3. PTR Changelog 2018-08-28

PTR Changelog 2018-08-28


  • Thank you @artch for taking our feedback into consideration and being so engaging in this discussion.

    @likeafox @omnomwombat I think a very valid point of reference to this discussion is how the (now established) mechanic of temple rooms came about.

    The meta and tactics of the game have evolved over the years and it's worth pointing out that temple rooms were not a thing until good old @bonzaiferroni actually came up with the tactic.

    It's also worth noting, that originally bonzai had been relying on a undocumented mechanic that you could send energy to any terminal regardless of the room's level. So originally, the temple room was pretty simple to code and a very powerful tool to get around the RCL8 limitation.

    At the time there were a lot of discussions around the balance of this particular behavior. In the end, it was decided that the concept of this temple room is a clever tactic/mechanic that should stay, but the "terminal abuse" needed to be patched. Since that time (3 years ago?) the concept of temple rooms has continued to be refined (as seen here), but patching the terminal abuse was undeniably a valid balancing adjustment.

    Sometimes the line is pretty blurry between bug, abuse and feature. I would suggest that in such cases it is acceptable for the devs to make a choice towards what fits with their vision.

  • Culture

    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.

    Dammit, you finally caught me 😉

    It's definitely expensive to do, but it's great for boosting up rooms that don't have terminals yet.

    I don't really consider this "abuse", but I also have no problem with it being less efficient- this change makes sense to me, even if I am going to lose some of the benefits.


  • Indeed, as far as I can tell, this remains a viable tactic in some very specific circumstances. This change simply reduces the effectiveness of the strategy somewhat.

    And now that this change does not impact boosts, I think it's a pretty good balance change.


  • While I agree that its kind of silly that you should use anything other then CARRY parts to transport energy/resources, this change is just a pretty crude fix to treat the problem, rather then actually cure it.

    The core issue at hand here, is the fact that CARRY doesn't hold enough energy relative to the cost of the other creep parts. In essence, the energy content of a single HEAL part is equal to the carry capacity of 5 CARRY parts. I don't think nerfing recycle is the proper way to fix this imbalance, but rather adjusting either part costs or carry capacity is the more proper fix.

    Additionally, applying a flat 30% tax on creep recycling feels like a sudden departure from the way other other game mechanics are balanced (e.g. creep renewing cost/tick time), which is that of a near zero-sum game. With this change, the instant I spawn a creep (regardless of purpose), I lose 30% of the energy cost of that creep instantly, which I don't think makes any sense.

    The idea that you get less energy back for 'used' creep parts is already implemented as is, i.e. older creeps return (proportionally) less energy based on TTL. So I don't really buy that as justification for adding this recycle tax.

    I think being able to fluidly convert between raw energy and creep parts is a really nice design choice, that shouldn't be abandoned simply b/c players are using creep parts in ways they weren't originally intended. It's also not like there aren't other cost factors the come into play when turning energy into creep parts (i.e. spawn time/pressure, CPU costs, etc.), so there are still interesting optimization choices to be made on the part of the player.

    just my 2c

    ☝👍
    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @issacar

    the instant I spawn a creep (regardless of purpose), I lose 30% of the energy cost of that creep instantly, which I don't think makes any sens

    When you buy a brand new car from a dealer, you instantly lose 30% of its market price, and it makes perfect sense.

    👎
    1 Reply

  • @artch

    When you buy a brand new car from a dealer, you instantly lose 30% of its market price, and it makes perfect sense.

    Except that is one of the canonical examples of why car dealerships are infuriating to deal with, precisely b/c it doesn't make sense.

    If you want to restrict the player's ability to convert between raw energy and creeps, even if its a design choice I personally don't agree with, thats still fine.

    The issue is, this doesn't really fix the problem that you claim you want to solve. If you want to transfer a large amount of energy via creeps, then using HEAL parts is still going to be a better option then using CARRY parts (unless you want to use boosts, which was still the case even before this change).

    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @issacar The solution that you propose is way more breaking to the game balance, it will deprecate almost any tactic and calculation of every player made from the game launch.


  • @artch

    I am well aware of that fact and would not seriously propose you to implement such a change as stated. I was simply pointing out the core issue and why it exists in the first place and to put into perspective how your proposed change relates to the problem which it tries to solve.

    Either way, it won't seriously impact me as I don't actively use this method for energy transport (precisely b/c I think its counter-intuitive to transport energy with anything other then CARRY).


  • @artch Are we going to use real world examples to justify one's stance? Can you heal in the real world? No? So we should remove it.

    I agree with Issacar, and believe the main problem isn't recycleCreep - but CARRY, and the cost of the part. I know you feel you have it all balanced out and thought out, but there are some balance issues with CARRY, and has been from the beginning. Of all the body parts, CARRY is the one with the most changes, from it creating fatigue to how it's minerals work.

    @artch do you believe CARRY right now is balanced?

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  • @likeafox Whoah whoah what do you have against doctors healing? I personally find the unflagging cooperation of thousands of individuals far more unlikely, we should add a rebellion mechanic to screeps.

    Remember when the carry boost also made you require more move parts to get around? I'm all in favor of making logical changes to get it in a more balanced state. Honestly I think harvest would be another good one to look at, maybe it should make you mildly more efficient as well as faster.

    What would people feel a balanced amount for carry to handle? I'm not sure it would be a good idea to increase the price of carry, given how crucial it is in low level rooms.

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  • FWIW I have roughly as many transport creeps as I do harvesting creeps


  • @davaned said in PTR Changelog 2018-08-28:

    I personally find the unflagging cooperation of thousands of individuals far more unlikely, we should add a rebellion mechanic to screeps.

    What about ant colonies? I haven't heard of any rebellions in there. And creeps on their own definitely don't have the intelligence to be called sentient beings 🙂


  • In terms of CARRY, a fun suggestion would be 100 Holding for 125 energy - and each tier boost 200/300/400. No changes to recycleCreep so this would make the heal/move vs carry/move more interesting, Spawn 300 - can do 2Carry/1Move.

    1 Reply

  • @likeafox said in PTR Changelog 2018-08-28:

    In terms of CARRY, a fun suggestion would be 100 Holding for 125 energy - and each tier boost 200/300/400. No changes to recycleCreep so this would make the heal/move vs carry/move more interesting, Spawn 300 - can do 2Carry/1Move.

    Seems like a pretty massive rebalance to carry with quite a few side effects. Most notably, full size haulers would now be larger than containers, which would have a big impact on general energy harvesting.

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  • I kind of feel like no matter what size carry parts are (within reason), you'd always wish they could be bigger

    👆

  • @tigga said in PTR Changelog 2018-08-28:

    Most notably, full size haulers would now be larger than containers, which would have a big impact on general energy harvesting.

    I'm sorry, but I fail to see how having a hauler larger than container can be bad -- just make smaller haulers, or have one hauler service multiple containers. Besides, boosted haulers right now can be larger than containers already.

    I'm kind of with likeafox here, it's not a problem with creep recycling, but rather with how limited CARRY part is.

    1 Reply

  • @orlet said in PTR Changelog 2018-08-28:

    @tigga said in PTR Changelog 2018-08-28:

    Most notably, full size haulers would now be larger than containers, which would have a big impact on general energy harvesting.

    I'm sorry, but I fail to see how having a hauler larger than container can be bad -- just make smaller haulers, or have one hauler service multiple containers. Besides, boosted haulers right now can be larger than containers already.

    I didn't say it was bad. I said it would have a big impact on energy harvesting. A few things:

    1. Smaller haulers are less efficient. This is not a solution.
    2. As far as I'm aware most people don't run multiple containers per hauler. I agree this is what you'd want to aim for to be efficient but it adds a lot of complexity and changes some fundamental aspects of remote harvesting (eg. it makes one soruce rooms less attractive, it makes sources close to each other more attractive). Lots of people have lots of code that'd have to be rewritten. I consider this a big impact and as such it's not a change that should be made without serious consideration.
    3. Nobody (AFAIK) uses boosted carry for general hauling from sources. There are a few very narrow cases where it's almost economical but for the most part it's just a waste of resources.

  • I too think problem lies with CARRY part, not HEAL part. Specifically with how much energy CARRY can carry. And I agree that balancing should break as little code as possible.

    So my proposition is: add another part that can only carry energy, but can carry more of it. Nobody gets his code broken (everything works as before), transition to new, more economical part can be pretty easy for everybody and HEAL mules becomes a lot less attractive.

    I'm not sure what parameters should new part have exactly, but it should allow carrying more energy than it and MOVE parts cost, so that transporting energy over large distances (when only one round trip is possible) would still be economical. Probably making CARRY+MOVE only creeps live longer would do the trick too.

    Hmm, that gives me another idea - make HEAL creeps live shorter, similar to CLAIM parts mechanics? (That one is game breaking though)


  • I kinda like the compressed energy idea or the ability to convert some mineral(s) directly to energy.

    A capacitor part also sounds very interesting, but I suspect that will just make carry a rarely used part (maybe that's ok?).

    However, just buffing up the carry boosts might be enough to fix the healcarry problem. I think it's quite apparent that the boosts not powerful enough because no one uses them. Make a T1 boosted carry equal to heal carry at range 50; (+200 instead of +50?). Plus this will have minimal impact on existing code since the boosts is nearly unused.

  • Dev Team

    I think it's quite apparent that the boosts not powerful enough because no one uses them.

    I use full-boosted transports to receive ~10k of energy once I have storage built (just to store boosts recovered from recycled transports). As far as I know, many military players use carry boost to have rcl6 at enemy territory as fast as possible (and it's really fast, I'm able to raise a room in less than 50k ticks). So when you say "nearly unused" I feel like I disagree.