I've been reading some of the posts on game-theory, arena size and balancing
shields and had some (well... quite a few) ideas.

************Implementing Periodic Boundaries****************
---A possible convenience to help with the added navigation complication would
be to add angular-position registers and converters. I.e. the x and y get
converted to theta and phi ranging from 0 to 2pi (like spherical coordinates
since the topology essentially becomes a torus).

---Alternately implement a "v_rescale" command which will rescale (if needed) an
x,y vector to fit within the boundaries. Also, add commands such as
virtual_robot_position. When the nearest distance wraps over a boundary,
position would be calculated by adding the remainder after wrap around so that
the position returned would be in the adjoining virtual world. I.e. a robot
whose x position is 1 unit from the left bound would see a robot 1 unit from the
right bound as having an x coordinate of -2 rather than world_width - 1. I.e.
virtual_robot_position v_rescale would then yield the same thing as
robot_position, but virtual_robot_position would be more useful for aiming and
navigation. Alternately, the definition for position could be chaned to be like
virtual_position and a new register called absolute_position could be added to
act like the current position register (which may help prevent breaking existing
sides).

---Also, add a relative_position command which takes 2 vectors and returns the
relative position of the second wrt. the first, taking boundaries into account.

---Update v= to automatically account for periodic boundaries and add v=_abs
which works like the current v=.


********Ideas for balancing Shields*************
-One idea for a counter for shields would be to introduce an armor piercing or
feedback option on weapons or an armor piercing / feedback weapon.

---Armor Piercing: a blaster or grenade with points in armor piercing would
bypass some of the shielding based on the level of armor piercing but would cost
more to buy and fire based on the level of armor piercing. E.g. .1 armor
piercing would reduce effective shielding by .1 but would increase cost of the
weapon by a factor cost*(1 + k*AP) for instance. Thus robots with armor piercing
have a definite advantage vs shields, but suffer vs unshielded opponents since
they wont do as much damage as they would if they had no armor piercing. This
would force sides to decide whether or not to spend money on AP or shields based
on what else is around.

---Feedback: deals additional damage, unmodified by shields, equal to
Feedback*k*shieldLevel. Could be its own weapon, or added as an additional
option on blasters and grenades. Like armor piercing, it would be good for
fighting shielded targets, but would be detrimental vs unshielded sides since it
would require higher costs to buy and fire weapons with feedback equiped.
Alternative feedback rule: adds a cumulative feedback charge to shielded targets
which slowly degrades once shields are lowered. Accumulated charge could:
1) do damage each frame, or
2) increase the energy cost for maintaining shields, or
3) lower effective cpu speed of target's brain, reduce sensor range, slow down
constructors, etc.

---Another idea: Passive robot scanners - work like robot sensors, but in a
variable arc angle (possibly limited between a min and max angle to prevent
abuse) with effective range scaled so that a finite area (sector) is detected
rather than a full disc. I.e. if used to detect a 90 degree arc instead of 360,
the range would be 4 times larger than a sensor of equivalent mass. Would cost
nothing to use but could only detect robots that are shielded or actively using
a sensor at the time (or possibly fired a weapon or syphon, sent a radio message
/ written to shared memory, collided with a robot or wall, etc.). The effective
range could also depend on the sensor range / shield level of the robot being
scanned for.

---Rework of shield rules: Shields have 2 parameters: charge (and max_charge)
and absorption. Absorption works the same as now, but robots must charge their
shields. The energy needed to charge / maintain shields would be based on the
absorption level. I.e. to a .1 absorption shield would cost absorption*k energy
to maintain, and additional energy spent would be added to charge. If the robot
doesn't spend enough energy to maintain its shields they would decay by up to
absorption*k charge. Finally whenever the shield absorbs damage, charge is
reduced by a corresponding amount. (this could also be worked in with armor
piercing or feedback)

-Wesley Smith