SLIGX SLIGXSeven opponents, from a pushover to a genuine threat. The first five are hand-tuned rules; the last two are neural networks that get better from every game they play on the server.
Each one reliably beats the difficulty below it. What changes between them is how often they act, how much force they hold back, how precisely they pick targets, and whether they bother defending.
Acts only once every six turns, keeps well over half its ships sitting at home, and often attacks without quite enough force to actually win. Picks its target almost at random.
A little more active, and commits close to what it estimates it needs rather than holding back — but still picks a weak target more often than not.
Acts every couple of turns, attacks with a real safety margin over what it thinks it needs, and reinforces its own planets when they come under siege.
Acts every turn, keeps almost nothing in reserve, and nearly always finds the strongest move on the board. Still backs up allies under attack.
Acts every turn with zero reserve and the heaviest safety margin of any bot — but won't divert a single ship to defend a planet that's already under attack. Pure offense, every turn.
A small neural network, not hand-written rules: every turn it scores each of its possible moves and plays by sampling from those scores. It learns by policy-gradient reinforcement learning after every game it plays, and every Space Cowboy in every game shares one continuously-improving brain. It shipped pre-trained — first imitating Mastermind, then about 8,500 simulated games — and on games it never trained on, it beats Hard 81% and Mastermind 85% of the time, 1v1.
The same kind of network, but it started completely untrained and isn't rewarded for winning — it's rewarded for being a nuisance: every fleet sent at an enemy planet earns a little, and total harassment plus planets stolen decide the rest. The result plays more chaotically and aggressively than Space Cowboy, attacking constantly rather than optimizing for victory.
Both keep learning from real games played on the live server, and an admin can see what each has learned, or reset one to its starting point, from the Admin page.
Every bot trash-talks, gloats and complains in its own voice in the chat panel — clueless Newbie, chipper Easy/Normal, smug Hard and Mastermind, Space Cowboy's drawl, and Gangster of Love's insufferable charm. They react to captures, losses, attacks, black holes, rebellions and wormholes, and taunt players now and then.