Like I said, this season was the worst in terms of copying and it will only get worse if nothing is going to be done about it. I only replied to this thread because I wanted to encourage the moderators to take action.
I’ve noticed that the number of players in the newer seasons have dropped dramatically compared to the number of players in the first few seasons. I wonder why… 
If it gets to the point where everyone starts copying the best-performing algo(s) during a single season and justifying their rationale with simply adapting to the ‘meta’, the game becomes unplayable in my opinion.
Newcomers can just scout the leaderboard, see which current algos are the best and straight up copy them right before the season ends. That’s not adapting to the ‘meta’, that’s just being lazy and disrupting the ‘meta’.
I notice the dwindling participation in the global competitions as well. People copying is one thing and should be discouraged, but the prize pool is another, as mentioned on another thread. Most people are drawn into Terminal for the live events since that’s where most of the competition and prizes are. Not to mention the Citadel recruiting opportunities only seem to apply to Terminal Live events as well.
I suggest we find ways to discourage and stop copying, maybe with a blind season as @Toastyone suggested. And ways to boost participation in the global competitions.
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Personally I’m against a blind season.
It could be interesting of course but it would become near impossible to actually improve your algorithm if you don’t see why you lose games (once you beat all bosses).
Like I said before, yes copying isn’t great but there is almost nothing to be done about it. I think it’s a fundamental part of the game and it’s not like any new player can just look at the best players and copy, since for example my algos rely on an action phase simulator, or other rules which can’t just be copied.
I wonder if the lack of participation this season is what leads to so many copies in the top ten? Copying has certainly happened a bunch in past seasons but it hasn’t been quite so blatant or widespread.
In my opinion, a blind season would be bad for Terminal since it would make it very difficult for new players to start playing the game. Playing against bosses is not nearly enough feedback to make a good algorithm.
We need to accept that copying of ideas is going to happen to some extent. For anyone who is frustrated with copying, I think the best thing to do is to focus one’s time on developing the decision-making logic of their program, as that is much harder to copy and can lead to enduring performance gains.
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I know you can just go to, well these api pages
https://terminal.c1games.com/api/game/leaderboard?page=(page number)
https://terminal.c1games.com/api/game/algo/(algo id)/matches,
then the watch page.
https://terminal.c1games.com/watch/(match ID)
I don’t think a lot of new players would know about this, well unless they search the forums. I guess the dilimma comes up, blocking access to the api all together, would cause issues.
Limiting access to replays by what your algo has played in would allow you see why your algo lost and work on it, I imagine that could possibly cause other potential issues though.
A way i imagine that could work, would be assigning each player a unique api/replay access key, and that key can only see replays from algos associated with your account.
I imagine that could curb it slightly, granted lower ELO players would still be able to see some higher level algos, since all algos start at an ELO of 1500, so a top performing algo would still show up in lower ELO algos api replay access(if that algo played against it shortly after upload), at that point though it would still come down the skills of the programmer in order to implement it successfully.
Granted I have never setup an API before, I’ve interacted with APIs, so I don’t know if that would be too difficult, or complicated but new players couldn’t go right to the API and view matches of the top 10 algos, unless they were able to get high enough ELO to match against those.Or matched against them when they first started at the starting ELO of 1500, (Assuming matches are based on a range withing each Algo ELO rating)
@IWannaWin That makes sense, i think that’s a reason @RegularRyan and other c1 staff have brought up when the issue of copying has come up in the past. Your algo is more than just the defensive layout, it’s the attack logic, the logic behind how you deploy your defenses etc. I remeber one season ping cannons were extremly popular, and on the surface they all appeared mostly identical, under the hood they were different though which allowed some ping cannons out perform others.
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I agree with Max that the large amount of copying is a result of less overall participation in this season of Terminal. I think the most interesting parts of terminal to me have been my work on my decision engine and simulator. Perhaps my lack of copying certain standard structures has also hampered the ability of my algo to perform as well as I had wanted this season… I think that factories as we currently have them are a strong force in making certain setups perform better than others. I mean, you have to focus on building and protecting them and try to destroy your opponents factories too! If you lose the ability to do either of those things, you will be hamstrung, and this singular focus prevents as much effort on the defensive structures themselves since they have to be so lean so we can build factories!
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@eric574 I am curious and i noticed this during the season. I think it’s possibly one of the reasons why your team algo had such a big lead on the second place algos in terms of ELO, and i suppose this is just a side effect from being in teams. Since each team member can upload 6 algos and then the team can have 6 algos, and possibly more, based on how a bug i found, seems to behave, but I guess i never put too much in an attempt to reproduce consistently. I noticed my algos playing against algos with users who didn’t appear on the leaderboards, I presume this is becuase they’re in a team. So if a team uploaded their 6 team algos, and each team member also uploaded their 6 algos that were all possibly varients of the teams main algo, ELO was still affected normally, I’m guessing your teams algos were able to maintain such a big ELO lead becuase of this?
The bug i found I made a thread in bugreport, and @RegularRyan has been looking into it, but I noticed when editing algos using the web editor, sometimes algos would get dupped, exiting the play/edit page I’d notice a new algo with the same name. The reason I believe this could be used to upload more than 6 algos per user, is becuase at one point i deleted an old algo from my algos page when it was full and then it ended up being full again, with a clone of one of the other algos, the reason i think it could be used to upload more than 6 algos is becuase the new cloned algo that showed up had an ELO rating like it had been playing in matches. I haven’t put too much effort into being able to reliably recreate this issue, and it mostly happened by accident. If i notice the same thing when next season starts I’ll maybe be able to put more time into reproducing it, so it can actually be fixed, I feel bad becuase I know with the info I gave Ryan, he was basically stumbling around in the dark.
Yes, I agree. Factories are so important now that it’s basically game over if you manage to wipe out your opponent’s factories.
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Nah it was because my team algos beat everyone at some point and I was constantly iterating on the algos until people started copying the exact layout and even attack (those with decision simulators) 
Regarding the newcomers, Molotov appeared in the Top 10 leaderboard out of no where in the last few moments of the season. And his algo layout is identical to mine…
My point is that there is no incentive to making a superior algo layout and even attack if it’s going to be copied by a bunch of people during the last few moments of the season.
Copying algos is arguably the biggest issue in Terminal right now and I don’t see the incentive for players to keep on playing if copying doesn’t get addressed.
It would interesting if Terminal ever experiments with hidden decisions/state that could not be directly observed! Although that would be a big increase in complexity, it would also drastically increase the difficulty of just copying another player’s algo.
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Bit wouldn’t that defeat the entire point of the game of being able to form dynamic bases?
Not entirely, I think, although yes, the added complexity might be a bit redundant when it could perhaps be better spent using it to make a more dynamic base setup.
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I think a good way of overcoming people winning games by purely copying the current top algo (besides limiting information like a blind competition or disabling the api) is by encouraging the rise of dynamic algos. That way, the reason for success is much more dependant on the logic and strategy of the algo which is much more difficult to copy than the layout of an algo.
In my opinion, it would be an interesting change to the game if Terminal added some factor of luck and randomness. Maybe something such as each turn having a different distribution of MPs and SPs that is determined at the start of the game. This would favour certain strategies depending on how your distribution is set. Or more interestingly would be a random layout of the board such as having hotspots of good positions that could pursued players to build a certain way. Like hotspots where factories would produce more resources if they were built there or maybe positions that would shield mobile units if they passed through.
Of course, this would be a massive shift to the game with some pros and cons. Opening issues like complexity and making rematches something to consider. But in my opinion, this would bring rise to loads of new dynamic algos that win by having superior logic built-in and making better decisions mid game.
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I love that idea of random (symmetric so they would be the same for both players) hotspots with bonuses!! I think that would solve this problem really well! If the bonuses are not too large, they would be fine for new players to ignore, but would ensure that top players have to be dynamic enough to take advantage of them. We would have to make sure, though, that the bonus system is important enough that it actually forces top players to use it. One example: designating a coordinate that if mobile units pass over will be able to deal double damage if they eventually score.
Its a bit like real live competition: if you fugure out a new great way to do things … not long after, copy-cats will show up and try to get a peace of your success.
You need to have some unique advantage or keep inovating to stay on top 
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