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
(back to CoreWar)