3. Attacking & healing don't use energy - why?

Attacking & healing don't use energy - why?


  • Hi all,

    I just learned that the ATTACK body parts and HEAL body parts apparently don't use energy. Assuming that's true, what is the rationale here? This seems to indicate that attacking and healing is simply a matter of putting enough body parts and sending enough creeps. There is no need to handle logistics and having an energy supply line, etc.

    Just trying to understand the design thinking behind this.

    Cheers!


  • How would you attack anyone more than a few rooms away if you also had to send waves of creeps carrying energy?


  • Hi Helios,

    I think that's the exact point. Being required to have energy for attacks to work makes it necessary to think about that logistical supply chain. It also doesn't make sense (to me) that in a game that is so strongly centered around resource management (energy, minerals, CPU time, memory, code size, etc.), attackers get unlimited free supplies, while defenders (assuming defenders use such things) have ablative, non-unlimited defenses (ramparts, constructed walls) that do have resource requirements.

    Look, I'm new (GCL2), so what do I know, but it does feel to me that not needing energy to attack doesn't fit the theme of the game. Hence, why I asked. 🙂

    Cheers!


  • You have the same resources available that the attackers are sending at you. Creeps 🙂 You also have the added bonus of hiding in ramparts and using towers to attack the enemy without the possibility of a counter attack.

    The resources available to the attacker are limited by his home economy and available boosts, not to mention the logistics of trying to maintain a supply chain and the necessary creeps to defend it would be immense, you'd probably spend more on the chain than the actual attack itself ^.^

  • Culture

    I understand your thoughts but you severely underestimate the disadvantages attackers must already deal with.

    1) Safemode rooms potentially wasting a generation's worth of high quality minerals

    2) Attacking someone puts your creeps in their territory, generally this means that they will have many more rooms within range of your creeps than you do. If you're attacking someone with 5 rooms then you have to get your creeps to one of their grouped up rooms. If you only have 1 or 2 rooms that can even reach that far, then you're fighting an uphill battle.

    3) Towers are incredibly strong especially when used correctly.

    4) Some wall positioning allows the defender to get an entire 3 rows of defending creeps behind the walls while only a single static row and possibly one flickering row of attacker creeps can get close enough. This severely limits the output of attacking creeps since they simply don't have as much firepower available in that small of a space.

    5) Defender creeps don't have to use as much move as they can often turtle, while the attacker has to go for a 1:1 ratio in most every case. This increases the defender to attacker firepower ratio even more.

     

    And here are the (sometimes possible) attacker advantages:

    1) Surprise.

     

    That's it. And with safe mode that no longer exists. So you see, there is no reason to further burden attackers and in fact the primary reason for lack of war is any combination of the 5 points I made above.