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lostandscared
lostandscared

Reputation: 13

How to kill and regenerate turtles every set number of ticks

The model I am working on simulates a group of workers working on a team project. I am trying to add a on/off switch titled "replacement." The intended outcomes are:

When it is on: 30% of existing turtles of breed employees die, and equal number of new turtles are introduced.

When it is off: No turtles die, and all turtles generated at setup will work on the project from start to finish.

The purpose of killing off the turtles is the turtle-own variable "skills." I am trying to simulate a scenario where people resign from a company and new people are hired, which will result in a change of skill level.

If it is easier to change the skill level of 30% of turtles every 20 ticks instead of killing/regenerating, that would be perfect, but I was unable to figure it out.

My attempt at this problem is shown below. It runs without any errors, but I confirmed that it's not killing/respawning 30% of turtles every set number of ticks. Any helpful guidance will be much appreciated.

to go
  if all? patches [ workload = 0 ] [ stop ]
  ifelse replacement [hire] [continue]
  recolor
  tick
end

to hire
  if ticks > 0 and ticks mod 20 = 0 [
    ask n-of (count employees * 0.30) employees [die]
    create-turtles number_of_workers * 0.30 [
        set breed employees
        setxy random-xcor random-ycor
        set shape "person"
        set color black
        set size 1
        set skills random-float 1]
  ]
    ask employees [move]
    ask leaders [move]
end

to continue
  ask employees [move]
  ask leaders [move]

end

Upvotes: 0

Views: 79

Answers (2)

JenB
JenB

Reputation: 17678

From your description of the problem, I am not sure why removing the if ticks > 0 and solved it. I am wondering if you perhaps had the "replacement" variable set to false, and the hire procedure would not have been called.

Regardless, you also asked about just changing the skill set every 20 ticks. You could do this:

to go
  if all? patches [ workload = 0 ] [ stop ]
  if replacement? and ticks mod 20 = 0 [hire]
  move-people
  recolor
  tick
end

to hire
  ask n-of (count employees * 0.30) employees
  [ set breed employees
    set skills random-float 1
  ]
end

to move-people
  ask employees [move]
  ask leaders [move]
end

I also reorganised slightly in a way that is intended to make it easier to debug. You had the moving in both the "hire" and "continue" procedures. Clearly you want that to always happen, so that is now explicit in the "go" procedure (and I changed the name to be more descriptive).

Now the "hire" procedure simply changes the skills of existing employees. Note, however, that any other variables (such as leader, size, colour and position) are not affected. If you go this approach, you may want to indicate in some way that they are new hires.

The "hire" procedure is now clearly called when the "replacement?" switch is on and also a multiple of 20 ticks. If you have part of the condition in the calling procedure ("go") and part in the procedure itself ("hire") then it's easy to forget the existence of whichever half you are not looking at.

Upvotes: 1

lostandscared
lostandscared

Reputation: 13

I ended up finding the answer on my own. Removing "ticks > 0 and" from the hire function solved it :)

Upvotes: 1

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