Paper - Stone - Scissors Trilogy
Many warriors fit well into the
following categories: bomber, scanner, replicator, vampire, imp or hybrid
warriors. Each of these categories has its own advantages and disadvantages.
They are by far considered as the most successful ones. It is interesting to
note that the result of their interplay is analogous to that of traditional
Paper-Stone-Scissors game where paper beats stone, stone beats scissors and
scissors beat paper. Hence, they sometime are also referred to either paper,
stone, or scissors warriors depending upon their interplay role.
- Stone
- Stone warriors are sometime called dwarfs because of their small size.
They are designed to win over those that have bigger size and operate only in
a single module as they are. Falling into this category are bombers.
- Paper
- Paper warriors are those whose progress is to maximize the number of their
modules. The key point here is to endure their own survival as much as
possible. Replicators
are the perfect association for paper warriors. Not only do they run in more
than one module, but also they multiply in number. Paper warriors can easily
overrun any stone warriors.
- Scissors
- Scissors warriors are those that are designed to catch paper warriors.
They can do this by stalling all exposed modules of paper warriors before
destroying them. They however cannot match the speed of the smaller stone
warriors. Falling into this category are: scanners and
vampires.
- Imp
- This kind of warrior does not fit within the framework of
Paper-Stone-Scissors analog. They become very useful when they are used in
conjunction with any other kind of warrior. For richer details about imp,
refer to Steven Morell's
chapter 1 book.
- Hybrid Warrior
- This kind of warrior is the result from interbreeding warriors of the
aforementioned categories. Their effectiveness is pretty much the average
between any two extremes. For example, the result of stone-scissors hybrid
warrior could be it plays better against pure paper but worse against pure
stone and pure scissors.
Author: wangsawm@peak.org
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CoreWar)