edwardlaneuk wrote:
Ok this is a bit of a crazy idea, but if you wanted to write a fresh set of instructions to automove your plane with a minimum level of processing power required, what rules would you write ?
Once I did it, for a Flash version of BM. It worked so good that I had to insert a small random percentage of error to make the automove actually beatable.

But halas it was a brute force algorythm, quite heavy even on 1vs1 games.
Anyway, it worked on angles. IIRC was more or less:
1. select the nearest enemy plane with the best angle toward you (i.e. it's at your 6 and you're at its 12 is best and so on).
2. compute all possible moves for it and for you, and put in a matrix computing all resulting angles.
3. Keep in mind the first 2 rules of karate: #1, don't take hits; #2, learn rule #1.

4. pick best angles, if more than one pick best distance. Of course, if you can fire better still.
Quite heavy, isnt'it?

To make it lighter, we can work just on starting angles, trying to get a better angle. Eventually keep in mind
dicta: turn
toward your enemy.
Anyway, just selecting all
possible moves before randomizing the choice would be a good improvement itself. We could start from that and see how it affects performance.
--- Message edited by gugliandalf