PTR Changelog 2018-02-28: lab reaction time
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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.
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@artch That seems pretty quick for the reaction time change, I am not even sure, that everyone affected by it has even read about it yet. The other 3 changes are all additions/fixes (and great! I was eagerly waiting for them). But reaction time change might force people to change their code.
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@mmmd This change isn't breaking. Your old code will continue to work, so changes are not mandatory. A lot of people won't even notice this change (in fact, only a small minority of players look at PTR patches at all), and the rest can start gradually optimizing their code while keeping old code functional.
I can see why it may be inconvenient for someone since some parts of economy may become suboptimal, but it's not critical, and economy things are rarely optimal, you know
We really delayed this PTR release for too long, we can't postpone it any longer. As for splitting reaction time into another patch, small frequent releases are bad for marketing, so we'd like not to do that.
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I still believe that dismantle is already a weak option, and having it have the highest reaction time in the game certainly won't help.
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It will certainly affect me (I assemble T3 from its base minerals in one pass, except for the ones using G)
I'm not sure this will help much to stimulate fights. It mostly encourages stockpiling and increases the power of large coalitions. (a small nimble group of players will run out of boosts faster).
I would have preferred having unbalanced mineral respawn rates (perhaps by shard or general area, to encourage trading and inter-shard commerce) or have to some recipes use more then one mineral (ex: 4X + UH2O -> XUH2O), again perhaps with some random element over time to avoid the market balances out.
If it's to reduce the DB load, which I suspect, I'd prefer a change that increases both reaction time and minerals used at the same rate (ex: 10 X + 10 UH2O -> 10 XUH2O with a 50 tick cooldown)
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@vrs This change has nothing to do with stimulating fights. I've explained why this change is needed in this post above:
The main motivation behind this change is to make T1 and T2 boosts more appealing, and create some new trade-offs that make their usage reasonable. There are now diminishing returns of the time/effect ratio on each tier.
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Update:
GO (damage reduction) series reaction time set to 10/30/150 ticks.
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@artch if you want to make tier1 and tier2 boosts more reasonable to use one thing that could help would be an increase in the number of market orders a player can have. That way players would be more likely to sell boosts that aren't at tier3.
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I'd rather move the ability to boost creeps to the spawn, meaning you would directly spawn creeps with boost.
This adds a whole new level of resource management if you have to decide which extension is filled with which resource.Granted this is a breaking change but on the bright side, this would allow people to use boosts they "found" even at lower RCLs.
In this case, wtfranks percentage approach would be the better option.
@artch I know that you have wonderful spreadsheets, that's obvious to anybody who tries to develop heuristics for his code, but sometimes those are really bad for gameplay.
So don't be afraid to make "game breaking" changes. Those are sometimes necessary to evolve a game to be more fun in the long run, besides they also weed out inactive players.
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I agree with @tedivm. I'd be more willing to create orders for tier1/2 boosts if I wasn't concerned about running out of available market orders.
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The biggest problem imo, is the inconsistent REACTION_TIMES. It would be one thing to have T2 take longer than T1, T3 longer than T2, but to give different times for different reactions makes optimizing and rewriting lab logic overly complicated as some T3 boosts are just clearly not worth the time involved anymore, while others still may be.
So not I need logic that says go ahead and produce XLHO2 as normal, but not XZH2O because it's not worth the time, so stop the chain at ZH2O. Don't bother with XGH2O anymore, which was previously the #1 priority, because you can't possibly produce it fast enough to keep upgraders boosted, so better GCL strategy is now to claim, upgrade, unclaim, repeat until that gets nerfed.
Basically you can't really create lab logic that applies to all reactions equally anymore because reaction times are now unequal.
I'm not sure this makes T1/T2 more viable, since T3 is still the optimal effect per creep / tick / cpu cost which are important factors. Really it just makes some T3's unviable by creating an artificial limitation that further slows down the game and reduces the reward for time / effort invested.
Just my experience with it so far. It certainly causes a need for rethinking various strategies, and that probably appeals to the Max GCL, liable to get bored / stagnant crowd. But I'm not sure complicating lab systems while reducing the reward will inspire new players or even mid-level players much.
