[StonyRhetoric]

Played three times, made it to gen 23 on the third time. Fun game.

Without knowing much about game mechanics, a "domestication" strategy seems to work well.

1. Pick a corner. Bottom-right was what I chose.

2. Move there without getting shot.

3. Shoot first at the robots shooting at your direction, then those with guns pointed in your direction. Then shoot the robots that are shooting. Save the robots that are pointed the other way, not shooting for last.

4. After a few generations, all the robots will be pointing the other way, not shooting. Kill the ones that twitch first.

5. There seem to be randomization events, and some of your domestication will be lost. Try to survive those and re-domesticate.

6. Eventually you run out of non-replenishable HP and die.

[mos_basik]

Reminds me of the creepypasta about the guy who left a quake server running for years and his bots learned not to shoot each other [0].

That was only in 2011. At the time it was solidly in "this feels like it could happen, but definitely didn't" territory. Now we're in "Let's see if I can induce this in this guy's browser game" land. Feels strange.

0: https://i.imgur.com/dx7sVXj.jpg

[Akinato]

I remember that! I loved the story (albeit it was just a story). Kind of cool to see that this is a possibility soon.

[darepublic]

Basically act as an artificial force for selecting poorly fit agents. Just like what we're doing to ourselves right now??

[AgentME]

Natural selection still happens for humans. Natural selection just applies for our current environment, not some ancestral environment. It's not longer selecting for the ability to outrun lions. It's selecting for the ability to attract a partner, to want kids, and to secure a place to raise kids in.

[mattigames]

Citation needed. The ability to survive doesn't seem tied to anything you mentioned except maybe to working genitalia, for example if you are born in a country with good health care (e.g. Canada) you are more likely to survive than a country with bad or mediocre health care -regardless of any other criteria-; wanting kids and having kids are not as correlated as expected, is easy to see that in the tons of unwanted teenage pregnancies, "attract a partner" is so subjective that it doesn't lean to any population in particular, you can see that when even male meth-heads living in SUVs have a girlfriend with similar issues; in general healthcare has improved so much that now lifespans are pretty much leveraged regardless of most other variables meaning is likely natural selection no longer plays such a major role as it did in previous generations.

[zaro]

> Natural selection still happens for humans.

Does it really? Humanity is very very keen on keeping alive every individual, even the most disfunctional ones. Not only that, but also try really hard to let even the disfuntional individuals procreate. To me it looks more like the opposite of natural selection. After all natural selection is not only about the best and most fit individuals but also about the pool of genes of the species also.

[eximius]

Yea, but money is a hugely effective ability for attracting mates and with the way wealth is past down generationally...

[uoaei]

I managed to train most of them to run into the walls. Just gotta make sure the ones that do are the last to die.

[atum47]

the randomization on the topic 5 you mention is the mutation. there's a 25% chance of mutation at each reproduction. The mutants have alterations on their color and their behavior.