[appleeaters]Something about the move count

Right now I'm having my robot bail if there isn't enough chances to get any points... to save moves. If you have to make 5 moves to kill one robot, then its wasted. I noticed this when there was only one robot left and I would take me 8 turns to run him into a dead one. Why do it? You only loose points.

So does this mean it could actually help be killing yourself/quitting?

In some cases this is true, but with the average number of robots being 1500 for a 550x550 map (less on small maps, more on big maps, of course), are you really likely to kill every robot even remotely often?

It may not hurt to test for one robot left, but I wouldn't expect it to average you more than a point or two in 100 games, if that.

If, on the other hand, you have a script that kills all the robots regularly, you've probably got everybody else beat. Again, the average map (550x550) has 1500 robots. If you can kill them all, and kill them quickly enough, that's 15000 points (minus moves of course)! The benchmark thread would lead me to believe that even if your average is a third that, you're doing very well.

One last thing - if it takes 8 turns to kill the robot, you're basically losing 6 points (10 - 8*2 = 10-16 = -6). If your fastest move to suicide is only three moves away, suicide is good; otherwise killing the robot will be better.