Newbie walls?
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I've observed that destroying one of the "newbie" walls doesn't destroy the rest of them anymore. However, this doesn't seem to turn off the "blocked" flag for the room. Despite a hole in the wall, enemy creeps can't leak inside, so
Map.findRoute()nor "brute-forcing" creeps inside don't work.This might be on purpose, but it kinda looks weird; it really removes the whole "risk factor" thing that was in place before.
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I think the respawn protection should be changed anyways to prevent abuse for defensive blocking of paths. This influences the game a lot and isn't fun.
I think the walls should be changed to invulnerability of creeps and structures in the specific room for a limited amount of time. This way blocking players will not be possible anymore and new players are still protected.
For a new player the invulnerability should last 48 hours, a re-spawning player 24 hour.
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That's true, 72 hours for a new player seems like a bit much. Invulnerability of creeps might look a bit strange - I think the newbie walls do their job fine, except for the fact that some tens of thousands of ticks have to pass before other players can enter, despite a glaring hole in the wall.
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My problem with the walls is that they can block other players to reach other rooms which can give huge unfair disadvantages.
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Right, yet it might be weird to have really strong creeps barging into your room. Would a player who is just starting be able to attack those who enter? Can these creeps launch an assault on another room? How do other players know that a room's creeps are invulnerable?
It's an interesting concept, just wondering what your thoughts are.
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The 1k energy that you get while you're spawning indeed gives you the possibility to spawn a creep with substantial attack possibilities. However, players that don't have invulnerability within their own room anymore will likely be room level 4 or above. I think you should be able by then to defend against a attack of 1k energy (if constant respawning and attacking isn't possible anymore).
Invulnerable players would be able to attack players that enter their room (otherwise you could just block sources/spawns). Visibility of it shouldn't be that hard, for instance a yellow border around the emblem on world map and textual when you're inside the room.
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I've seen this issue as well -- and it's a pain, because if you break out, you presumably also want your creeps to be able to re-enter, but instead they are stranded in the new room.
I agree about the issues raised around newbie rooms blocking paths -- sometimes this can turn a 5-room path into a 30-room path, causing massive problems (this in fact I believe was responsible for the performance issue in my code that caused my empire to collapse when I was off doing other things for a week earlier this month). I haven't had it used maliciously against me AFAIK, but I certainly see the potential for abuse.
I wonder if one option might be to cause newbie walls to instead teleport you across the room to the opposite exit (or another exit, if no opposite exit). Could be confusing to code assuming the grid, but since you're kind of a slave to findRoute anyway with the lack of any map introspection methods...
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@QzarSTB: These are good ideas, I figured out that invulnerability would be only inside the starting room (colony), not other rooms.
@ZorzZ: Someone could probably take advantage of the newbie walls with multiple accounts, but I hope that'll never happen. Teleporting might raise some issues. It doesn't sound like you'd be able to choose what room to go to (if the target room has multiple exits), plus, it kind of adds some unneeded complexity imo.
I find that the current system in which it's impossible to access the data of a room in which none of your flags/creeps/structures reside is a little irritating. While I understand that it saves a ton of CPU, it'd be nice if the player's code could access everything that the player himself can (e.g. amount of sources, location of room controller, etc.) without sending a scout creep. I'd like to make a script in which everything, including colonization, is taken care of autonomously.
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@GrandonBroseph I completely agree that everything that we can do as human controllers, our Screeps AI ought to be able to do -- including looking at map tiles we don't have a creep on, placing an initial spawn, and reinforcing spawns. The current system rewards those who babysit and penalizes those who code strategy.
To think that nobody will use extra accounts to abuse the system is unrealistic; there have already been multiple complaints about it happening. The system has to be built so as not to reward abuse.