Yeah, step functions really break this. I think I was in a game with you or some else with the same general idea, they won on the very first turn with the sine wave trick.
The game has to be only hard and expensive enough to hack so that the effort isn't worth the result.
Of course with unlimited resources you can pretty much solve anything, if you assume those, then everything is easy to solve. But assuming that is simply ignorant.
> You can always make the game itself harder on top of all the anti-bot tricks.
You are implying two things here. Firstly, that its' always possible to make the game harder and, secondly, that anti-bot tricks can solve this issue.
I'm skeptical about the first part and strongly disagree with the second.
In regard to the first part I'd say that it's hard to make the game harder without making it unenjoyably to play. How'd you integrate a sufficient amount of complexity into this game without ruining the fun? That it's in principle possible shows Go. Interesting problem.
In regard to the second part I say that it's just adding (futile) noise and not tackling the fundamental problem. The player has to see at least the map. He then draws a graph in a program that produces a function that has nearly that graph and gives a string defining that function. The user just copy and pastes it into the game.
As for the rest, that is up to the developer with more resources than his opponents.
s/The user just copy and pastes it into the game./The user emulates his keyboard typing that string.
I don't see the point in this. It's just adding noise instead of talking about the real problem.
> As for the rest, that is up to the developer with more resources than his opponents.
If it were like that, I'd be happy. Right now it's trivial to completely solve the game.
Even though the game is not suited for competitive gaming it is great to teach some math.