welcome

I've just posted the game's new Code of Conduct. This more comprehensive set of guidelines is now the definitive guide for community standards and replaces the previous shorter Player communication rules. The new CoC thread is locked to serve as a stable reference, and this announcement will be the official channel for feedback and discussion about it.

For many years, the game operated with a very loose "be civil" approach to moderation. While that worked for a time, I believe our community has reached a point where more explicit guidelines are necessary to achieve the primary goal: making bots4 a more positive, respectful, and welcoming environment for everyone, both our dedicated veterans and any newcomers who join us.

Many of you may have noticed an increase in moderation activity over the past couple of months. This wasn't arbitrary; it was the first step in a deliberate effort to curb the toxicity that can sometimes make our forums an intimidating or unpleasant place to be. This new Code of Conduct is the next step in that process. The goal isn't to be heavy-handed, but to be consistent and transparent, providing a clear foundation so everyone knows what is expected.

To be perfectly clear: This is not an attempt to eliminate conflict, rivalry, or "spicy" discussion. bots4 is a competitive game, and the rivalries that form are a core part of its history and fun.

The Code of Conduct explicitly outlines the difference between acceptable, game-focused trash talk and unacceptable personal attacks or hostile goading. My aim, and the aim of these rules, is to moderate toxic behavior, not to stifle competition. You can still work to defeat your rivals, but you must treat them with a baseline of respect as fellow players when you communicate.

I believe these rules are a vital step towards ensuring the long-term health and enjoyability of our community, and I am committed to upholding these principles.

That said, this thread is an open channel for you to share your thoughts and feedback on this new direction. I am interested to hear if you are supportive of this renewed focus on a more respectful environment and any constructive thoughts you have on how we, as a community, can best uphold these standards together. While the core principles of respect and civility are non-negotiable, your feedback on the application and clarity of these rules is valued.

Thank you for taking the time to read the new Code of Conduct. I look forward to your constructive feedback and to working with all of you to build a better bots4 community.

It's been close to 6 months since my last patch notes post, so it's time to go through my code commits and collect the list of player-facing changes. If you have feedback on the format of this type of update, please let me know. Going forward, I plan to use announcements threads like this for both (a) comprehensive patch notes posts every so often that exhaustively list everything that's changed from a player-facing perspective (the idea being that going through these can fully catch you up) and (b) one-off threads for bigger or more important changes that would benefit from more immediate feedback. I think this balance lets me make small tweaks and fixes on the fly without having to spam everyone with announcements for every little thing. With that said, on to the details...

Features:

• Stash reordering: Items in stash can now be re-ordered. Click/drag on desktop. Long-hold/drag on mobile (see announcement).
• Buy unequippable items: All items can now be bought to make upcoming upgrades a bit smoother (see announcement).
• Overflow stash items: Stars are no longer needed to see inaccessible stash items (see announcement).
• Monthly Crescendo: To keep competition relevant throughout the entire month, energy exchanged per battle will increase steadily throughout the month. This is currently set to 5% per day in June (down from 10% per day in May) based on player feedback. See the May announcement thread, May feedback thread, and June annoucncement thread for plenty of discussion.
• 10 member clans: The ranking clan member cap was reduced from 20 to 10. This was done to lower the barrier for a clan to effectively compete and make the top spots more attainable for smaller, focused teams. See the links in the previous bullet for discussion on this as well.
• Click-to-pause buffs: Click/tap buff icons to pause/unpause. A small QoL change to make it easier to quickly stop/start buffs (from suggestion).
• Clan energy history: Added an energy history chart for the top 10 clans to the clans homepage (see discussion).
• Cancel showroom orders: Arrived orders can now be canceled, just like unarrived orders (from suggestion).

Bug fixes:

• Buff purchase: Fixed a bug where a global buff being active would prevent you from buying its regular version (from bug).
• Mobile stash: Fixed a bug making opening the details popup for stash items on mobile unreliable, which was caused by the stash reordering feature (from bug).
• Emoji bar: Fixed a bizarre and oddly-specific (Firefox-only + only when logged out) rendering issue with this (from bug).
• Historical clan rankings: Fixed a small rounding error that could lead to the wrong level being displayed on the clan history page in a very narrow set of edge cases.
• Unread post count: Forum posts from deleted threads will no longer contribute to your unread post count.
• Buff sort order: This broke when adding global buffs in December. It is now fixed (from bug).
• Start-of-month energy: Fixed a bug that caused energy to not enter the game until 1am instead of midnight on June 1 (from bug).

Misc:

• Text input font: Changed in places like forum post entry boxes from fixed-width to the same font as the game (from suggestion).
• Anti-cheat: Invested further into the system, continuing with past increased focus after November 2024 cheating.
• Deleted forum posts: Rather than be totally hidden, deleted posts now have a "removed by moderator" stub to (a) give transparency on forum moderation actions, (b) give a signal that the forum is actively moderated, and (c) give a hint of when a thread may be confusing because of context that was formerly present and possibly replied to but now removed.
• Forum moderation: In an effort to make the forum a more welcoming environment for new players and veterans alike, player communication rules are being more regularly enforced.
• Ranking clan members: On clan profile pages, the rank column now has a yellow background for rows where that bot is contributing to ranking.
• Unequippable items in stash: Just like in the showroom stock, unequippable items in your stash now have a red background.
• Mobile stash: Added light haptic/vibration feedback when starting/ending drag.
• Global buffs: Global buffs are now visually distinct from regular buffs. They have a 2 pixel gold outline. This may change (see post.
• Daily energy exchange increase: The daily rate is now visible to players as a global buff named Monthly Crescendo, rather than being a hidden system detail (see post).

As for what's next: I'll mostly be continuing to focus on the clan competition aspect of the game. The Clan competition changes for June + looking ahead thread has a list of specifically what to look out for (but note that the list is tentative and may change). I'll continue making smaller QoL updates and bug fixes in parallel with these larger changes. Some additional items to look out for at some point (no timelines just yet) are better player analytics to understand engagement/retention (I talked about this a bit in my last patch notes post), Discord server setup (see post), and introducing a comprehensive player code of conduct that will likely replace the existing player communication rules in the interest of making the game and community aspect a more welcoming place for all players.

Past patch notes (I'm going to start including this list in all patch notes announcements):

• August - December 2024
• June 2024

Hi everyone, as we kick off the June clan race, I want to thank you all for the fantastic amount of detailed feedback and thoughtful discussion over the past month regarding the May experiment and future ideas for the clan race. I've been reading through all of it - in the official May feedback thread, the All Bots Gain Monthly Energy discussion, and more. It's clear how passionate everyone is about this core aspect of the game, and I truly appreciate you sharing your insights.

This post will outline changes for June, as well as my current thinking on longer-term directions based on that feedback and ongoing observation. First though, a note on future plans: The ideas below for "later in June" and beyond are currently in various stages of planning or early consideration. Game development, especially for a solo developer, can have unpredictable timelines, and details may evolve as I work through implementation, balance, or based on further feedback and testing. Please consider these as directions I'm actively exploring, not firm promises with fixed ETAs. I always reserve the right to adjust plans to best serve the game's overall health.

Live now (effective June 1)

Daily energy exchange growth reduced from 10% to 5%

• Based on a lot of feedback from the May experiment, the daily energy exchange increase has been reduced from 10% to 5% per day. The spreadsheet I'd shared before has been updated to reflect this.
• Reasoning: While the 10% scaling aimed to keep the end-of-month competitive, many of you felt it was a bit too extreme, potentially devaluing early month effort more than intended and raising valid concerns about the rapid drain of system-wide "loose energy." Although the math showed the first half of the month still carried significant weight (~1/3 of total impact), perception and feel are very important. The new 5% daily increase will still provide a significant end-of-month multiplier (around 2.5x the base rate on the final day), aiming to keep things interesting and comebacks feasible, but in a way that should feel more balanced throughout the entire month.
• Regarding "total energy inflation" caused by scaling - I'm less concerned about this for the "total energy" stat itself in the long run, as I plan to re-evaluate its meaning and how we track long-term achievement (more on that below).

Ranking clan member cap remains at 10

• The reduction from 20 to 10 members for clan ranking and end-of-month clan trophies will remain in place for June.
• Reasoning: The primary goal here was to lower the barrier to entry for more clans to compete effectively. While May's race still saw a significant lead at the very top (often a reflection of concentrated resources or exceptional individual performance, as some of you noted, rather than just raw numbers of scorers), the top 10 change is a step I believe is in the right direction. I'll continue to monitor its impact on clan formation and competitive dynamics, and I'm mindful of balancing this with the experience of players in larger clans (like high-level training bots) and their opportunities for recognition.

Targeting later in June

Visible global buff for daily energy scaling

• To make the daily energy exchange scaling more transparent and easier for everyone to track, I'll be working to display it as a visible global buff that clearly shows the current day's energy exchange multiplier. This will remove any guesswork.

Fight list page revamp

• A significant quality-of-life improvement I'm aiming to get out later this month is a revamp of the fight list page. The goal is to drastically improve the process for identifying viable targets. My tentative plan is to move towards a single, paginated table (as opposed to level-specific tables/pages) that is sortable by various columns (like level, energy, ratio) and also filterable. I'm also looking to add new information/features, such as how recently you've attacked a bot and the ability to apply custom labels or notes to bots (e.g. "favorite", "easy", "hard", etc.).

Targeting July or later (requires more design and development)

"All bots gain energy" (conceptual exploration)

• There's clearly a lot of community interest in making energy more broadly accessible. I'm strongly considering and actively exploring concepts where a wider base of bots (i.e. unclanned) generate some baseline EPH.
• Reasoning: This could create a more ambient level of energy, provide more targets, and further lower the barrier to entry for new players and clans, while still ensuring that focused strategy and investment (like well-built dumpers or active clanned play) remain valuable.
• Key considerations would be limiting this to recently-active bots, providing an opt-out mechanism, and setting the EPH rate lower than dedicated clanned bots. This is a complex change with many potential effects, so tuning details are very much TBD and will require careful thought.

Ranked clan qualification

• To make the clan rankings better reflect active, competitive entities, I'm exploring ideas for qualification.
• Reasoning: The goal is to reduce the number of "fluff" or placeholder clans in the rankings. One tentative idea is requiring a clan to have a minimum energy ratio (say, x2) to be formally "ranked". Unranked clans would still be listed, though likely in a separate, collapsed-by-default section.

Differentiated rewards for clan ranks 2-10

• To further incentivize the fight for every spot in the top 10, I plan to introduce more differentiated rewards.
• Reasoning: The current drop-off in reward value after 1st place is significant. I'm tentatively looking at using the F1 scoring system already used elsewhere in the game to scale the value of rewards for ranks 2 through 10. This would give more meaning to finishing 2nd vs. 3rd, 3rd vs. 4th, etc.

"Total energy" rethink

• The "total energy kept when leaving clans" feature is still a high priority. However, as many of you observed, and as the May scaling experiment highlighted, dramatic month-to-month variations in energy generation can make a single, cumulative "total energy" number less meaningful for comparing achievements across different months/mechanics.
• Reasoning: My goal is to reward longevity and a bot's historical achievements without being anchored to a single stat that might become inflated or less comparable over time. This gives us more freedom to experiment with core race mechanics. I'm exploring alternatives, possibly using a system that scores or ranks historical monthly performances (again, F1-style points for past monthly energy results could be one avenue) rather than a simple sum. More details on this once the path is clearer.

Maybe sometime in the future (speculative ideas)

Energy from trainers (PvE)

• Further down the line, I'm open to exploring how PvE activity, like battling trainers, could contribute some energy. It would need very careful tuning to ensure it's less efficient than dedicated PvP or energy-focused strategies but could offer a first step towards a more fleshed-out PvE mode. One idea is to have dynamic scaling for energy received based on attacker level vs. lowest level to beat that trainer in past X hours.

New clan-based game mode

• I'm also in the very early conceptual stages for an entirely new clan-based game mode. This would be designed to complement (definitely not replace!) the core battle loop and clan race, offering a different avenue for clans to work together on shared objectives and progression, adding another dimension to clan identity and teamwork. This is still extremely early thinking and I'm being intentionally vague about details, but it's a direction I'm interested in.

The May experiment was very informative. Please continue to share your constructive thoughts and suggestions - your feedback is invaluable as we work together to make the game more engaging for everyone!

Congrats to Myriad [431] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the May 2025 clan competition and securing a 11th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Myriad [431]		20,271,770	(x45.41)
2		<Mount Wario>	Starbot [145]		5,910,514	(x18.21)
3		<Valhalla>	Nosferatu [364]		5,881,783	(x13.90)
4		<Apex>	Guardian Angel [75]		3,699,457	(x8.73)
5		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [140]		2,122,006	(x5.03)
6		<DOOM>	DrEvilZal [100]		1,708,384	(x12.25)
7		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,521,786	(x3.58)
8		<The Gunners>	PeeT2 [387]		1,504,496	(x7.84)
9		<Tarnished>	God Malachorn [30]		1,339,318	(x3.30)
10		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [350]		1,226,004	(x2.75)

Also see:

• May 2025 clan rankings
• May 2025 bot rankings

Hi everyone, as we head into the home stretch of the May clan race, I wanted to start a dedicated thread to gather your feedback on the experimental changes we trialed this month (the daily scaling energy exchange and reducing ranking member cap from 20 to 10).

Now that you've had a chance to experience most of the month with these mechanics, I'd love to hear your thoughts:

• How has the daily energy scaling felt? Has it kept the race more competitive or engaging deeper into the month? How did it affect your strategy, activity levels, or perception of early vs. late-month effort?
• What are your impressions of the ranking member cap reduction from 20 to 10? Has it noticeably impacted competition, or the ability for more clans to contest top spots? Could going even lower, at least for a time, be fun?
• Overall, what worked well, and what didn't, with this May experiment?

I've noticed this month's race is still quite lopsided at the top (with first place having more than double the energy of second place currently). This might suggest that one month isn't enough to fully gauge the impact, that different player strategies are still adapting, or that further tweaks might be needed to achieve the goal of broader, sustained competition. All constructive feedback on this is very welcome.

Looking ahead: Ideas for June and beyond

Beyond just feedback on the May changes, I'm also keen to hear your broader ideas for June and future clan race iterations. There's already some great discussion happening in other threads, like the one suggesting All Bots Gain Monthly Energy, which I'm following with interest (and have just replied to with my initial thoughts).

• What other changes could make the clan race more engaging for more people?
• Are there tweaks to the current May experiment you'd suggest?
• Do you have ideas for new energy sources, ways to spend energy, or different clan incentive structures?

Please share your suggestions here! A quick note on timing: Implementing entirely new, complex systems for the June race is likely unrealistic unless they are very simple adjustments. More significant changes will take more design and development time, but gathering your ideas now is crucial for effective future planning.

A note on "Total energy kept when leaving clans"

Separately, regarding the planned "total energy preserved when leaving clans" change: The energy inflation we've seen from May's scaling experiment has made it clear that the meaning and comparability of a single "total energy" stat across different months or eras of the game is becoming less straightforward.

To ensure we have the flexibility to continue experimenting with race mechanics that might affect monthly energy generation, I'm currently re-evaluating the best way to represent a bot's long-term clan-related achievements. The goal is still to allow players to retain a sense of their bot's history without being penalized for changing clans, but I want to do it in a way that doesn't "lock us down" by making a single, ever-inflating stat (i.e. total energy) the only measure of this, especially when its perceived value can change drastically based on changing month-to-month mechanics. We might need to explore alternative ways to track or display historical progress. This feature is still a high priority, but I want to ensure it’s implemented thoughtfully in a way that supports the game's continued evolution. More on this when I have a clearer path.

Thanks for participating in these experiments and for helping to shape the future of the clan race. I look forward to your constructive thoughts and suggestions!