	Tyson & Ryan	5.4%	29%	45%	48%	8.6%	17%	7%
8	Dark Forest [0.2]	Alexander	4.8%	45%	13%	48%	9.2%	10%	12%
9	Mangeurs	Szeety	4.5%	17%	32%	75%	10.4%	26%	0%
10	Simple 1	James Austin	3.9%	24%	27%	67%	12.9%	16%	0%
11	Flaming Forest	Alexander	3.1%	36%	10%	60%	9.6%	8%	12%
12	My Algae	Analog Kid	1.3%	8%	51%	84%	9.4%	17%	0%
13	T2-base-based	mcmadhatter	0.8%	24%	28%	67%	6.1%	3%	8%
14	Smarter Eater	Analog Kid	0.4%	19%	26%	75%	6.5%	2%	0%
15	mini-eaters	Ids Braam	0.1%	9%	14%	90%	2.4%	1%	2%
16	Diagonal Explorer	Marcos Coelho Marín	0.0%	4%	25%	94%	3.7%	0%	3%
Overall:				36%	22%	54%

I think I prefer removing sides, because it creates more turnover. If we didn't remove sides when the author (not the side) graduated to the main tournament, sides like Forest Fighters would accumulate. They might not be good enough for the top ten, but they're good enough to intimidate beginners. That's what the Newbie Tournaments are supposed to avoid.

Newbie Tournament 3

(23 July 2006) Added five sides by Alexander. Removed Move Zig! because it's now champion, and the filler sides (Lunatic, Sunflower, and Neorabbit) because we have more than ten newbie sides now. Forest Fighters kills most everything, which makes the tournament run much faster. (230 rounds.)

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Survival	Death rate		Early Score	Fraction	Kills
Rank	Side	Author	Score	Survival	Early	Late	Early Score	Fraction	Kills
1	Forest Fighters	Alexander	40%	85%	1%	15%	20.8%	47%	43%
2	Shield + Cowards 2f	Alexander	25%	79%	16%	6%	11.0%	32%	11%
3	Bomberz	Alexander	19%	88%	10%	3%	11.6%	22%	25%
4	Flower 2	Tilendor	15%	31%	27%	58%	12.6%	41%	12%
5	Microalgae	Tilendor	7.0%	22%	23%	71%	11.0%	31%	0%
8	Nova	Tilendor & Ryan	5.0%	24%	36%	62%	8.9%	18%	6%
6	Dark Forest	Alexander	4.1%	39%	20%	52%	8.0%	10%	11%
7	Simple 1	James Austin	3.0%	16%	31%	77%	10.8%	19%	0%
9	Flaming Forest	Alexander	1.3%	25%	16%	70%	7.9%	5%	9%
10	My Algae	Anthony Kozar	0.8%	6.9%	59%	83%	7.5%	12%	0%
11	Smarter Eater	Anthony Kozar	0.3%	9.7%	24%	87%	6.8%	4%	0%
12	Diagonal Explorer	Marcos Coelho Marín	0.0%	4.0%	27%	94%	3.4%	1%	3%
Overall:				36%	24%	53%

Newbie Tournament 2

(13 June 2006) I added Flower 2 and Move Zig!. Both are much better armed than the previous batch of sides.

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Survival	Early Score	Kills	Comment
1	Move Zig!	ziggystar	38%	96%	8.2%	50%	Good fighters. Slow growth.
2	Flower 2	Tilendor	33%	76%	11.5%	32%	Pretty and tough, but sometimes self-destructs.
3	Microalgae	Tilendor	18%	79%	10.3%	0%	Hard to kill off.
4	Flower	Tilendor	9.0%	51%	8.1%	15%	Doing better with fewer tiny gatherers consuming missiles.
5	Simple 1	James Austin	8.3%	65%	16.2%	0%	Good growth. Needs a weapon.
6	NeoRabbit	Devon	3.6%	66%	15.7%	0%
7	Sunflower	Matt Burkholder	3.4%	38%	6.6%	7%
8	Lunatic 2	Devon	2.5%	37%	6.0%	0%
9	My Algae	Anthony Kozar	1.7%	19%	11.2%	0%	Destroys itself.
10	Nova	Tilendor & Ryan	1.5%	14%	8.0%	9%	Serious friendly fire problem.
11	Smarter Eater	Anthony Kozar	0.7%	39%	10.0%	0%
12	Diagonal Explorer	Marcos Coelho Marín	0.1%	24%	8.2%	5%	Grows early, but starves later. Buggy fighters.
Overall:				50%			Only 105 rounds, because they're still a bit slow. Error <= 5.1%.

Newbie Tournament 1

(15 March 2006) The release of the Windows version brought a bunch of new users (okay, two of them). There are now enough users who have never won a tournament that Tilendor organized a tournament for them. There are seven sides from four and a half authors, plus three old sides to pad the roster to ten.

Because none of these sides are well-armed, the population increases greatly and slows down the simulation. Therefore no one has run enough rounds to have reliable results. The scores given here are based on only 20 rounds. Survival was nearly 100%, except for My Algae.

Rank	Side	Author	Score	Comment
1	Microalgae	Tilendor	37%	Skittish algae.
2	Simple 1	James Austin	28%
3	My Algae	Anthony Kozar	16%	Destroys itself.
	NeoRabbit	Devon	8%
	Smarter Eater	Anthony Kozar	< 3%
	Diagonal Explorer	Marcos Coelho Marín		Buggy.
	Flower	Tilendor
	Nova	Tilendor & Ryan		Buggy.
	Sunflower	Matt Burkholder
	Lunatic 2	Devon

Newbies: send in more sides, and updated versions of these, so we can continue this tournament!

Grobots by Devon Schudy and Warren Schudy