🚀 go-pugleaf

>
>If an impring had more points, wouldn't it be easier to kill?
>

I have submitted several variations on seven-point imps with no success.
All the existing imps are three-pointers (yes?)

It's true that an imp-ring/spiral has only one vulnerable point at any
one time.  That point may not even be the one about to execute, since
multiple processes can be laid down over the same spiral and the loss
of one does not affect the execution of the others who pick up the slack.

The real vulnerable point of the imp is the most trailing point, which
is always in the same stream (until killed), and it is never protected.
It can be killed by a dat bomb, thus shortening the spiral by one.
Unfortunately the chances of killing even a short spiral by bombing the
trailing points one-by-one before you are overrun is minimal.
Stunners, scanners, and Vampires have better luck by stunning the
trailing point with a spl or spl-jmp bomb.  The stone in Imprimis
has some success by using an increment of dat #2667,nnnn; by decrementing
locations at 2667 intervals it can run down a slow-moving imp.

Gating is an effective defense against imps, but tends to make your
program one or two instructions longer and therefore more vulnerable.
Charon v8.0 does not use a gate but still wins the majority of its
battles with imps.  The secret is extended scanning with an increment
that scans N and N+2666/2667/2668 (pick one) within a few hundred
cycles of each other.  You do have to be careful to allow enough time
for core-clear and for the opponent's processes to all die, however.

I still believe what I said before, the modern imps are just stones with
a backup plan.  The stone probably does most of the killing and the imp
gives the tie in the rest of the cases.  The win percentages for Emerald
and Imprimis are nearly the same - one is a stone and the other is
a stone-imp.  Traditionally a replicator kills stones with no problem,
so another approach would be a replicator that can somehow kill imps.

It is important to protect as many of your instructions from decrements
as possible, since half the bombs of a mov <a,b stone are single decrements.

As for using some other core size, remember that a three-point imp
does not have to use (N+1)/3 as the increment.  (N*i+1)/3 works just
as well.  And changing the core size will affect ALL programs that
depend on optimal bombing/scanning patterns.

Imps are here to stay, just like stone, paper, and scissors.  We don't
need to outlaw them, just learn to live with them (or in spite of them!)
They do make life a little more complicated.

Paul Kline
pk6811s@acad.drake.edu