PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps

artch

> Game.rooms.E13N15.lookForAt(LOOK_POWER_CREEPS, 18,23)
< [powerCreep PC1]

How do you reproduce it?

artch

@geir1983 This mineral deposit is on cooldown, so the power doesn't work. usePower doesn't check semantics of all powers, it simply returns OK in such cases, and the check is done server side.

Geir1983

hmm, ok applying to minerals on cooldowns was working earlier this week, i assumed that was the correct behavior.

Edit: its also possible to apply to minerals in unowned rooms currently.

artch

@geir1983

its also possible to apply to minerals in unowned rooms currently.

Do you mean in rooms without controllers? That's the intended behavior.

artch

Update

OPERATE_EXTENSION behavior is changed:

Instantly fills 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% of all extensions in the room using energy in the target structure (container, storage, or terminal). Cooldown 50 ticks. Range 3 squares. Consumes 2 ops resource units.

Geir1983

@artch rooms with controllers, but no owner or built extractor. Was not sure if its intended.

Btw; the regen_source works while the source has active cooldown, maybe it should be clarified that the regen_mineral power only works while the mineral is not on cooldown. The description of the powers are pretty much identical but dont indicate this difference in behavior.

artch

@geir1983 What does room.controller.isPowerEnabled() return for that room?

Geir1983

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

room.controller.isPowerEnabled()

it returned "is not a function" , but it is enabled and returns true for the property.

artch

@geir1983 Which room?

Davaned

@artch Won't it cause the attacker/defender discrepancy you stated could not be allowed?

Everything else in screeps can't be undone. Despawning is a far more punishing road imo. It's a nice thought to prevent a malicious hacker from causing account damage, but no other similar mechanism exists. Someone with access could make you buy everything at max price and sell everything at .001 credit to delete your credits. They could completely respawn you, even copy/delete all of your code. I think adding the delay as "protection" from stupidity/malicious behavior is unnecessary. I think programmers know the cost and care required for accessing as root.

If you want to keep it as a noob protection, I think there should be a param to override it just like clicking the "I'm sure I want to do this button", although I highly doubt anyone would choose to intentionally delay themselves.

artch

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

They could completely respawn you, even copy/delete all of your code.

Neither of these actions are nearly as fatal as losing GPL to zero. Respawning is a natural process, almost all players experience it from time to time, most have smart enough code to build up from scratch. Code deletion is also not really harmful, since most veteran players already use external version control, and we also plan to introduce in-game code backup soon.

But losing GPL is huge. Hernanduer has been very busy growing his GPL over 3 years, imagine his anger if he suddenly loses it all in a moment.

artch

Announcement

We're going to schedule the release of Power Creeps for the next Monday, March 18. Stay tuned!

Geir1983

@artch Shard 1 / Room E2N11

Geir1983

Disrupt Tower is missing a cooldown description in the create power creep window

artch

@geir1983

Shard 1 / Room E2N11

This room indeed has a power-enabled controller. Didn't you enable it? I don't get what's wrong with this case?

Disrupt Tower is missing a cooldown description in the create power creep window

Thanks, fixed.

artch

Update

Power Creeps respawn cooldown has been set to the production value of 8 hours.

Also, this cooldown now is triggered when a PC dies of old age too. Otherwise it allows for too many abuse cases when it's beneficial to wait until PC dies and not renew it.

Geir1983

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

This room indeed has a power-enabled controller. Didn't you enable it? I don't get what's wrong with this case?

I was just not sure if it was intended that you could use the regen_mineral in this case.

Renaming creeps also needs looking at, its possible to do, but you have to do it blind. When pressing the Pencil icon next to the PC name on the Overview page the name disapears. You then need to delete all characters by holding down backspace and then write the new name without seeing what you are typing.

Helam

I don't like the power level cost of deleting power creeps. The cost should not scale so much, it would be easier to digest if it were a constant. I also don't like that deleting a high level power creep and deleting a low level power creep have the same high cost.

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

Each player has 30 experimentation periods initially, and we will replenish them from time to time when major balance changes occur.

These experimentation periods do resolve (though somewhat artificially) the issues above, but would any of these replenish naturally over time, even without major balance changes?

There will definitely be times when I (and probably other players as well) will want to do a massive change in code base or strategy, just for fun or to change things up. Losing potentially dozens of power levels to do this would be devastating, and in some of these cases I feel like I would rather respawn than lose those power levels.

I would rather not have to respawn, but it does seem preferable to me over losing many power levels in some cases.

Can we have our experimentation periods replenished when we respawn?

alaricdragon

@artch can we mabye not have the cool down be in hours, and instead ticks? 14400 at 2 seconds a tick would be 8 hours.

There is nothing wrong with useing hours, it's just harder to code is all. And if your useing code that can 'plan' kinda, it's a lot of randomness to have, cause tick times are not very predictable.

Geir1983

@artch there is a problem when trying to "swap" places with power creeps and regular creeps. Normally when two creeps tries to move to each others position they just swap places, but it does not work for a pc vs a normal creep. At first i thought it was my code somehow not detecting the power creeps correctly to resolve traffic issues, but i also tested moving two creeps by console so that they would swap places, but it also does not work, even with an empty main loop.