NPC Strongholds
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It would be cool and fun to have NPC Strongholds in the highway crossing rooms. They would be small bases with walls, ramparts, towers, and creeps all protecting a storage in the middle of the room that cannot be destroyed (similar to NPC terminals), but can be robbed by players for valuable resources.
These bases would have "levels" of difficulty that would increase after being defeated by a player. Every time the stronghold is defeated, it would respawn after a time with stronger defenses with a higher quantity (or higher quality) of resources. If a stronghold is not defeated after a long period of time, the defenses and resources would reset to level 1.
Defenses could range from a couple of weak invaders at low levels, then increase to having walls of increasing strength, tower structures (could even surpass the tower limit if needed to increase difficulty) and boosted creeps. Perhaps even NPC power creeps at some point. These increasing difficulty levels would limit the amount of resources that one player could gain from these strongholds, as well as provide a challenge for those wanting to work together to try to clear them.
There could also be a leaderboard or overview statistic that would record the highest level of NPC Stronghold that you have defeated, or the number of Strongholds defeated. This would provide some kind of ranking that is related to combat ability. Currently both of the leaderboards are related to economics and I believe many would like to have some kind of combat related statistic.
These strongholds would also provide an excellent way to practice and refine attack code in a fun way that would also have rewards.
The roadmap http://support.screeps.com/hc/en-us/articles/210325285-2016-Roadmap mentions "Quests." This would be a little different from the way quests are described in the roadmap but there could be quests or "achievements" for new players to clear different levels of these strongholds. There could be a reward of credits or power or boosts for the completing these first few quests to help players get started in the market or with power creeps.
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Sounds a great way to also create more intra-alliance activity. It'd be really cool to form a raid of alliance members to take out a particularly tough stronghold (assuming a bunch of you could reach it!)
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I feel this is also a great way to test out new attack code. For those of us that don't like attacking neighbors or don't have any hostile neighbors to attack, this would be a great opportunity to do that.
In addition, it could pose as another barrier to slow the progress of expansion. A stronghold on the path to your new room may require you to send more than just a 1x MOVE 1x CLAIM creep.
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This is an excellent idea. It adds more depth to the game, and should not be hard to implement. I would also suggest that the strongholds buildings automatically disappear after a set amount of time.
Helam
“storage in the middle of the room that cannot be destroyed”I’d suggest a stronghold building. The building will have:
- minerals
- energy
- power
The building has a at least a rampart over it. You need to destroy the rampart to siphon the resources out of it. The building can also be destroyed, but this should be entirely optional.
Once the building has been secured you should be able to safely siphon the stronghold dry.
Don’t make us drop it on the ground and pick it up I don’t like spilling.Ideas for different types of strongholds:
Tier I:
- 1 Tower
- No walls
- 1 or 2 unboosted creeps defending the stronghold on ramparts
- http://i.imgur.com/nqhjs2m.pngTier II:
- 1~2 Towers
- Walls of max 100k
- 2~4 unboosted melee creeps defending the stronghold
- http://i.imgur.com/D1rb4pH.pngTier III
- 2~4 Towers
- Walls of max 1 million
- 4 unboosted melee creeps defending the stronghold
- http://i.imgur.com/HjaKAYf.pngTier IV
- 4~6 Towers
- Walls of max 10 million
- 4 unboosted guards on ramparts behind walls
- 4 boosted melee creeps defending the stronghold
- http://i.imgur.com/nZoaRLQ.pngYou get the general idea I’m going for.
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This seems like a natural extension to NPC invaders; The attack part of the defense encouragements.
Should walls drop energy? Is the ability to mine for energy part of the reward?
Other considerations are to potentially have base weighted towards the stronger side (with a rollover reset to not give well established players too much of a boon?) every time they are destroyed and to have towers only attack in a fixed range so you can at least ignore the bases if you need to.
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For determining base strength:
An evolution factor per sector or room seems appropriate. If bases keep getting wiped within reasonable time they should increase the levels, if left alone the evolution factors should be lowered.
Should walls drop energy?
I’d say yes. Normal game rules should apply.
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The way I think about Screeps is as a set of several general problems, each branching towards specificity and increasing in complexity as the game progresses. As a puzzle solver, the progression of each problem is incredibly rewarding, where your successes introduce you to new problems, enabled by a continually growing, improving, and never lost codebase.
All of the problems currently posed by the game seem designed to follow this type of progression, and I think that this suggestion of NPC Strongholds fits perfectly. Given the provided design, which feels really well developed, I think it fits into what I perceive to be the general philosophy of Screeps, while introducing several nice features. Additionally, I think several existing systems could be leveraged to make implementation fairly straightforward.
Great idea.
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Awesome idea
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Another idea that came up is the potential for raiding parties to spawn from the strongholds. They would be on par with the current invaders in unoccupied rooms but if you where to wipe out a stronghold to get at the goods (or to just stop spawns) you would face steeper competition next time the stronghold spawned...
Plus it would solve much of what bugs me about the current implementation of invaders.
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Excellent idea!
One thing I would definitely want if this was added is at least 2 different tower 'strategies' for NPC towers, possibly more. These could either be random depending on the base, or different at different levels, but I think it would be good to have some variety in behaviors and layout so that it is harder to develop one-siqe-fits-all strategies which predict NPC movement and are more like mining SK rooms than raiding a hideout.
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This sounds cool.
I'd prefer there to be an encouragement to do these things co-op: More player-player interaction is fun. Currently we only have "attacking each other" and "non-personal market trading" as the incentives to interact. You could achieve this by increasing the amount of loot if there are multiple players that are doing similar damage.
I'd like to be able to walk past a stronghold without getting shot. eg. I power mining mules or claimers getting shot would be annoying.
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Yes, and also. The strong-hold could launch an attack on those who have attacked it, thus, you might get destroyed.
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This definitely would add another dimension to the game. I like AMD's "counter-attack" suggestion, too.
