[Alliance] The Culture

I don't think that makes much sense. Efficiency is one of the main reasons to upgrade those skills.

I do agree with the REGEN_MINERAL though, it shouldn't be inactive while the mineral is on cooldown.

It appears that if another player's power creep is "visible" to your game instance, it's being added to Game.powerCreeps. The sporadic nature is coming from my observers passively scanning the map...

I don't think other's power creeps should be in my Game.powerCreeps list.

I added a check to set .memory if it wasn't set and I get this interesting error as a result:

Power Creep Processing error Could not set other player's creep memory Error: Could not set other player's creep memory
at Object.set (:40507:23)
at Object.processPowerCreeps (main:12431:18) <-- only part of this that is my code
at Object.module.exports.loop (main:12935:8) <-- only part of this that is my code
at __module (__mainLoop:1:52)
at __mainLoop:2:3
at Object.exports.evalCode (:15990:76)
at Object.exports.run (:30481:24)
at global._init.global._start (:29710:22)

Randomly, some of my power creeps will lose access to their .memory shortcut point to Memory.powerCreeps[name] and I'll receive errors saying "powercreep.memory is undefined." This is not every tick and when it happens it does not affect every power creep.

Not sure when this happened exactly, I think it was with the new UI release. For some reason the forward and back buttons on my mouse (typically buttons 4 and 5) are bound to left click functionality and there's no easy way to quickly navigate through rooms. This is especially annoying when trying to go back and forth between two rooms.

They work fine if I hover the cursor over the URL portion of the browser window, but in the tab itself all I get is dragging on the map view.

Note: this seems to affect Chrome and not Firefox.

@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

@hernanduer

Definitely still need power creep LOOK and FIND constants, or roll them under the CREEP constants.

FIND_*_POWER_CREEPS should work on the PTR currently, have you checked?

Okay, so that does exist, but it isn't in https://screeps.com/ptr/constants.js which makes it super hard to tell what constants exist. I thought that was the actual file the server used and it always had to contain what is used in game.

Operate_extensions should alleviate this some, but the really low amount of energy moved + the really long cooldown (you can get 5 50 part creeps out of 3 spawns in the time it takes for 1 fill cooldown) makes the skill practically useless and the synergy between the two skills is non-existent.

OPERATE_EXTENSIONS just seems a bit underpowered. I think a better solution is to increase its effect rather than change the mechanics. What do you think is an appropriate value?

One idea is to change its effect to a percentage of all extensions in the room: 20/40/60/80/100% of all extensions in the room are filled rather than some energy amount is sent.

That'll definitely make it stronger, but how will that factor into energy required by the power creep?

Definitely still need power creep LOOK and FIND constants, or roll them under the CREEP constants.

The disparity between operate_extensions and operate_spawn has me worried. I don't ever see a circumstance where calling operate_spawn at level 5 would be useful. The speed up is excellent, but the energy required stays the same and often that is already the primary constraint on how quickly creeps can spawn (3 healers can take quite a while to refill extensions...) Operate_extensions should alleviate this some, but the really low amount of energy moved + the really long cooldown (you can get 5 50 part creeps out of 3 spawns in the time it takes for 1 fill cooldown) makes the skill practically useless and the synergy between the two skills is non-existent.

I have a couple of proposals to alleviate this issue:

1. Change operate_spawn to also reduce energy cost by a similar percentage, but also reduce the percentages. 10/20/30/40/50% reduction in energy cost and build time would make this skill much more useful.
2. Change operate_extensions to instead treat the cargo hold of the power creep as a very large extension. This could be a buff the creep applies to itself (or maybe another creep could be possible too?) where its carry is now accessible to the spawns. The cooldown/duration could be something like 200/100, so you can't always use this, but it's good for a quick boost (also high ops cost? 25-50?) This change would move this skill from practically useless due to its cooldown and extremely subpar performance, to one that would become very useful in the right situations. And better yet, those situations work synergistically with operate_spawn.

Either of these changes would be good and make these skills much more useful. Right now I don't see myself ever using either, even in situations where spawning fast would be desired simply because it won't be possible to keep up with energy demands.

@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

Update

New feature deployed: experimentation periods. An experimentation period can be activated for 24 hours, during which power creeps are deleted without cost and without delay. Each player has 30 experimentation periods initially, and we will replenish them from time to time when major balance changes occur.

In the current state you have there, this is actually a nice solution for my problem. I understand the need for penalizing re-creation of power creeps too often, and I still disagree with losing power levels, but this seems like a generous solution that still works against anyone trying to abuse the system.

@davaned said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

Random thought: If you want to start working on goal oriented progress and more onboarding to the game, you could reward all players who reach(ed) 5 GCL with 5 free power levels. That would give players a way of messing around with power creeps and not feeling super locked out. Plays into the "hero" idea where they can get one hero creep, and understand that if they work for it they'll be able to level them up. It's harder to see the value if they don't have a taste of it, and concrete goals are great for player retention.

It's a shift from just a "raw world" type progression, but it's a thought.

Power will be buyable from NPCs on the market and the first few levels are meaningless in amount, so that doesn't really seem like a very useful thing to give for free and break all other "rules" the game has in place.

PowerCreeps aren't showing up under Room.find FIND_CREEPS or the more specific versions.

The PTR API Reference is out of date too, in particular with some constants usage and stating power creeps have indefinite lifespans.

@faff said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

I reckon the level drop penalty is a very elegant solution. It's functionally similar to proposals for hard timer lockouts but leaves player interaction as part of the system while scaling the penalty with the player's ability to mitigate it.

It's not a level drop, it's a malus to your real level. That means the scale of loss gets greater the more creeps you delete and there is nothing you can ever do to fix it. It's bad design and antithesis to fun or strategy.

@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

Honestly, I actually think you will be. Not at the start, but your pursuit of perfect optimization will inevitably lead you to the point when your every single PC has slightly modified skills tree and thus slightly modified aspects of behavior, thus effectively becoming unique "characters", unlike regular creeps which all have identical bodies. Otherwise you won't be able to achieve the desired level of optimization, identical builds of PCs won't work as good as highly optimized for given circumstances (rooms, defense/offense balance, neighbors, world location, new secret trade mechanic that will be announced soon).

Can't get to that point if deleting them costs me a usable level. I will absolutely never delete a single one and thus won't ever develop such optimizations.

Permanent loss in a game like this is ridiculous.

Well, you permanently lose almost everything when you respawn.

I have a question for you: have you ever played a persistent world online game with skills/tech trees where you are allowed to reset without cost (i.e. without some permanent loss of resources like gold, credits, skills points, etc)?

I remember the fact you keep your GCL and code being a big deal. You never lose everything when you restart, and levels are supposed to be one of those things.

Sure, some RPGs have costs for reskilling. NEVER are they the levels you're trying to reskill, and they're typically pretty cheap, in the realm of some credits or a special item you can find.