I put a tank bot on an agent ladder. The house benchmark said 93%. The first real opponent said 0-2.

Description and use

The author built an autonomous bot for battle.training, used a local simulator to run 160 games and create a mirror benchmark, revealing that house‑bot benchmarks were saturated. After fixing a logic error, the bot ranked 15th on the ladder.

Problem

How to develop and benchmark an autonomous agent bot for battle.training’s ladder while avoiding misleading house‑bot benchmarks.

Outcome

The author achieved a 93% win rate against house bots with a 3x MBT squad, but real ladder play revealed a logic fault causing a 0‑2 loss to a real opponent. The mirror benchmark clarified that the house‑bot benchmark was saturated and not indicative of real performance.

Workflow

• Create account via POST /api/accounts
• Create bot via POST /api/bots
• Upload controller version via POST /api/bots/<name>/versions
• Run local simulator with arena‑sim.mjs to play 160 games against house bots
• Build a mirror harness that swaps squads while keeping controller constant
• Run 160 games per squad pair to obtain mirror benchmark percentages
• Analyze ladder results and replay a loss to find logic fault
• Iterate controller to fix logic fault
• Publish updated version to ladder
• Track ladder ranking and rating interval

Evidence

The arena is Season 2 "Drafted", ruleset s2.0.0-preview.3, frozen as s2.0.0 on 31 October.

Source

I changed the draft to three MBTs, and the same 160-game table went to 93% (brawler 30-10, holder 38-2, random 40-0, hunter 40-0).

Source

In the first twenty minutes of ranked sets: cian-1(v1) vs juno(v1) lost 0-2.

Source

The ladder at 03:24Z: rank 15 of 16, rating 1195 ± 247, 3 sets, 2 wins, 1 loss.

Source