Please Assist with Netlogo Model - simulation

Question

Please let me preface this with I am not a programmer by trade. I am a social scientist using M&S for some research. That being said, my goal is to use ABM (Netlogo) to create a model of state antifragility. That is a model of states that get better under stress rather than deteriorate or are resilient (return to their pre-stress levels).
The idea for this model is simple. Create agents (states) that have three properties-loops, capacity and performance. The Capacity of a state is defined as it's Agility + it's Learning + it's Power Conversion. ( I've done some regression analysis to see what the relationship between each of these variables and stress is and they are listed below. ) The state also has two loops-fragile and antifragile that are always running, but depending on the performance value and the stress value only one of those loops will activate to update the capacity/performance values to deal with the next stress. Finally, a state's performance ties all those together. That is, it is a function of capacity and stress.
States randomly roam about the world full of shocks (red patches with an intensity value). When the state comes across the patch, it interacts with that patch. To interact, it activates a loop and then performs and update of its capacity and it's performance for the next stress. This happens until a state dies (it's too fragile and fails) or it becomes the maxium value of antifragile.
UPDATED CODE BELOW ( 22 July) JenB, I took your advice and stripped it down to it's basic parts by removing the looping functions. Eventually, I'd like to get there in a future iteration, but for now I removed it. The code below is my stripped down, updated version. Where I am stuck is the stop movement function.
Starting with the latter, I am still unsure how to set something true or false. I kept getting an error about a string not a value for that command. (Again, I am really, really a beginner at this and even reading the Netlogo Dictionary isn't that easy for me.)
Now that I think about it there is a third thing. I'd also like to randomize the value of the red patches ("shocks"). I believe the way I have it set up right now is that they all have the same value, but I'd like some to be bigger or smaller.
Thank all of you for all your help in this journey!
Please see the code below:
breed [states state]
states-own [learning powerconversion agility performance category]
patches-own [intensity]
;; TO SET UP ;;
to setup
clear-all
grow-shocks
set-default-shape states "dot"
create-states 10 [
setxy random-xcor random-ycor
set color blue
set size 2.5
set performance random 100
set learning random 10
set powerconversion random 10
set agility random 10
]
reset-ticks
end
;; TO GROWN SHOCKS ;;
to grow-shocks ;; to grow shocks in the international environment do the following:
ask n-of number-shocks patches [
set pcolor red ;; make them red
set intensity random 10 ;; set their intensity to a random number between 0-10
]
end
;; TO GO ;;
to go
ask states [ ;; ask states to do the following : move, interact, update-category (AF, R, F)
move
interact
update-category
]
tick
end
;; TO MOVE ;;
to move ;; to move do the following:
right random 15
left random 15
forward 1
if abs pxcor = max-pxcor
[ set heading (- heading) ]
if abs pycor = max-pxcor
[ set heading (180 - heading) ]
end
;; TO INTERACT ;;
to interact ;; to interact with shocks do the following:
if pcolor = red [
set pcolor black set intensity 0 ;; if the patch is red, turn the patch black and set intensity to 0
update-performance ;; update-performance
update-category
]
end
;; TO UPDATE PERFORMANCE ;;
to update-performance ;; to update a state's performance do the following:
set performance (((-0.13 * learning ^ 3) + (1.89 * learning ^ 2) + (-5.72 * learning) + 8.13 ) +( 0.09 * agility ^ 3) + (1.29 * agility ^ 2) + (-3.45 * agility) + 5.57 +( 0.02 * powerconversion ^ 3) + (-0.89 * powerconversion ^ 2) + (9.93 * powerconversion) + -17.51 )
end
;; TO UPDATE STATE TYPE;;
to update-category ;; to update the state's type do the following:
if performance > 75 [ ;; if the state has a performance value of over 75, turn it green indicating an antifragile state
set color green
]
if performance < 74 and performance > 35 [ ;; if the state has a performance value between 35 and 74, turn it yellow indicating a robust state
set color yellow
]
if performance < 34 and performance > 5 [ ;; if the state has a performance value between 1 and 34, turn it red indicating a failed state
set color red
]

Answer 1

So I am guessing the line throwing the too large error is this one:
to activate-antifragileloop
set performance e ^ performance
end
This seems like a logic error to me. From the rest of your code, I am guessing performance numbers are generally in the range 0 to 100. Do you realise that e^100 = 2.6881171 x 10^43? It seems unlikely that you want performance to switch between numbers like 100 and numbers with 43 digits. I can't imagine a real world situation that you could be trying to represent where a key characteristic of the entities in the system has such a wildly varying value.
On the question of stopping, I would have another variable named something like done? that starts as false then you set it to true when you want it to stop. Then you can simply have ask states with [not done?] instead of ask states for any code that moves them around etc.
You said you are not a programmer. One of the best things a beginner can do is to make only minimal changes at a time. You have several problems with your code - this should almost never happen. Your life will be much easier if you only make one change at a time and get it working correctly before moving on. This is particularly important with NetLogo where it can be very difficult to work out whether something is working correctly because you are modelling systems that interact - how do you know whether the interaction is producing the results or a bug is producing the results?