On the defensive power of strongholds
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Agreed on the overly steep difference between the Lv4 and Lv5 stronkholds. But I also do have a feeling that Lv5 only seems strong now, until someone can figure out how to cheese it...
Still, I'd love to have a few extra levels to bridge the gap between these.
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I wonder if level 4 strongholds shouldn't use tower repair when there are no creeps to shoot.
@orlet said in On the defensive power of strongholds:
Agreed on the overly steep difference between the Lv4 and Lv5 stronkholds. But I also do have a feeling that Lv5 only seems strong now, until someone can figure out how to cheese it...
Maybe. There are some known ways to "cheese" level 5s, but for the most part they just make your life easier. For example you can just copy-paste their defense code and get perfect pre-healing. That makes tough more effective and means you can save on a lot of parts and instead turn them toward damage. The fact that the defense code doesn't have any randomness is a big weakness IMO. If it just multiplied it's damage calculation for each target by
0.8 + 0.4 * Math.random()it'd be a lot more dangerous. Personally I've not abused this yet as I'm aware that they intend to improve the way strongholds work, and if that makes the defense make more effective use of their resources code to exploit these issues will become redundent.In Slack we've talked about a couple of other methods - nibbling away at corners where only one ranged creep can reach you (though repair creep causes problems, as do strongholds without exposed cornes), and using fortify+sheild (helped by the fact strongholds don't shoot power creeps) to create a indestructable cover to shoot at the stronghold from. They're quite a bit more complex than the cheese for lower levels 4s and aren't so clearly cheese.
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@tigga I think strongholds don't shoot power creeps is just a bug.
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@nicle said in On the defensive power of strongholds:
@tigga I think strongholds don't shoot power creeps is just a bug.
I'm sure it is, yes.
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Changes today are good. Bring level 4s up to a point where you can't just snipe them, brings level 5s down a bit so that if you get lucky they're only "hard" rather than "very hard" and the double fortifier means "fixed function" strategies such as corner nibbling may just fail due to lack of damage.
Nukes are still an issue IMO.
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Nukes still OP.
Stuff like this should not be possible https://screeps.com/a/#!/history/shard3/E16S26?t=17766300
Those nukes, on landing, will kill 3-4 towers, and all the ramparts in the top left. Moving in and killing the stronghold after the nukes land is not "easy" but also far far far easier than actually killing the stronghold without nukes.
IMO we either need special rules for strongholds (eg. nukeproof, or each nuke landing reduces core loot by 50%), or strongholds need to last <50k ticks so nukes can't actually land on them.
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@tigga These nukes costs 2.4 million energy and 40k ghodium in addition to what is needed to finish it off. Not to mention the the 50k tick lead time and 100k cool down on your nukers which could have a strategic cost. I feel like these strongholds are practice for bunker busting and nukes are a valuable tool in that effort IMO.
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@tehfiend said in On the defensive power of strongholds:
@tigga These nukes costs 2.4 million energy and 40k ghodium in addition to what is needed to finish it off. Not to mention the the 50k tick lead time and 100k cool down on your nukers which could have a strategic cost. I feel like these strongholds are practice for bunker busting and nukes are a valuable tool in that effort IMO.
Which is nothing compared to what's inside them.
Beating top tier strongholds should require top tier code. Not just dumping nukes.
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My ideas of nerfing nuke-abuse of strongholds :
- Strongholds could have a nuker that would just reply with nuke to any nuke sent to room with stronghold
- Landing a nuke in stronghold room causes non-invader creeps TTL reduced X time faster (stacks) for Y ticks
- Landing a nuke in stronghold room causes damage to non-invader creeps by X hits (stacks) for Y ticks
- Invader turrets have X% chance per tick of shooting down nuke if not healing/attacking/repairing
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@tigga Shouldn't nukes destroy all the container content in the room?
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@tgdgnu said in On the defensive power of strongholds:
@tigga Shouldn't nukes destroy all the container content in the room?
No, and the good loot is in the core anyway.
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Just to document, this strategy doesn't work anymore as of June 2020. The creeps will raise the ramparts to the equivalent damage of the nukes. Maybe its possible to overwhelm the repair power with like 6 nukes but I didn't try.
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@zortea said in On the defensive power of strongholds:
Just to document, this strategy doesn't work anymore as of June 2020. The creeps will raise the ramparts to the equivalent damage of the nukes. Maybe its possible to overwhelm the repair power with like 6 nukes but I didn't try.
They always did. I don't see anything in the souce to suggest this has changed recently.
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@tigga said in On the defensive power of strongholds:
They always did. I don't see anything in the souce to suggest this has changed recently.
@tigga said in Right now it is very easy to take down a L5 stronghold with two nukes and loot 3/4 containers.:
Then I don't understand how you can clear a L5 stronghold with 2 nukes like you said a few months ago. Right now the repairer will fully repair its entire damage. Do you mean just use the nuke as a distraction for the repairer?
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@zortea said in On the defensive power of strongholds:
@tigga said in On the defensive power of strongholds:
They always did. I don't see anything in the souce to suggest this has changed recently.
@tigga said in Right now it is very easy to take down a L5 stronghold with two nukes and loot 3/4 containers.:
Then I don't understand how you can clear a L5 stronghold with 2 nukes like you said a few months ago. Right now the repairer will fully repair its entire damage. Do you mean just use the nuke as a distraction for the repairer?
~9 months ago there was a change where repairers went from bredth-first unproritized repairs to depth-first prioritzed repairs. That was an improvement, but really just means you need more nukes. Nukes are cheap.