What do you feel about the current "conquer"
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When you clear a level 7 or 8, if you don't guard the base, theoretically the opponent can (sending pioneers) rebuild spawn, storage and 20 extensions in about 8k ticks (working off of just 1 source), after which they are back to business without much problems. Do you thing or find this makes "forcing a base to decay", too difficult?
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This is a theoretical consideration, but it seems kinda irritating to prevent an opponent from keeping the room alive: if even a single worker upgrades once, the decay counter is reset to 50k.
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If the room is worth the risk and trouble, I'd encourage this behavior. As for the new defender that is what creep.reserveController(target) is for [Creep API]. You can reserve a room for a decent amount of time if you're willing to go through the trouble and don't want to station attack capable creeps.
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@RaskVann you can't reserve a non-neutral controller! I think exactly the same like reelthyme - the downgrade mechanics are just not very nice. I would like to see a controller.downgrade() which requires energy as well, so you can increase the downgrade speed if you want. In case the enemy is interested in keeping that room they will have to intervene instead of just having one worker upgrade the controller once. This is related to my thread http://screeps.com/forum/topic/1280/Lose-RCL1-only-if-no-spawn-is-present. I think the whole controller mechanism could use some overhaul.
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One unintended effect is that you often have to try to kill the players completely even if you only want to take one room. This causes stronger player to wipe out weaker one even if it's not necessary, and also reduce the conflict between players of the same strength.
I liked Chris suggestion in the other thread. The only thing I'd add is to disallow player from upgrading other player controller (or the upgrading from another player should not affect the downgrade tick).
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I had a idea, what if another player can use degradeController by feeding energy, which increases the degradeRate. If the decay counter is equal or less than the degradeRate, the room drops a level. If the degradeRate ever reaches 50k, the room will decay one level every tick. When a controller becomes neutral, degradeRate resets to 0.
The owner of the room upgrading the room causes the degradeRate to decrease by that amount, as well as resetting the decay counter to 50k
It's a bit more complicated, but it may create tension and some variety of game states compared to flat 50k to take over.
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I agree that something should change here. I like the ideas of there being a downgradeController function requiring energy, or there being some sort of attack function that lowers the energy the controller has (and thus the room level). The downgrade timer seems better for resolving the "idle player" problem, rather than a solid game mechanic for gaining and losing control or rooms.
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We have something new regarding this topic in this PTR changelog.
