Power Creeps update
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Ah I'm glad @artch went for the disable terminal, I think thats a much more effective siege mechanic. Although you'll need to be very careful with maintaining the block, since 1 tick off will ruin it. Kinda like attacking controller nowadays.
Any thought in having powers overlap with offense and defense? Like having the tower power be used to either buff or debuff towers, rather than splitting them into two different abilities? Might make it so creeps are less binary since right now you'd probably almost always take either defensive or offense on one creep.
I'd like to add a suggestion for power creeps in general:
Passive: Power Infused Hide
Power creeps are resistant to energy damage and have a flat 30% damage reduction vs towers.
I'd like to also offer the possibility that a power creep death drops some power per creep in a tombstone and costs the user that much power from their account. That way something defending against power creeps gets rewards, and players who are far behind in power can use those to level up. Would have to be balanced so that people with lots of power lose more, people with little power don't lose much.
Edit: Maybe losing something cube root of your total power, so that if you have 10million power you are losing ~200 power per power creep killed. Not enough to be seriously damaging, but enough that it feels bad to lose a creep.
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@davaned I like the idea of having the OPERATE and DISRUPT powers be combined, since it would also fix the issue I was talking about earlier, however I am not sure I like the idea of losing permanent power, if the system is potentially getting released without full automation it will mean I have to micromanage my power creeps quite often during combat.
Would be kinda cool if the devs gave power creeps some type of mitigation against lasers in general, although I feel like DISRUPT_TOWER kinda serves that purpose now, and with every useful offense power having basically infinite range, I am not sure they will ever actually need mitigation.
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@gankdalf said in Power Creeps update:
every useful offense power having basically infinite range
Only
DISRUPT_TOWERandDISRUPT_TERMINALhave infinite range.DISRUPT_SPAWNhas range 20, andDISRUPT_SOURCErange 3.
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@artch As I said, every useful power. This is obviously all just theory, but let me explain.
DISRUPT_TOWER This is the only way for operators to safely enter a room and get anywhere near loaded towers. They may have a high number of hits, but if they want to make it out of the room alive, they need to be able to sustain continuous damage, which is currently only possible with boosted TOUGH. With the addition of OPERATE_TOWER this becomes an even bigger issue. This power is quite powerful and pretty much always useful in any siege. Requires 10 ops per tick to reduce 5 towers in a room by 50%.
DISRUPT_TERMINAL Currently the only way to kill a well defended room is to make it so expensive that the enemy empire decides it isn't worth it, or you completely run the entire empire out of resources. Terminals allow every room in an empire to share resources, so it isn't (currently) all that important to have boosts on-site before an attack. A boosted enemy shows up, you just send in the boosts and swat the gnats. Even if this is a very expensive DISRUPT power, it is by far the most dangerous. If you have an isolated room (created with a vanishing portal or something), it must go out and kill the operator itself on the border or adjacent room by itself because if the enemy has enough Ops and boosts, they can guaranteed kill the room, since it likely cannot sustain its own boost usage (math on OPERATE_LAB still pending). It takes 65 power creep levels to self-sustain this terminal attack on a room border. This power is easily the #1 reason I wouldn't feel safe enabling power in any of my owned rooms even if I did have power creeps. I feel like something like this is necessary to help balance the game, since currently there is no way to take a room without killing the entire empire, but at the same time, it then becomes one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Using 10-15k Ops and a few boosted attackers against an isolated enemy base is almost a guaranteed kill if they cannot chase off the operator. Requires 1 op per tick to isolate a room.
DISRUPT_SPAWN This power is a cool idea, but if it is truly to hurt an RCL8 room, it would need to not only get within 20 range of a spawn, which likely requires max level DISRUPT_TOWER, but it would also needs to have a max level DISRUPT_SPAWN and a giant stockpile of ops. Even after achieving this, it is at best a 1/3rd reduction in spawn capacity with potential to cause bugs in the enemy players code from a never spawning creep. Overall it seems like a very situational power that I cannot find a use-case for, especially considering you cannot use Lvl 5 DISRUPT_TOWER on the same power creep as Lvl 5 DISRUPT_SPAWN. Requires 2 ops per tick to disable a single spawn from nearly point-blank tower range on some bases. Requires 3 ops per tick if you include the cost to simply get in range with DISRUPT_TOWER. Would cost 13 ops per tick to fully disable the room, which is potentially very dangerous, but the operators would have to actually survive, and would need to be able to reach 20 range of all spawns. This power also does very little if the opponent already successfully spawned defenders.
DISRUPT_SOURCE is a cool power that also likely requires DISRUPT_TOWER to safely use. It is probably safer than DISRUPT_SPAWN, but still likely requires entering a room for more than a single tick. Although this power is kinda cool, it doesn't do much more than prevent mining a source for a cycle or two.... but we already have something that does that, and it doesn't require DISRUPT_TOWER. It's called walking into the enemy room with boosted attackers and killing the miner. Sure, ramparts, walls and such can prevent this, but in the end +500 ticks of regen time only reduces the potential energy gained by 5,000. I'm fairly sure there are cheaper ways to cause a 5k energy loss that don't include spending 100 ops. This cost obviously depends on how valuable ops end up being. Finally, this attack isn't even dangerous without DISRUPT_TERMINAL. This requires 2 ops every 5 ticks to disable all sources in a room. It would also cost the 11 ops per tick for DISRUPT_TOWER and DISRUPT_TERMINAL to actually be dangerous though.
It's not that the other powers don't do anything, it's that their usage basically requires the defender to have poorly placed spawns or sources, and then requires the other two powers to even be dangerous.
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Power Creeps could also use the Shield power on their own square to protect themselves, and given how the current code probably doesn't support towers shooting at ramparts, they'd be invincible from towers while on their shield square.
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@crusher48 towers firing at anything under a rampart hits the rampart. Also, I would recommend trying to make a good offense creep with many shield levels using the planner. I would like to see the link
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Are you sure? I'm fairly certain that towers can only damage creeps because of the assumption that there are no hostile ramparts or other structures in a room with a tower in it. Also, the API says they can only attack creeps.
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@crusher48 That is because no hostile structures currently exist in the game that can be in your own rooms. If it matches the functionality of ramparts in general, attacking anything under the rampart damages the rampart... Obviously the API docs do not include the changes from power creeps, since they aren't even on PTR yet.
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@crusher48 A quick test with my own ramparts seems to indicate that anything in a rampart is protected against tower attacks.
Edit: Just tested it with invading creeps trapped in ramparts... the hostile creeps in my ramparts took no damage. As for attacking structures? Yes they do indeed. Feel free to try it yourself
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Even assuming towers could fire on shields, the shield power would still allow offensive operators to defend themselves when they get in position, at least enough to allow boosted healers to repair the damage sustained for the ticks where the shield drops.
Though honestly, the problem is that Commanders and Executors will need similar abilities to allow them to engage in rooms with towers, or they won't be useful.
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@crusher48 Could you show me the link of an offensive operator that has a high enough shield level that it can block more than a single attack from the towers+defenders?
The shield power has a 20 tick cooldown, likely will only have 5-10k HP, and requires a massive amount of energy to use. It could have some synergy with a dismantler still though, since it will be generating energy at the site, but I still don't think it is sustainable without DISRUPT_TOWER, and especially not with the OPERATE_TOWER existing now
EDIT - and it cannot move while shielded or it loses the benefit of the shield
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@artch so I have some questions.
Can EXTEND_SOURCE and EXTEND_MINERAL be used on the same target before it regenerates? You said the effects don't stack, but I somewhat assumed this wasn't an effect with a duration, so I am not sure it works the same way.
Can I use OPERATE_EXTENSION on a power spawn to drain it of energy and distribute it to the room's extensions
I still can't find a use for OPERATE_STORAGE, would there be any chance that it might get changed to work on more than just storage, and scale by a percentage rather than hundreds of thousands?
Are cooldowns on things like OPERATE_SPAWN per spawn or per power creep?
Although effects can't stack, can they overlap to prevent downtime?
Is it possible to create 50 level 1 operators to mass generate ops instead of 2 level 25 creeps to generate much fewer ops?
Can you permanently disable a spawn by repeatedly using DISRUPT_SPAWN Lv5?
With OPERATE_LAB lv5 do I generate 11 units per reaction (addition) or 10 units per reaction (multiplication). I assume it is 11, but I thought I would ask.
Why aren't OPERATE_EXTENSION level amounts all multiples of 200? And all of the values seems at least a bit low, although the 3 range is interesting.
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Regarding this discussion of power creeps survivability - are you probably missing the fact that power creeps can be healed by regular creeps? Some T3 healers dedicated to a power creep should be capable of protecting them from towers.
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@artch Without boosted TOUGH, they would take 900-5000 damage from towers alone depending on how the room was constructed and whether the defender was using OPERATE_TOWER. Add in the fact that they could spawn boosted defenders on the edges of their ramparts, and it could become very difficult to actually get in range to disable the spawns.
The main point is that it heavily depends on how the room is setup and defended. There are many rooms that I have seen that I could never get within 20 range of any spawn with a creep that didn't have boosted TOUGH or DISRUPT_TOWER running.
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Can EXTEND_SOURCE and EXTEND_MINERAL be used on the same target before it regenerates?
Yes.
Can I use OPERATE_EXTENSION on a power spawn to drain it of energy and distribute it to the room's extensions
Not decided yet.
I still can't find a use for OPERATE_STORAGE, would there be any chance that it might get changed to work on more than just storage, and scale by a percentage rather than hundreds of thousands?
OPERATE_STORAGEis intended to work only on storage, I don't see any reason why it should work with other structures.Are cooldowns on things like OPERATE_SPAWN per spawn or per power creep?
All cooldowns are per power creep.
Although effects can't stack, can they overlap to prevent downtime?
Yes, you can renew an active effect with the new one.
Is it possible to create 50 level 1 operators to mass generate ops instead of 2 level 25 creeps to generate much fewer ops?
Sure. Although take note that 50 Lvl1 creeps (50 ops production) would cost 100 levels, this is equal to 4 Lvl24 creeps (32 ops production) or 8 Lvl11 creeps (66 ops production).
Can you permanently disable a spawn by repeatedly using DISRUPT_SPAWN Lv5?
Currently yes. May be changed.
With OPERATE_LAB lv5 do I generate 11 units per reaction (addition) or 10 units per reaction (multiplication). I assume it is 11, but I thought I would ask.
Default production amount is 5 units, so with
OPERATE_LABL5 it will be 15 units.Why aren't OPERATE_EXTENSION level amounts all multiples of 200? And all of the values seems at least a bit low, although the 3 range is interesting.
Multiples of 200 is a valid point, we'll change that. Range 3 means to the source structure, not to the extensions.
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@gankdalf said in Power Creeps update:
The main point is that it heavily depends on how the room is setup and defended. There are many rooms that I have seen that I could never get within 20 range of any spawn with a creep that didn't have boosted TOUGH or DISRUPT_TOWER running.
So why not to use
DISRUPT_TOWERthen?
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@artch Well it would require another high level power creep at the same time, since it requires constant usage of DISRUPT_TOWER combined with a massive amount of ops and an additional healer to keep it alive.
The original statement was that the useful powers have infinite range. Both of the other two powers almost require the two useful powers to even function, and since they cannot be on the same power creep, it requires two power creeps to actually work.
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@gankdalf there are only a few rooms where a player can cluster all of the towers immediately at the only entrances to the room, so in most cases the damage for that first tick will be lower than those worst case scenarios.
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@tedivm I didn't mean for the first tick, DISRUPT_TOWER and DISRUPT_TERMINAL are pretty safe to use. DISRUPT_SPAWN could be questionable in some rooms due to 20 range and some towers will most definitely be between you and the spawns, while DISRUPT_SOURCE will very likely require going some place dangerous or inaccessible.
and regardless of how much damage the tower is doing, the DISRUPT_TOWER user will need a healer beside them.
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OPERATE_STORAGEis intended to work only on storage, I don't see any reason why it should work with other structures.Well currently I see no use for this power. The one thing that I have trouble with on capacity is the Container structure. Because of a container's 2k capacity it creates a hard limit on how much a hauler is allowed to carry in a single trip. I have been trying to find an excuse (even if it is wildly inefficient) to use carry or harvest boosts in my harvest code, but the containers keep being a limiting factor. Even if I attempted using two high level power creeps with Lv 5 EXTEND_SOURCE on a single source, it still doesn't make these boosts viable due to container limits. I have to use some other transfer method (like links).
