PTR Changelog 2016-09-19
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You’re right, it is unrealistic to test, which is why I don’t think pushing a change that will potentially break multiple different areas of people’s code simultaneously is a good idea. Having this pushed out in increments allows people to adjust.
Not all people like to adjust something all the time. For many it is easier to sit, create a spreadsheet and fix all the things at once.
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not every game needs a ‘healthy’ in game economy as its most important feature
I completely disagree. Healthy economy (not just player-to-player market, but economy in general) is vital for every game where economy is present.
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How about we take a step back -- I think we could all see a similar point of view if we look at what the current problems are. What problems do the development team think the game has?
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If we're talking about pacing, you could always just lengthen ticks. I don't know how many would agree with me, but I'd be happy with ~5 second ticks. Or you could even double creep life-span and halve most other things.
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Well, going into this kind of discussion would require posting a lot of statistical inner data, economy usage metrics, aggregation reports, etc. We are really not ready to do that right now. Actually, I totally agree that it'd be very cool to post some design docs from time to time, but we really don't have enough time resources to do that properly due to all these timeframes regarding open-source server and other stuff.
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DP's point is valid. Not much has been said for the purpose of these changes.
I am currently uncertain whether these changes are good or bad, but would like to understand the motivation behind them.
The safe room change was made ok by adjusting that it only be possible one at a time. This allowed warfare between multi room empires to proceed without too much of an issue. It might be that some of these changes can be adjusted to manage their impact in a constructive way.
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In terms of balance -- what's the solution to the power problem? With minerals harder to come by and energy now more scarce too, those with large power reserves (a year's worth of power) will be able to afford a great number of power creeps (and as they're "ageless", they can just flood their rooms with them and they'll stay flooded) and those without the power reserves will have a harder time getting power and a harder time combating the bonuses it provides.
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It seems to me that this change is quite punishing for newer players?
1) GCL growth will be significantly slower after this change as less energy and minerals are available. This means that new players will have to catch up on older players with a significant handicap.
2) At low GCL the CPU / Claimable Rooms ratio is much higher, meaning that also the maintainable number of remote mines / claimed rooms ratio is much higher. Therefore I'd expect low GCL players to take a much harder hit to their energy income from this change than high GCL players (who get a higher % of their energy from fully claimed rooms).
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DP’s point is valid. Not much has been said for the purpose of these changes.
I am currently uncertain whether these changes are good or bad, but would like to understand the motivation behind them.
The safe room change was made ok by adjusting that it only be possible one at a time. This allowed warfare between multi room empires to proceed without too much of an issue. It might be that some of these changes can be adjusted to manage their impact in a constructive way.Yes,
Yes, and we love to discuss features with the community. But these are balance changes. Numbers based on statistics. Unfortunately, we can’t really discuss this being on the same page if we are unable to refer to the same numbers. I could probably summarize it like this: there are too many easy resources in the game world, which affects the game balance too much to leave it unattended anymore.
In terms of balance – what’s the solution to the power problem? With minerals harder to come by and energy now more scarce too, those with large power reserves (a year’s worth of power) will be able to afford a great number of power creeps (and as they’re “ageless”, they can just flood their rooms with them and they’ll stay flooded) and those without the power reserves will have a harder time getting power and a harder time combating the bonuses it provides.
But what makes you think that power creeps will be like regular creeps? You will not be able to flood a single room with them having even billions of power. They are exponential mechanics, like GCL, creating each new power creep and activating each new “Power” for each power creep will require exponentially increasing amount of power resource.
But, of course, when balance changes are made, it is inevitable that some people who made profit of its unbalanced state before will be in benefit. It is never a reason to not implement such changes anyway.
Therefore I’d expect low GCL players to take a much harder hit to their energy income from this change than high GCL players (who get a higher % of their energy from fully claimed rooms).
Exactly the opposite. High GCL players receive most of their energy income from remote rooms, and this change will affect them in the first place.
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Can I request some more time?
It seems I have to redo some calculations for the coming weeks to see the impact. I can't do these in the next week, neither with the 5-tick-harvest delay.
A week for this huge change seems kinda short.
To come back on your statement I got the following points:
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Currently, the market is suffering from energy deprivation. I myself am spending energy buying stuff from others, this costs thousands of energy every generation of creeps. New players want to sell to me but could not pay the energy costs. I've since then bought stuff from them. The energy costs are quite steep for new players.
With this new change energy will become even more scarce than it already is, and impacts new players specifically:
- Mostly single room based
- Remote code is a challenge
- Inefficient code leading to energy losses
- SK will become overpowered ( 33% reduction in normal rooms vs 12% in SK)
It will not impact larger players:
- Got quite a bit of energy
- Know how to scale well (just screw down GCL praising, or market buying/selling)
- Got multi-room complex setups to grab more and more energy
I personally thought energy needed a boost, not a nerf.
Lowering the amount of minerals (see this, total nerf is now since start) will not make me sell any minerals. With the quick over-the-table calculations I would require all the minerals myself. Making the market ecosystem poorer:
- Big players won't sell, they need the minerals, they will halt trading (Halted it as of now as well, will no longer sell minerals, stockpiling time)
- Smaller players won't be able to buy the minerals, will have to sell their energy to get more minerals.
- Compounds will mostly be used by the larger players.
- The "miner once in every 5 ticks" will effectively change the mining speed by 5 as well, thus even less resources available.
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I don't want to be all negative here, this update also has good parts:
Making H and O more valuable, also equalizing the spawn rates is quite nice. Lowering it even further makes you think twice before spending al that XGH2O on upgrading, you'd have to prioritize on your goal (GCL, or build up that giant 300M wall you've always wanted).
The 5-tick rule is a good thing as well. It adds an extra challenge to mine the minerals.
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Possible idea's to help with the aversion people have for the update:
- Increase energy in owned rooms.
- This will help new players in learning to manage their energy before grabbing remote rooms.
- Keep remote room nerfs. Not reserving a room and mining it is bad.
- Decrease to 2k energy in reserved rooms is OK when combined with buff in owned rooms
- Make minerals, when harvested result in 2 mineral, not 1.
- This offsets the hefty energy costs of mining minerals
I hope you listen to the community. I’ve sadly only seen hate so far for this update, even though it has it’s good parts.
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Every game should polish its game balance from time to time, even when these changes are painful unfortunately. It will have no future otherwise. I’m sorry if it looks like a sudden decision to you, but I can assure you that we’ve been watching and calculating them carefully for weeks already.
I don’t care so much about the “suddenness” of the decision it’s the whole “well if they switch to [SK room rushing / other thing you don’t like] we’ll just reduce energy there”
So how about you just tell us what you don’t like? Having a game that has emergent gameplay suddenly being directed towards a very narrow channel of gameplay that the dev’s find acceptable isn’t a very popular move and it only takes one or two to completely destroy a game community.
So I’m asking you instead of doing the nerf dance for a couple months how about you just skip all that and dictate to the community how you want them to play the game. Because that’s what it’s going to become.
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I understand this is to help the market, and I agree with Dissi that this is a good change for Minerals, to make them more valuable.
But as it is, it requires energy for literally everything in this game - you're nerfing energy income while the existing upkeep and production costs remain the same, which is going to be difficult.
Additionally, the energy costs to perform terminal transactions is going to be a huge limiter still. Which reduced energy income there will be even less reason to use the market, especially more than a few rooms away - and frankly, if it's in the distance that I could ship it with creeps, I feel like it defeats the point of having a market.
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I definately agree this has good parts, but will take some rethinking for established players. Currently a lot of my CPU goes in to remote mining and I've been working on optimizing my code so I can exploit more rooms, while trying to find the best rooms to exploit and get rid of less profitable ones.
This change will force me to reconsider which rooms are profitable, but that will also free up CPU that I can use on other things.
I'm not sure it will keep higher level players from trading. You'll still have an excess of some resources and a shortage of others, so it makes sense to sell some and buy others.
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Can I request some more time?
It might be delayed if we see a lot of requests here. Unfortunately, only a few people watch for PTR changelogs, the majority of players will see the changes only when they are deployed to the main server. But it is why the date is “estimated”, it can be changed.
I myself am spending energy buying stuff from others, this costs thousands of energy every generation of creeps.
This is because you buy from all over the map. The market system is intended to be regional-based. If you ignore this, you pay a lot of energy.
Big players won’t sell, they need the minerals, they will halt trading (Halted it as of now as well, will no longer sell minerals, stockpiling time)
This is an interesting point to discuss. If you have 2000 K, 500 Z, 500 U, and 500 L, would you keep stockpiling all resources, or trade your 1500 K for 500 Z, U, and L instead to make 1000 G? When you stockpile, you lose time which can be used to boost your upgraders already.
In Screeps, selling and buying is not a result of surplus (there should be no overall surplus of minerals at all, it means that game generates more minerals than it can consume), it’s a result of balancing between different mineral types in order to get proper compounds as quickly as possible.
I don’t care so much about the “suddenness” of the decision it’s the whole “well if they switch to [SK room rushing / other thing you don’t like] we’ll just reduce energy there”
So how about you just tell us what you don’t like? Having a game that has emergent gameplay suddenly being directed towards a very narrow channel of gameplay that the dev’s find acceptable isn’t a very popular move and it only takes one or two to completely destroy a game community.
Frankly, I can’t seem to understand your point. My answer was to the phrase “The only viable strategy will be “control all the SK rooms””. If it happens to become the case (there is only one viable strategy), then it should be changed, there should be more than one viable strategy, don’t you agree?
But as it is, it requires energy for literally everything in this game - you’re nerfing energy income while the existing upkeep and production costs remain the same, which is going to be difficult.
I’d say we’re nerfing not just energy income, but remote energy income. When we designed all the energy costs and sinks in the game, we weren’t considering the fact it can become so easy to reserve and mine 10 remote rooms per one claimed room. It was our design flaw that is revised now.
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Exactly the opposite. High GCL players receive most of their energy income from remote rooms, and this change will affect them in the first place.
What do you base this on? I could imagine high GCL players on average having better and more efficient code bases. But if we assume equally skilled players then they should spend a roughly equal amount of CPU on room maintenance.
If we for example assume 5 CPU for average room maintenance, then:
At GCL 1 I have 30 CPU available and 1 claimable room. 5 CPU is used on claimed rooms, leaving 25 for remote mining. Meaning that 83% of my CPU can be spend on remote mining.
At GCL 10 I have 120 CPU available and 10 claimable rooms. 50 CPU is used on claimed rooms, leaving 70 for remote mining. Meaning that 58% of my CPU can be spend on remote mining.
If we for example assume 10 CPU for average room maintenance, then:
At GCL 1 I have 30 CPU available and 1 claimable room. 10 CPU is used on claimed rooms, leaving 20 for remote mining. Meaning that 67% of my CPU can be spend on remote mining.
At GCL 10 I have 120 CPU available and 10 claimable rooms. 100 CPU is used on claimed rooms, leaving 20 for remote mining. Meaning that 17% of my CPU can be spend on remote mining.
In any case, no matter what value you choose for maintenance of claimed rooms and how efficient your remote mining code is, when using the same code base for a higher GCL there will always be a lower ratio of remote mines to claimed rooms.
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What do you base this on?
You could simply check some player profiles and their rooms energy statistics.
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| so easy to reserve and mine 10 remote rooms per one claimed room.
For bigger more experienced player, maybe, for newer/inexperienced player like me mining more than 1 or 2 remotes is difficult. I do have many inefficiencies in my code, and it could definitely be improved, but as someone who has limited time to work on screeps code it would be very frustrating to have even more energy problems due to lower income combined with the cost of keeping the room reserved.
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I’d say we’re nerfing not just energy income, but remote energy income. When we designed all the energy costs and sinks in the game, we weren’t considering the fact it can become so easy to reserve and mine 10 remote rooms per one claimed room. It was our design flaw that is revised now.
Among other things, I thought that was a good thing, because it means those rooms are not claimed, and that limits the # of minerals being mined, which certainly seems to be something your proposed changes indicate you desire.In Screeps, selling and buying is not a result of surplus (there should be no overall surplus of minerals at all, it means that game generates more minerals than it can consume), it’s a result of balancing between different mineral types in order to get proper compounds as quickly as possible.
Fortunes are made or lost over localized imbalances in distribution.
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I'd like to highlight this again. This change has nothing to do with the market balance, supply/demand, orders, etc. It's all about large-scale economy balance - i.e. overall resources produce and consumption in the game. Their distribution between players is unrelated.
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If the energy income is being cut, are you expecting empires to shrink accordingly?
