If you approximate the positions of the pin numbers as independent exponential distributions with parameter λ = 1/10000. Then the expected value of the maximum is the sum of 10000/k for k = 1 to 10000 [1], which is approximately 1000*(log(1000)+γ) with γ = 0.57721... [2]. This gives the following values for the expected number of digits needed to get all k-digit pin numbers:
k | n
------------
4 | 97,875.6
5 | 1,209,014.1
6 | 14,392,726.2
7 | 166,953,113.2
8 | 1,899,789,640.9
Which agrees reasonably well with the actual values, at least those found so far.
Microorganisms are probably far less affected by vacuum than larger ones, as long as they can get some nutrients from time to time. And since most engines used in space produce plain water (and engines are fired frequently around the ISS), I think the only really difficult thing about the environment is radiation... and microorganisms might also be more resistant to this.
Tardigrades can endure some of the most extreme conditions, including the vacuum of space and solar radiation, and can go without food or water for more than 10 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
Not the same as plankton, but still quite interesting, I think!
It's almost vacuum up there, so the water from the engines is diluted and diluted and the microorganism can't get enough of it. Probably they are only not-dying there, like inside a big freezer without air, only waiting frozen. It's not clear than they are viable, and that if we put them in a good environment they will thrive. Perhaps they are only microcorpses.
As a person with a penchant for data, but with limited coding experience, I agree.
I have hard time reconciling:
"Don't know how to code? That's fine."
With:
"The code is available on Github, and that's where you should start. Just clone the repo and run the installation script located at root."
I think you seriously overestimate the layman's abilities here. Is this for programming laymen? Github is one of the last things people learn, for better or worse.
Yes, we are still a bit new with Node and the best practices when it comes to installation process. I went for what came in mind immediately, but there's obviously room for improvement. Any thoughts or comments are welcome! Thank you :)
I was also perplex the first time I entered this project.
You would be surprise how this simple rules is already quite challenging.
This game is fully observable and also determinist, which give way to make much more complex AI I think. I see it a bit like Chess: Pretty simple rules but there is still a fight to have the best AI in chess.
This game is fully observable and determinist so that is not the hardest situation.
However there is still a lot of possible game states.
I've started an attempt to have a tree of all possible actions and using a minimax algorithm (with a score function + alpha-beta pruning) but this is not yet conclusive because I can't explore so much deep (was able to explore up to 20 next player decisions but that is just 5 moves of your hero).
I think this game is enough simple to try to have this approach but also challenging because there is still up to 5 possible actions per turn so it is a max of 5^1200 total of possible state for a game – a lot.
My current approach is now to try to have a minimax with pre-explored interesting path in the tree (e.g. all path which leads to tavern and mines), that is still a lot of computations.
When I saw the premise, I was expecting that the server would provide a line of sight for your hero each turn. You could even make the map initially undiscovered, and leave it up to the bot to "remember" what it discovers. I think that would make the game a lot more interesting, although also probably much more difficult to program bots for with standard techniques.
