PTR Changelog 2018-02-28: lab reaction time
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On the whole this seems like a good change to me. We're going to have to start using T2 and T1 boosts just to use up all those minerals we're able to mine.
So the three boosts that take more time are:
- Disamantle. @artch already explained this.
- Build/repair: I guess this is because logs show it's quite popular?
- Upgrade controller: Same as 2?
Personally I'd prefer times to be more uniform. I understand the arguement that these be more time consuming, but it would be a lot neater if everything was uniform, even if it's not quite as optimal. It seems like needless complexity.
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Making T3 boosts far harder to obtain doesn't negate the fact that a high-level attack needs T3 boost to have a chance of winning against the towers. With this update it will take 3000 ticks using 9 labs (which would also prevent you from boosting much in the room) to create enough tough parts for a single viable offensive creep. Meanwhile, towers don't have any nerfs to them to give creeps without T3 tough boosts a chance of surviving in combat.
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@crusher48 said in PTR Changelog 2018-02-28: lab reaction time:
Making T3 boosts far harder to obtain doesn't negate the fact that a high-level attack needs T3 boost to have a chance of winning against the towers. With this update it will take 3000 ticks using 9 labs (which would also prevent you from boosting much in the room) to create enough tough parts for a single viable offensive creep. Meanwhile, towers don't have any nerfs to them to give creeps without T3 tough boosts a chance of surviving in combat.
That's just not true. Towers deal a maximum of 3600 damage/tick. Four healers with 25 HEAL parts and T2 HEAL boost can heal 3600 damage/tick.
You don't need T3. You don't need tough. And this is assuming you're within 5 tiles of every tower.
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I'm not sure about the changes. A big issue is already the disparity between established and newer players, with a big factor being the established using T3 boosts. Those players will already have a stockpile and a means to create more, where as the ceiling for new players to break and use T3 boosts just got higher. The disparity between the bonuses No boost/T1 and T3 provide are the bigger issue.
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IMO, this solution is too complex for the issue. A simpler solution would be the following: 1: OH boost takes 20 ticks to create (was 10 ticks, 40-70 total ticks to create T2 boosts) 2: X boost reactions with a T2 mineral take 50 ticks to create (was 10 ticks, 90-120 total ticks to create T3 boosts)
This makes the changes simple and easy to understand for AIs, while still adding a reason not to use catalyzed boosts.
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@tigga Fingers crossed they heal the right creep though...
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@shibdib shard1 and shard2 were only added a few months ago, there aren't going to be huge stockpiles throughout the game. And these stockpiles will deplete over time.
T3 boosts certainly have got harder, but that's only because the cost/benefit was out of whack before. Some of the T1 boosts have got a lot easier to build - e.g. T1 Tough boost. That's a big benefit to new players and may have very little impact on the boost consumption of the older players.
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All boosts have different bonus progression, some are linear, some are not, this is why they have different reaction time progression as well. It has nothing to do with their popularity, and it explains why it's a bad idea to make all tier times uniform. Now each "total reaction chain time" strictly correlates to the bonus value within each effect type series. We got a solid spreadsheet proving that, these numbers are not random
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I think better solution will be in increasing number of ingredients to produce T3 boosts. Like a 5*T2 + 5X = T3, or something like that. Not one-to-one like now. It will raise usability of T2 boosts.
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Dismantle is a massive outlier for not that big of a gain. Dismantle creeps already suffer from a number of downsides compared to attack creeps (namely, inability to fight creeps and dropping half of the energy used to build the walls on the ground to be picked up later to rebuild the walls), and they're higher damage output in an optimal situation isn't a reason to implement an incredibly long boost time specifically for them while attack, ranged attack, and heal are given the standard 95 tick boost times. Just because it "can only be used for attacks" doesn't mean that it should have 4x the cost of a similar mineral that can theoretically be used in other roles.
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@fetid I think artch's view is that this would break existing code more than changing the lab job time would https://screeps.com/forum/topic/2038/introduce-boosts-one-teir-at-a-time-rather-than-all-at-rcl6/11
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Just because it "can only be used for attacks" doesn't mean that it should have 4x the cost of a similar mineral that can theoretically be used in other roles.
True. And this is why the cost is the same. It is time that differs, not cost.
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I mean time is a cost here, because it appears that the new bottleneck with high-level boosts will be lab time, not minerals.
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@artch While I'm not entirely in @Crusher48's camp on this, time is a form of cost itself.
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@dissi said in PTR Changelog 2018-02-28: lab reaction time:
attacker runs out of boosts
Should read as "runs out of credits". So, again game seems to be a bit more versus new players.
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I believe increased time won't contribute to the market price to the same extent as the mineral cost does.
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I've been frying my brain trying to figure out a good way to implement labs/reactions/boosts/etc for a while now and that was BEFORE this change. Seems like its taking something already complicated and confusing and making it even more so. I haven't actually gotten code for reactions written yet but it seems like while this won't make the actual reaction logic any different, it will make the decision of which minerals to focus on even more complicated than it already is.
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Update:
ZH (dismantle) series reaction time set to 20/40/160 ticks.
New column "Time/benefit ratio" added to the table above. It shows diminishing returns on each tier, indicating that the time/benefit progression is not linear, but is in favor of lower tiers.
The release date of this patch is set to March 5 along with other PTR patches.
