apologies i've not read through all the recent posts - assuming i'd understand it 
Hello old friend! I'm very pleased to see you jump into the conversation. I have every indication, now, that the MOTO developers have simply given up, so it is good to see some other smart, respected folks like yourself joining in! With enough of us still caring we *CAN* save this coin.
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it seems to me that all the maps being completed can be done by humans just as fast
the problem maybe is just the generation of the maps
all the recent completed maps look like this:
the problem maybe is just the generation of the maps
all the recent completed maps look like this:
Yes, the current iteration of bots are very simple/naive, not even as smart as the most basic of huc bots.
Humans can certainly solve these maps within the target time, the problem is that until the difficulty retarget and "difficulty time warp" problems are addressed, the humans don't even "get to try" because even if they were given the same "easy maps" that the bots select for themselves the human simply can't press the keys fast enough to solve before a bot does, and their map resets.
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the bots don't need to be that "good" (assuming they are bots) - they just need someway of finding easy paths by generating millions of maps - probably someone could just generate the maps the same way and then play it as a human (assuming this isn't what's happening now)
I might be able to be convinced to release a client patch which would generate and select a map for a human using the same or similar heuristics as what the bots use to select them. This would increase humans' margin a bit, but I suspect that the block frequency, and subsequently the map reset frequency, would still overwhelm the humans.
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maybe if each map has some permenant blockage to prevent it being just a "freefall"
very crude image example - and would need to be thought about more
this way, any bots need to move / change directions - probably/maybe making it more complicated, so they can't just fall to the coin (they will still do it eventually) - and maybe the blockages would need to move slightly randomly based on blockhash (so doesn't change when F6), but atm i think they aren't as smart as people think (from looking at the replays).
wouldn't be a permanent solution mind you
I put this in the same category as simply increasing the map size; something that would hinder the current naive bots, but would have little or no impact on the upcoming wave of "smart" bots.
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note: I could be wrong and the bots have it down to perfection - and the generation of the maps in this way is just an extra bump for completing it quicker
You are not wrong, but it is just a stop gap solution.
In any case, this is still a bit "cart before horse" since the most critical problem right now is not really the bots' dominance, but the potential for someone to use their bots to (massively) fork the network with a (possibly difficulty time-warp based) 51% attack.