PTR Changelog 2018-08-28
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This post describes changes on the Public Test Realm.
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New performant methods
Game.map.getRoomTerrain,Room.getTerrain, and prototypeRoom.Terrain. Old methodGame.map.getTerrainAt -
Change creep recycle energy return from 100% to 70%. UPD: Mineral return is not changed and equals to 100%.Max energy return from creep recycle is limited to 125 units per body part.
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SIGN_NOVICE_AREAandSIGN_RESPAWN_AREAare now considered deprecated and replaced with one constantSIGN_PLANNED_AREA. -
Creep.buildnow is not blocked by the room controller level, you can build any construction site if it's already placed.ERR_RCL_NOT_ENOUGHis removed from this method (engine#77 by WolfWings).
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What's the reasoning behind the recycle nerf? It hits a lot of interesting ideas about sending boosted creeps out to do a job and returning and recycling once the job was done. I don't think these stratgies are really imbalanced, so it feels out-of-place to nerf them.
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Thanks for the update! But I do want to make a complaint against the recycle nerf. Same question as Tigga for the rest.
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Thumbs down to recycle nerf. Thumbs up for new updates and trying new things.
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The 100% return allowed to abuse this mechanic to transport energy via HEAL creeps, recycling them at the destination. And it seemed too much in general since they are "used" after all.
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@artch I'm not familiar with this mechanic, but I see what you mean. That sounds like a very clever use of the system.
Was somebody actually doing this?
It feels like the cost effectiveness really depends on the distance between start and destination. I'm not really sure it is cost effective at all.
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Thanks for the reply and my 2cents. With the upcoming power creep capabilities the ability to convoy energy to rooms and maintain the necessary logistics train will become increasingly important. Just throwing it out there in case that wasn't being considered with regards to balancing now and in the future.
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Was somebody actually doing this?
Yes, a lot of people. We did our research and the math has shown that this change is going to make it more balanced.
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Ah, that's an interesting exploit. It seems to me it's not cost effective as it stands, it just saves CPU and spawn time. I'm trying to figure out how much that matters compared to how much the cool non-standard boost ideas are being nerfed. For example there are a few ways to deal with SK room invaders:
- Have guards up 100% of the time (expensive)
- Spawn a unboosted response (slow but cheap)
- Spawn a boosted response and recycle it after the job is done (fast and not much more expensive than 2).
If the recycle rate drops to 70% option 3 (which nobody much uses anyway) won't be nearly so good of an option.
Another cool idea is to use harvest boosts for extreme CPU reduction. Place the spawn next to a source, build a big creep with harvest+a small amount of carry+boosts, clear out the source in 5 ticks then recycle. It's not a huge gain in CPU but it's also non-zero. Post nerf it's just not economically viable.
One-way carry boosts are another use case of limited time boosts. Given this seems one of the few uses of carry boosts it's strange that this nerf would hit it too.
I don't know if having a separate recycle rate for energy and boosts would work?
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@artch The core problem is that energy has really poor mobility, hauler cost ratio compared to what they can carry per lifetime is pretty low. Even for haulers recycling them is, or was, a signifcant portion of their delivery.
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Alternatively, what if a spawn's energy recycling ability was capped to the room's energyCapacityAvailable? At low RCL that's much too small to get much use out of recycling heal creeps produced by a different room.
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@artch Out of curiosity, if this is a sandbox game specifically designed to let players do whatever they want and some players identify a way to transport energy more effectively (I too agree that energy is too immobile), then why is it an issue? Is there a reason that energy was intentionally made so difficult to transport?
Alternatively, a lot of players use recycle to recoop boosts for temporary use creeps. Is there any way to use the 70% for the energy recovery, but leave boosts at 100%?
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I see now.
In that case, I feel SemberRabbit's proposal has real merit. 70% energy, 100% boosts would nerf that particular mechanic but retain significant value for strategies involving boost use.
I'm not sure in what specific case that heal haul strategy was used, but a rough analysis indicates it would only be useful in:
- rooms with no terminal (so pre RCL6)
- rooms within short distance (low ttl would make it less useful compared to regular haul)
That seems a pretty limited strategy as is, but maybe I've misunderstood the point. Is someone using this to transport energy between rooms with terminals? Or are we talking about inter shard transport?
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Nvm, just found out on slack the specific case where this mechanic is actively used (and encouraged).
Temple nearby rooms (very short distance) in the energy gap at RCL 4-5.
So, I'll stick to the original suggestion by semper. Please make the efficiency decrease impact energy and not boosts. Or cap the energy return based on room energy available capacity to permanently disable this issue.
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@atavus HEAL hauling is good for scu, feels useful for the whole claimer range (600 tiles away)
cap the energy return based on room energy available capacity
That won't help, a player still can spawn smaller MOVE/HEAL haulers and achieve the same bandwidth/scu.
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Is there any way to use the 70% for the energy recovery, but leave boosts at 100%?
Yep, that would complicate some code, but it's possible. The aforementioned scenarios of boost+recycle usages are convincing enough.
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OK let's keep mineral return rate at 100%.
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This post is deleted!
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@likeafox See the post above, boosts recycle is not touched.
Honestly, do you really think that the HEAL hauling is something that falls under the category of clever tactics, and not an abuse of a mechanic that hasn't been well thought on launch which is improved now? There is no strict scope of what is right, but there is some balancing process, and I don't think you would really want it to stop at some point, it's good for any game.
Also, it's the PTR purpose to help us polish (or even revert) the upcoming changes. So yes, some PTR changes may be a bit not fully thought out, and it's perfectly fine.
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I don't understand what's the problem of using HEAL parts as a way to transport energy, but assuming there's a good reason to prevent that, why penalise everyone using recycle? If the goal is not to discourage the use of recycle in general, why not just cap the energy recovered by body part to .7 * 250 * ttl / 1500?
