Guesstimation of total pawns by id()

[cooljoseph1]

One can estimate the number of total pawns on its team by using the id() function.

import random

a = []

def turn():
    global a
    a = [random.random() for i in range(999)]

    log(str(id(a[-1])))
    
    board_size = get_board_size()
    team = get_team()
    opp_team = Team.WHITE if team == Team.BLACK else team.BLACK
    robottype = get_type()

    if robottype == RobotType.OVERLORD:
        if team == Team.WHITE:
            index = 0
        else:
            index = board_size - 1

        for i in range(board_size):
            if not check_space(index, i):
                spawn(index, i)
                break

    else:
        pass

What's happening is that 999 new objects are created each time the turn function is run. This causes the id's to increase over time, and so by comparing the id's from last turn to the most recent turn, the robot can estimate the number of robots on its team.

[cooljoseph1]

This exploit is similar to this:
#111

[cooljoseph1]

Looking more into it, I've found that the id values are rather inconsistent, so it probably wouldn't work very well.

[arvid220u]

this is very interesting! but yeah, it seems too unreliable for me as well

[arvid220u]

anyways, it seems like we should just disallow id. there's no real reason to have it around and it does potentially expose things