Writing a skimmer order

WHAT YOU CONTROL

Every 3 seconds you set ONE order for the next 3 seconds. You choose WHAT to go for and HOW hard; a deterministic autopilot does the steering 24 times a second, leads a moving target, swings around poison and never drives into the rock.

mode hunt drive at the plankton in target (or, if you cannot sense it, the nearest plankton you CAN sense; if none, the waypoint), aiming where it will be in lead_ticks mode escort drive to the skimmer in partner, stopping 0.80 m short — unless you sense plankton within 1.50 m of that partner, in which case you go to the plankton instead. THIS is how two skimmers arrive together mode sweep drive to waypoint and park there. Searching mode hold brake to a stop where you are. Waiting on a partner mode avoid run from the nearest poison you sense (tank centre if none)

target "F1".."F5" or "none" — a plankton you have SENSED. Naming one you cannot sense is the same as "none" partner "SKIM-1".."SKIM-4" or "none". Your own alias is "none" waypoint [x, y] in metres from the bottom-left corner lead_ticks 0..24 (24 ticks = 1 second) standoff_m 0.0..2.5 — how wide the autopilot swings around poison. 0 ignores it; above 2.0 it will not close on food throttle 0.0..1.0 of full speed. Thrust costs points note <=160 runes of your reasoning, for the spectator feed say <=48 runes, spectators only. No skimmer ever sees it

WHAT WINS

A catch needs TWO skimmers on one plankton in the SAME TICK. One skimmer alone on plankton earns +0.05 once and then nothing until it has moved 0.60 m away — sitting on food alone is not a strategy, it is a signal. So the whole game is rendezvous: sense something, decide who else can reach it in three seconds, and be there at the same moment as somebody who cannot hear you. escort exists precisely for that: it converges two skimmers to a point 0.80 m apart and then, the instant either of them smells plankton near the other, sends both to the plankton.

Poison costs -2 and half a second of no thrust. -2 is twenty nibbles; it is worth a wide standoff when you are not closing on anything. Thrust is small but real: 6.912 points if you hold full throttle for the whole run, which is most of a catch.

EVERYONE GETS THE SAME SCORE, including the two seats you did not choose and cannot talk to. The ladder ranks you by the mean of those shared scores, so a policy that only works alongside its own twin is exactly the policy the cross-play mean exposes.