[GCL] GCL - Circumventing the "cap" is ridiculously easy
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I agree that the 15 energy per room limit seems off, and this mechanic seems inconsistent with that if the purpose was to limit the rate of player growth. Personally, I've found this mechanic to add a whole new layer to the game. Suddenly it matters how efficient your SK rooms are, since you actually have some way to use that energy. Also, figuring out the best way to leverage this so that I'd have more minerals than I would otherwise was really fun.
Keep in mind, once power processing matters, this might no longer be the best use of energy. But this could still be one way to spend energy strategically.
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bonzai, I appreciate that you've invested your code in this but that's not a good enough reason to keep the mechanic- by that logic I should be able to have more than 100 flags for the rest of this game, because I followed the rules that were given at the time. Obviously I'm pretty salty about that change, just like you might be able this one, but that alone is not a reason for not doing something.
If this tactic is allowed to stand then we should also remove the 15e/t cap at RCL8.
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tedivm, I agree, the devs should listen to the community on this. Still gonna reserve the right to be salty!
I think nerfing this is an objectively bad idea. Skorp put it really well, the way it is now there is pretty much no incentive to be efficient with your energy harvesting. At some point each player starts making progress at the very same rate. Just look at the player progress graphs in the monthly review. That's not a competition, that's just a waiting game. Perhaps lifting the cap on all controllers is the answer, at least it would make things more consistent.
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I, for one, welcome a return to growth curves like these
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It seems to me that the 15/tick limit serves three purposes.
- To make is that that RCL8 rooms can't snowball and totally boost GCL well beyond what a RCL 5 or RCL 6 room could.
- To encourage the use of XGH20
- To encourage established players to go get new rooms even though it means giving up a RCL 8 room.
So what ever solution,
#1 seems like it's broken. You can have an RCL 3 room "out produce" an RCL 8 room. I agree with the goal, but the limit doesn't seems to actually accomplish it. I think that is part of the problem. If the RCL 6 room was capped at 15/tick too then this would be a non-issue
#2 seems like it works. It's currently the only way to "legit" break the 15/tick cap.
#3 This may or may not be working I don't know.
I see two fixes.
Fix A)
Add the cap to all levels but make it sliding. cap = RCL * 10 or something. Boosts can still break the map as before. So a RCL 6 room is only going to get 60/tick. For people building the room, they have to decide if it's wort it to take the GCL loss, and really boost the room using tons of outside energy, or build at/near the cap. Because the cap is there, the incentive to use these "less reputable" methods fade. But using a dead storage to rebuild a room is still viable.
#1 Snow balling is kept in check, though the limit is raised a bit. I can argue that RCL 8 rooms should be more valuable then RCL 6 rooms.
#2 Boosts are still important.
#3 You probably won't want to move rooms and give up your RCL 8 room. I don't know if this is actually different from now or not.
Fix
Keep the RCL 8 limit but apply the increase to the GCL only when you go up in RCL and only the first time. When you git RCL 8 GCL progress applies normally.
For example RCL 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 would only increese GCL 3 times. This would have a lot of ripple effects though. Downgrades become horrid, as all that energy you poor into restoring a RCL is just lost. Loosing a room means loosing the RCL progress that would have gone into GCL. On the upside it makes holding on to a room more critical.
#1 Same effect as now.
#2 Same effect as now
#3 Still no real idea
Fix B is the larger game changer, but could introduce more fun.
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I think this mechanic can stay to allow players going for leaderboard 1 the opportunity to pump as much energy as they can, but to prevent the gcl getting out of control, Change it that only RCL 8 rooms count towards GCL after GCL gets to 10 (all rooms still count towards leaderboard).
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why not have all (your) buildings removed when you unclaim ?
this would fix this issue nicely , and prevent abuse
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It's not just about unclaming, it's also about just downgrading.
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@ChaosDMG That's awful, there would be no way to catch up. Or at the very least catching up would take decades.
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Well if they do anything to prevent it now it will be hard to catch up for players that didnt use this opportunity.
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It's not only the issue of GCL/tick It's also the issue of CPU per GCL
Currently, when you have a level 8 room you can do 15CP per 0.2 CPU while other rooms realistically can do 40CP per 0.2 CPU.
I personally have 30 rooms costing at least 6 CPU when all upgrading.
Yet I can achieve the same with dumping energy into another room and use 1 room to do all the upgrading.
This is why I think the current limits should be revised, or at least needs some balancing.
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I agree some balancing need to happen. It should not be possible to earn more GCL in RCL levels 1-7 then you can in RCL 8.
That said, there is already a MASSIVE gap to cover if a new player is trying to get onto a top 10 list.
There needs to be someway that the game can "adjust" so it's not just who has been playing the longest, while at the same time, there should be a benefit to a carefully crafted long standing empire.
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Have structures decay, and not be repairable when the room is below the RCL level for the structure.
If a terminal decayed at a rate so that by the time the controller decade to RCL 4 the terminal popped, the issue would largely go away.
It would also still allow for some recovery via terminal in a dead room.
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Yeah, I think this is the best solution. Simply making structures decay when the room level can't support them would solve this issue. It still allows people to raid their neighbors to steal resources, since structures will need time to decay, but it prevents abusing those structures existence.
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i'm not so sure decay is the solution. it takes only 1.5 M energy or so to get back to RCL 6 so it's quite fast if you're able to send it using terminal. less than 10K ticks or so , so less than a RL day.
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I don't think the issue is the structures or terminals. You can easily get around this by just using a room next to a level 8 room. It is a bigger conception of limiting energy into controllers at level 8. As it stands there is two worldviews.
1. Don't limit controller upgrade in any way.
2. Limit level 8 rooms to 15 energy/tick. Don't limit lower level rooms.I would argue both of these are the same. Either you have a world where people upgrade controllers how they feel they want. Or you have a world where if you want to be successful you force the player to funnel energy to lower level rooms. If the goal is to limit upgrade for larger players, a larger player will eventually implement #2 anyway. Give it six months and everyone in the top 20 will be using this method or they won't remain in the top 20. New players will observe and emulate top players and you have the same problem that was intended to be solved with limiting level 8 rooms. I strongly feel the limit needs to be removed and higher and higher GCL should require a greater jump in control points. This allows newer players to get a foothold, removes the arbitrary limit on level 8 rooms, and slows bigger players down.
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Another solution could be introducing a long cooldown period after unclaiming the controller for the same player to claim it again. What do you think about it?
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I don't think a cooldown period will solve it, just change the dynamics. For instance, if someone was cycling the rooms over a 50k period and you added a 200k cooldown they would be able to achieve the same effects using four rooms instead of the original one.
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a cooldown period might be a good idea even if it doesnt solve this problem. The reason you would unclaim a room and claim it again shortly would most likely be to abuse some sort of game mechanic.
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>>> "Another solution could be introducing a long cooldown period after unclaiming the controller for the same player to claim it again. What do you think about it?"
If you wish to maintain the 15 energy/tick limit another idea might be that if you unclaim a room and then reclaim it that the limit of 15 energy/tick starts from GCL 3 or so. This would mean that if you want to pump up rooms you would be forced to continually seek out new rooms as the ones you've used become consumed. It also provides a consequence of sorts to unclaiming a room. To bonzai's point, gaining levels will very much be a waiting game again as it is now.
What I like about this approach is that the most successful player who chooses not to be in the waiting game becomes one who is nomadic and is always seeking out new territory. I could see this also increase the need for player vs player interaction since you need to take new territory after you've used up old ones. It also gives a more poignant reason to improve new room build up code. Personally I'd be too lazy to go that direction but I'd be happy to see people get the rewards of putting in that effort.
