It will certainly affect me (I assemble T3 from its base minerals in one pass, except for the ones using G)

I'm not sure this will help much to stimulate fights. It mostly encourages stockpiling and increases the power of large coalitions. (a small nimble group of players will run out of boosts faster).

I would have preferred having unbalanced mineral respawn rates (perhaps by shard or general area, to encourage trading and inter-shard commerce) or have to some recipes use more then one mineral (ex: 4X + UH2O -> XUH2O), again perhaps with some random element over time to avoid the market balances out.

If it's to reduce the DB load, which I suspect, I'd prefer a change that increases both reaction time and minerals used at the same rate (ex: 10 X + 10 UH2O -> 10 XUH2O with a 50 tick cooldown)

If I would have to choose between slack and discord, I'd choose IRC on one of the big networks.

benefits:

• open standard
• won't get fired for using it at work
• lots of clients to choose from (and some of them don't eat 2GB of RAM)
• no walled garden
• tons of integration options exist
• easy to archive
• venerable
• can ignore others
• no signup required - much lower barrier of entry
• high nostalgia value, includes trout slapping

drawbacks:

• not owned by a startup desperately trying to make money or go public before funding runs out

getting this one occasionally:

[10:25:09 PM][shard0]RangeError: Array buffer allocation failed at new ArrayBuffer (<anonymous>) at typedArrayConstructByLength (<anonymous>) at new Float64Array (native) at new Heap (__runtime__:33218:27) at Object.findRoute (__runtime__:33024:13) at Object.findExit (__runtime__:33114:30) at Object.findExitTo (__runtime__:14667:29) at Object.findPathTo (__runtime__:14831:32) at Object.moveTo (__runtime__:36365:29)

Ok, got it running now.

minor nitpick, in the UI, the top right CPU/Memory might have some rounding issue. I'm seeing values like these: 60.799999999999955 / 290

that's great news !

I'm sad to report that I'm unable to use it on PTR. With an empty main loop, no other files and empty Memory, it's still returning [3:56:35 AM][shard0]Script execution timed out ungracefully, restarting virtual machine.

I haven't made my mind up on the question itself. On one hand, I'd love to have a larger universe. On the other, it's pay2win-like, and may cause even more stagnation.

However if it would be explicitly permitted, it should be done in a controlled manner; e.g require players to register their extra accounts to be linked to their main account, and ban those who don't (if there is sufficient suspicion). This has numerous benefits:

• it's possible to limit the amount (e.g max 3) or usage (max 1 per shard)
• it's possible to avoid lots of 10cpu clones (a drain on the rest of the community)
• it could be made public, to warn possible attackers (like GCL and alliance membership is an indication now)
• permits integration in the game if needed (auth keys, billing, rank, ...)
• could help avoiding "toxic" effect (new players being surprised it's allowed because the docs don't mention it at all, unfounded allegations of being an alt, less chance of "trolling" since alts are not fully anonymous, ...)
• keep track of how widespread it's use is
• limit interaction with new content like the arena minigame to the "main" account only, if needed for fairness.
• ...

basically, keep the door open to tweak and extend it later.

I too am concerned about the rate limit of 10 per hour on uploading code. It's way too restrictive.

Thinking back to when I started, I remember several days of furious coding in which I commited far more then 10 times per hour, after ditching the ingame editor. I believe it's the way most people learn a new language: change one line, commit, see if it works, rinse and repeat. it will also interfere with "printf" debugging.

I understand the devs might want to prevent excessive use (such as an external bot continuously changing code), but that should be addressed differently (increase CPU cost of uploading, use more elaborate limits, or just ignore it for now and monitor + warn players that do that)

looking great!

One suggestion: I'd love it if the shard-portals were way more rare, and if they not only occurred in highway rooms. It would add strategic value to holding certain rooms and zones for alliances. It will also help in making shard populations evolve independently from each other (other players settling the same space). As it is now, new players in shard1 may get squashed often by their upstairs neighbors.

For clarity, I'd also suggest using different naming, like "conduit" instead of "inter-shard portal", since their mechanics are very different.

ok, thanks for clarifying, that sounds reasonable.

is this an account wide limit of one deal/send every 10 ticks, or a terminal limit ?

Meaning if I own 20 rooms with a terminal each, can I still do 2 deals per tick on average (by using all available terminals, taking cooldown into account) ?