Robocode's Sample Robots Strategies

When you install Robocode, you see a list of sample robots ready for you to test and become familiar with the Robocode universe. When you see these for the first time, not having written any Robots, they seem to be very sophisticated and you begin to question whether you can write a robot that can compete with the default set of robots. Are these seemingly creative and complex robots really that good? Below is a list of 8 robots which are described based on movement, tracking, and shooting.

Walls

1. Movement: This robot moves along the walls, from corner to corner, nonstop.
2. Targeting: Walls' radar doesn't turn and always faces to the opposite side of the battlefield.
3. Firing: It shoots when it is facing a robot.

RamFire

1. Movement: RamFire chases its enemy to ram them to cause damage.
2. Targeting: When this robot doesn't have a target, it spins around until it finds one. If it goes to an enemy, but the enemy is no longer there, it once again spins around until it's radar finds a robot.
3. Firing: It shoots at max power when it rams into an opponent causing a great amount of damage. Very aggressive!

SpinBot

1. Movement: It goes around in a circle over and over, unless it runs into another robot, in which case it was turn so it can continue doing donuts.
2. Targeting: It's radar always faces forwards. So as the robot spins, the radar is able to scan the entire battlefield.
3. Firing: SpinBot's shoots a bullet at max speed when it's radar picks up an enemy.

Crazy

1. Movement: This robot runs around in a very erratic pattern. It consists of movements like a sin/cos wave and semi circles. It is unpredictable for other robots. It even drives backwards when it hits a wall!
2. Targeting: Crazy's radar, like most of the previously review robots, only faces forward; never turning. It crazy, hence the name, movement also results in an unpredictable radar.
3. Firing: When it finds a enemy on its radar, it fires a low power bullet.

Fire

1. Movement: This robot doesn't move unless it gets hit. Then, it just does a simple move forwards or backwards to avoid multiple hits.
2. Targeting: Fire's radar spins until it finds an enemy. It keeps locked on until the radar looses track. Then the radar spins again to find a robot.
3. Firing: It fires hard if it has a lot of energy left and the enemy is close. If not, it just fires with low power.

Sitting Duck

1. Movement: It doesn't move. At all. Not even when it's hit.
2. Targeting: It doesn't turn and doesn't scan.
3. Firing: Can you guess when Sitting Duck fires? Never. Hard not to feel a little bad for this yellow robot.

Corners

1. Movement: This robot goes straight up to the top of the battlefield, then goes to the top left corner and just sits there. If it does poorly this round (75% of robots still alive when it dies), it chooses a new corner for next round.
2. Targeting: When in the corner, Corners sweeps it radar back and forth. Since it is in a corner, it only needs to sweep 90 degrees.
3. Firing: When it finds an opponent, it fires with a strength proportional to the distance to the enemy.

Tracker

1. Movement: Tracker chases a robot until it is 150 pixels away. If the other robot gets closer than 100 pixels it runs 40 pixels to get more space.
2. Targeting: This robot uses a clever tracking system to turn its radar based on the number of turns it loses track of the enemy. This results in a effective targeting system.
3. Firing: When it is at an optimal distance from the opponent and sees it on the radar, Tracker shoots with maximum power since it is so close.