US VS IT rules

These are the rules as e-mailed to me from Dorothy K. for the US vs IT game. This is the link for this game: http://www.stonetronix.com/games/usvsit/.

Us vs It rules
as created by Russell, Hernando and Dorothy

Laser Eye:
Trigger: if a tank is within 3 squares straight ahead
damage grid: 4,3,2,1,0,0,0

Fist:
Trigger: if a tank is within 1 square (radius)
damage grid:
2,2,2
2,x,2
2,2,2

Atomic Mine:
Drop Trigger: if a tank is within 2 squares in a straight line in any direction, including diagonals
Explosion trigger: if a tank is within 1 square (radius)

damage grid:
2,2,2
2,4,2
2,2,2

Rotate trigger: if a tank is within 2 squares, rotate towards it

Move trigger: always move if a move is possible

Death grid:
1,1,1,1,1
1,2,2,2,1
1,2,x,2,1
1,2,2,2,1
1,1,1,1,1

Robot's action list:
Move
Laser
Mine
Fist
Rotate
Move
Laser
Mine
Fist
Rotate

We tried several options, the robot having 10 actions, or 5 actions, but then it lost the ability to rotate when damaged and lost an action.

Another action sequence:
Move
rotate
mine
laser
fist
(and repeat)

and:
Rotate
Move
Mine
Laser
Fist
(and repeat)

We found we could tell what the robot would want to do in a given situation, but it was tricky to figure out ways to operationalize the rules so that the robot would take the optimal action (other than moving forward, the robot was good at that).

We then modified the rotate trigger so that the robot would rotate even if no tanks were around, to give the game some variation, some surprise.