RoboBob3000
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1978
Registered: 10-23-2003
IP: Logged

File: Adders and mothers.hold (1.5 KB)
Downloaded 40 times.
License: Public Domain

Adders are picky about when they choose to eat tarstuff mothers. They apply normal cuttability rules when deciding whether or not to eat the eyes.

This could be intentional, but it seems odd since eyes are always cuttable to the player. You be the judge. I've attached a hold outlining several adder-on-mother cases.

____________________________
http://beepsandbloops.wordpress.com/

Briareos
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3516
Registered: 08-07-2005
IP: Logged

RoboBob3000 wrote:
This could be intentional, but it seems odd since eyes are always cuttable to the player. You be the judge. I've attached a hold outlining several adder-on-mother cases.

I guess the game totally disregards the eyes and just takes the tarstuff behind them into account - seems both plausible and sensible to me...

np: Radiohead - Morning Bell (I Might Be Wrong - Live Recordings)

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

Tahnan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2459
Registered: 11-14-2005
IP: Logged

Briareos wrote:

RoboBob3000 wrote:
This could be intentional, but it seems odd since eyes are always cuttable to the player. You be the judge. I've attached a hold outlining several adder-on-mother cases.

I guess the game totally disregards the eyes and just takes the tarstuff behind them into account - seems both plausible and sensible to me...

np: Radiohead - Morning Bell (I Might Be Wrong - Live Recordings)

No good. I haven't downloaded RB's hold, but when he mentioned it in chat, I went into the editor to see for myself. If you lay down mothers without actually putting any tarstuff behind them, the adder will eat the tar mothers but not the mud mothers. So it's not a fact about the underlying tarstuff.

RoboBob3000
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1978
Registered: 10-23-2003
IP: Logged

Tahnan wrote:
No good. I haven't downloaded RB's hold, but when he mentioned it in chat, I went into the editor to see for myself. If you lay down mothers without actually putting any tarstuff behind them, the adder will eat the tar mothers but not the mud mothers. So it's not a fact about the underlying tarstuff.

Well, Briareos is right. Adders only eat uncuttable tarstuff. A lonely mother is interpreted by the game as a corner edge, not a side edge or inside-corner edge. Since a corner edge is cuttable on mud, a lone mud mother is therefore inedible for an adder.

____________________________
http://beepsandbloops.wordpress.com/

Tahnan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2459
Registered: 11-14-2005
IP: Logged

Tahnan wrote:
If you lay down mothers without actually putting any tarstuff behind them...

Oh, I see. My fault. If you lay down mothers without putting any tarstuff, the game fills in tarstuff behind them. I believe that's in fact a change from the previous edition--in, I think, my Limited Resources hold, I put in a pair of mud eyes (in a place they couldn't expand) with no mud behind them, and at turn 30 the mud behind them filled in.

So yes, the idea that single mud mothers won't get eaten because the tar behind them can't be eaten because it's cuttable is a pretty good theory. (Whether it's a good idea or not, you're on your own.)

coppro
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1308
Registered: 11-24-2005
IP: Logged

Yes, this was discussed in the beta. There was a big discussion about black doors, because for a while they would drop and leave nothing behind. It looked bad. The problem was that if they didn't, they could drop on room entrance and then close again when the mother (without tar) spawned. A script (written by Stefan) was used to locate all rooms on CaravelNet with mothers that weren't on tar and black doors. There was twenty or thirty, and then Stefan manually checked them to ensure that they weren't affected by such a change. There were two that actually were affected at all - all the others either had tar elsewhere in the room that made it impossible to get it all in 30 moves, or there was a room clear gate as well as the tarstuff gate, meaning the mother had to die anyway, or some other combination. Looking at the two, it was decided that it didn't make a huge difference. So the change was made, Mike made the announcment about the change in rules, and he also made mothers automatically place tar, so that the architect could take advantage of this feature, but only if he did so intentionally - by default there would be tar underneath.