3. what do people use containers and storage for?

what do people use containers and storage for?


  • hi, I'm very new so this may be a dumb question.

    I notice that we get the ability to make containers and storage very early on, but I'm wondering what use people have for these in rooms with low controller levels?

    I'm guessing that containers and storage are not automatically connected to the spawn capacity like extensions, so about the only use I can see would be as fuel bunkers for towers.  I'm just wondering whether I'm missing anything obvious so I thought I'd ask:

    what are people using containers and storage structures for early on in the game?

  • Culture

    It's much easier to maintain a stable economy using less CPU when you can maintain a storage buffer. The chances of having resource starvation decrease. If you spawn a big creep and have the energy for it in storage it's easy to refill the extensions, otherwise you have to wait for mining to occur.

    Containers are often used in mining so that the miner can drop energy onto the ground (and into the container) without having to deal with energy decay. Any resource, including energy, will decay when left on the ground and not in a structure or creep.

  • SUN

    A slight expansion: A WORK creep without CARRY will drop anything directly onto the ground; but a container will pick up anything dropped on top of it.

    Storage on the other hand can store a massive amount of multiple resources. All of which decay if left on the ground.

    I also use storage levels to control my economy - construction doesn't occur if energy reaches critical levels for example.


  • storage and containers simplify the problem of dedicating creeps to certain tasks. without them, if you want one creep that just harvests and one that just carries stuff, you've got to coordinate handing off resources between them, or drop it on the ground and let it decay. if you let the harvester sit on a container then they can drop the resources with no penalty. also, for remote mining, your haulers can put things in storage when they get back to base, rather than having to find a worker to hand it off to.

    PS: very sorry for attacking you. sent a message in-game.


  • Awesome, thank you all for the answers

    Controller level four is just the point where i'm starting to think about rewriting my scripts so that I can have dedicated miners and dedicated haulers rather than combines so I can see now how a container under the miner's position will help enormously.  

    I'm gonna have to think a lot more deeply on having a central storage and using its level for economy control, maybe I have too much bias towards lean processes.  Does anyone ever search for or conduct hit and run (haul) attacks on outlying or singleton rooms with fat storage?  And can you use storage to responsively spawn a burst of defenders? or are spawners too slow for that even with sufficient energy on hand?

     

    thanks again

    re: sparr, no worries neighbor 🙂  I can see from the email alerts that it was a once off border incident rather than intentional attack, thanks for letting me know.


  • Given how long it takes to go through walls, storage provides ample time to get out a lot of defenders or pump what is needed into towers. As for raiding for energy. If you're spending the resources and CPU to get into someone's storage, everyone destroys the rooms spawners and working creeps if they've gone that far to kill the room, allowing raiding for energy at their leisure if they're interested.


  • Personally I user containers near sources to save energy while carriers move that energy where it needs to go. This doesn't save a lot of energy, but some. And it's enough to be important. I also usually have a container very near to the spawn and when I decommission creeps, they go there to die (to reuse their energy)

    Storage on the other hand, I usually stick by the controller and it serves 4 jobs.

    1. When I have no place to put energy it goes there. Creating a buffer that can be used to spawn larger creeps, or a large number of creeps.

    2. When I ave amassed more then 10,000 energy I spawn a "mass-upgrader" that basically dumps all the energy in to the controller. This helps creat a burst of GCL/RCL which I prefer. It lets me normally only apply say 5/tick to RCL but make a huge burst. It help me keep my econ stable. Although this is taste, a room can only put out 20/tick So I like to dedicate parts of that as a baseline for normal stuff. 2/tick for upgrading walls, 2/tick for repairs, 8/tick for new spawns etc etc (these numbers are fake) The extra goes to the   buffer and creates the RCL/GCL bursts. I can also supress a burst if I think I will need the energy for defending or attacking.

    3. Storing minerals till I get all the right parts.  I feel it's better to store unused minerals and then sell them, then it is to directly try and sell them. 

    4. Storing partial mineral chains. Like #3  I prefer to store, and have a buffer then to just sell. For example lets Say I made a bunch of UO. I may not need it. I only have two miner creeps. So instead I store it, sell some of the access. That way should something happen to the U or the O parts I still have some left over.