3. Repair some elses creeps or upgrade their controller

Repair some elses creeps or upgrade their controller


  • Hi there. I've just started playing with a friend. After he has logged off I've seen that all his creeps died and now his controller decays.

    So I've build a creep on my side to upgrade his controller. I wasn't expecting that I couldn't do it and was suprised that the method upgradeController returned ERR_NOT_OWNER.

    You are not the owner of this creep or the target controller.

    My Question

    • Why can't I upgrade other players controllers?
    • Why can't I repair their creeps?
    • Why can't I transfer energy to their buildings?
    • (I haven't tried to repair another players creep or to transfer energy to another players spawn yet, but the documentation says that this is impossible too)

    It seems logical to me that I can't do "bad" stuff like harvesting their resources, but why can't I do "good" stuff?


  • You can, just not upgradeController. The documentation for upgradeController states:

    ERR_NOT_OWNER: You are not the owner of this creep or the target controller.

    Whereas for transfer, repair, build, heal and rangedHeal, the documentation states:

    ERR_NOT_OWNER: You are not the owner of this creep.

    By "this creep", it means the one doing the action. So you can't instruct somebody else's creep to heal you (obviously), but you can instruct your own creep to heal someone else's.


  • You can absolutely withdraw from another players structures. I'm pretty sure you can transfer into other players creeps / structures. I think you can heal another players creeps, and I'm pretty sure you can repair another players structures.

    The only one really missing is upgradeController. I agree I think there is no reason to prevent it since it would allow novel behaviors of players working together. I've tried to do this in the past but in the end we settled for me dumping a pile of energy right next to the controller so they could upgrade it themselves.