Scarce Friction - now Desert

[bwisialo]

Yes, it's very reasonable and would be great addition. Here are my thoughts if you were to use this substrate.

I tweaked, tweaked, and tweaked a standard crawler and got it to 120. Perhaps a different model could make it over the hurdles but it seems unlikely that one could reach, say, 300. A Stereocyte is necessary.

No time limits are needed. I would just go with a cell count Objective.

My sense of an appropriate cell count comes from my experience. Once I started working on a Stereo-crawler, it didn't altogether too long. Once it get off the ground it was getting 200. With some work it hit 300, and the first small tweaks after that had big results: 400. Then I corrected Neurocyte settings I had messed up: 540. For me, it was at this point that additional gains became increasingly tricky. I'd say 400 makes for a good challenge and I'm tempted 500 or 550, especially if it's a final challenge. It would be very hard but not unreasonable, given that we hit 1000.

[bwisialo]

Wow! Our results seem fairly different. I ran yours a couple of times, hitting 780 and 870 before seeming to fall off into 650-750, up to 1500hr. The first one had a lot of ups and downs and took a long time to get to 780. Does it just take forever, until they eventually fill out the plate? Or does it sometimes peak in the 800s?

Mine gets to 800 relatively quickly, will spend some time getting over humps, regularly hits 950, and then spends most of its time between 800-900, though I usually don't watch for very long. Will send it via PM.

[Alast]

Yes, currently it is chasing Stereocrawlers. And it's working! Symmetrically Just not well enough to reproduce... More brain activity needed.

As for this challenge, I think it could be a cool addition to the app. And 300 sounds good. You could also make it another series of 3 challenges: I make 300, II make 600, III make 600 no Nitrates. Something like that. But that might be a bit much wishful thinking on my end, so I will leave that up to you

Besides that I agree with bwisialo, no time restrictions needed and no cell type limitations either I don't think.

If you want we can also look at the substrate together and play around with the values if you it should be adjusted. I kind of would like less nutrients to make it really scarce but found it hard to find a good balance there But of course we can also leave it as it is as it's doing its job just fine.

[Alast]

Hm, interesting on the results. I just ran my genome again and it didnt even make it to 800 before dropping below 700 and staying there. Maybe I saved the wrong version... Will have to play around with values a bit. The few runs I did when maxing out that happened within 1.5k h.

[bwisialo]

I hope you didn't lose it.

I just tried a few tweaks on my genome. No definitive results. I think I can get it to max consistently. But dang, these things are incredibly sensitive and prone to variation.

[Alast]

I feel like I did Crap, need to make it work again. I want my max out crawler back!!!

I was so sure though that I had saved the latest version which maxed out under the new name keeping it as it is...

[bwisialo]

Your predator is symmetrical?! Is it two Devorocytes and signal cells in back?

[bwisialo]

It could be tough to test the challenge, since crawlers vary so much. Eg, mine is much, much faster than yours.

[Alast]

Yes it is. At least currently But only 1 Devorocyte (front center) as otherwise unprotected cells can get pulled into them and the predator kills itself.

I think I have found the issue with my Hammerhead. In the saving process under the new name the signal strength seems to have been saved as snap value even though originally it was unsnapped. If I recall correctly I was working with something below 2.5 for better targeting on nearby nutrient chunks. I swear I will get there and have my max out crawler back!!!

[bwisialo]

Been there. That sucks. It could be the issue that's in the last post of the tick/untick thread. Hopefully Petter will get that figured out.

Two Keratinocytes? Your back end isn't symmetrical... unless you have three signal cells, which you probably do