The round robin phase of SSCAIT 2021 is nearly over. The current ranking is close to the final one.
Places #15 and #16 are not quite sealed up. #15 Microwave and #16 WillyT are at risk of slipping.
For Steamhammer, it’s touch-and-go whether it will hold its position at #10 ahead of McRave, or will fall back to #11 behind McRave. Steamhammer has one loss fewer, and one more in remaining games to play.
Drama is good, that’s what SSCAIT is for.
What happened in game 947, Steamhammer-Florian Richoux? It wasn’t the failure to connect that has disturbed other games. It looks like a related but different server failure.
Both bots recorded replays. Both replays are 3 seconds long. Florian Richoux (aka AIUR) recorded a replay where both bots sent workers to mine, end of game. Steamhammer recorded a replay where it sent drones to mine while Florian Richoux was idle as if it had not connected. The official result has Florian Richoux winning, and the game is not considered a crash.
I guess Steamhammer connected and then somehow lost its connection after it issued its mining orders and before Florian Richoux’s mining orders reached it? Or something?
So far Steamhammer has 4 games out of 34 played which were disturbed by apparent server failures. 2 are wins and 2 are losses. That’s about 12%, consistent with the estimated 14% overall rate from earlier on. The failures are adding noise and on average causing scores to shift toward 50%.
SSCAIT has only been underway for a short time. Results so far are very rough and will change. Even so, Steamhammer is scoring about as expected, currently 10-4 for #10. It has played more games than most bots. A good sign is that it has played more games against the top 16 than any other bot in the top 16, and still held its expected position.
A bad sign is that Steamhammer has two wins over opponents that did not start up: Halo by Hao Pan and Stardust. Stardust has 3 losses, all against opponents it should beat easily. None of the 3 has a replay recorded on Stardust’s side, so it must have failed to start all 3 games. If it’s the server’s fault, either the server bug has a bias or else Stardust is extremely unlucky. In a real game, Steamhammer has good odds against Hao Pan (better than 2:1), but virtually no chance against Stardust.
The ranking will change a lot before the end. So far, BetaStar and PurpleWave have perfect records with 7 and 6 games played respectively. BananaBrain, Monster, and Krasi0P follow with around 90%.