Terminals and Credits seem overpowered
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@Gankdalf AFAIK the devs stated they were ok with the possibility that there is a "perfect" defense that can't be cracked with a frontal assault. They'd rather err on the side of defense than offense.
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@davaned I know, I like that. What I don't like is by how large the margin is.... or at least by how large the margin seems to be from what I can tell.
With DISRUPT_TERMINAL and the other operator powers, I can see ways to break bases. At least... possible ways. Even if the defender still has an advantage, there are possible strategies that can force their base into positions where it must make correct decisions. If the defenders makes the correct decisions, they always win. That's perfectly acceptable.
But, what I am seeing with the current state of the game though (without power creeps) is that the defender simply needs to spawn some generic attackers+repairers, and can mindlessly hold off any attack until one of the players runs out of resources. It doesn't even matter where I attack or what I attack with, they can always respond with the same generic defenders.
It's so lopsided, that ignoring my attack, and just repairing walls at a faster rate than I can damage them is a valid strategy if I don't bring an absolutely massive attack force. They don't even have to fight back, or at least not very much.
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I think what you are seeing is distorted by the fact that the best defense that I am aware of in the game (o4kapuk) is also the most written about.
In fact his is the only defense I have looked at or poked that I could really see an effective way of attacking. Other people have good defense, but nearly all have some weakness a skilled and determined attacker can exploit.
Base defense in screeps is similar to network defense in IT. In theory you can make it impregnable but in practice there are many things that can go wrong that its likely to be vulnerable.
I havent read the power creep docs in detail, but my understanding is that DISRUPT TERMINAL will consume ops much faster than you can generate them, this seems to be the way things should be.
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I think what you are seeing is distorted by the fact that the best defense that I am aware of in the game (o4kapuk) is also the most written about.
That is indeed quite possible.
EDIT - or maybe it's just my hate for the terminal mechanics in general.
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I think it is fine adding this as a power creep ability.
Terminals are powerful in sieges, but without backup of active and well coded defender-creeps most rooms are probably breakable with enough effort (resources and code).
I think very few players have defenses that can be considered unbreakable, I certainly do not. With actively modifying the code and instructions to attacking creeps, I think almost any room is breakable, unless the defender puts in the same effort in code and time. If they do, I think it is fair that they are basically unbreakable. The terminal-blocker ability will be a way to maybe break them.
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Also, honestly the biggest issue with defense is that it's all reactive. So all the attack has to do is find an exploit and they can cause tons of damage. The more advanced your defense code is, the higher the chance are some interactions that break it. And if not, then its probably very cpu intensive, so it means that they have less spare for their economy.
Basically, if you're persistent enough, anyone is beatable in the long run assuming they don't actively defend themselves. But honestly anyone with better than decent defense code is rarely worth attacking given there is no gain to be had and only vast losses.
Now... if there was a way to effectively collect resources from a player... or even cannibalize parts of them (maybe steal CPU or something) then it would be a different story.
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@davaned said in Terminals and Credits seem overpowered:
Also, honestly the biggest issue with defense is that it's all reactive. So all the attack has to do is find an exploit and they can cause tons of damage. The more advanced your defense code is, the higher the chance are some interactions that break it. And if not, then its probably very cpu intensive, so it means that they have less spare for their economy.
Basically, if you're persistent enough, anyone is beatable in the long run assuming they don't actively defend themselves. But honestly anyone with better than decent defense code is rarely worth attacking given there is no gain to be had and only vast losses.
I agree and I don't agree. Take bunkers for example: with a manually placed bunker to cover the controller you can reduce a lot of the variables. A single repairer for a bunker can quite reasonably repair 5k/tick, 8k/tick or more if you push it. Nobody should be able to reach your walls as 40 T3 Attack parts combined with short range towers melt everything. The repairers out-repair ranged attack. At this point it doesn't matter what you do as the attacker so long as the repairers are reasonably well coded.
As people's code improves this becomes more common. It seems to me the only way to take out certain rooms are:
- Flaw in the defender's code which doesn't get fixed.
- Defender running out of energy/credits globally.
- 31 nukes on the terminal.
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Again, if there was a way to forcibly enable powers in opposing rooms, bunkers would be beatable, but until there's a way to enable powers in opposing rooms, bunkers can just not enable powers and there's no way to take them down.
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@tigga said in Terminals and Credits seem overpowered:
31 nukes on the terminal.
I wonder if anyone has 31 RCL8 bases close enough to an enemy room to do this?
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@stevetrov multiple people?
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@tigga This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
Nobody should be able to reach your walls as 40 T3 Attack parts combined with short range towers melt everything. The repairers out-repair ranged attack. At this point it doesn't matter what you do as the attacker so long as the repairers are reasonably well coded.
Perfect example of a powerful defensive response that triggers. What a great thing to exploit! Walk a few boosted creeps into a room, trigger their defense creeps to spawn, then have the creeps walk on to their next room and trigger the same thing. Keep walking them around and trigger defense responses. You can easily get them to waste 5x your mineral cost and trigger in a number of rooms at once.
Basically, I'm saying that a persistent attacker can always reverse engineer your code and find some loophole. Either to cause significant damage or significant waste. Given enough time an AFK player's base can always be broken.
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@davaned said in Terminals and Credits seem overpowered:
@tigga This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
Nobody should be able to reach your walls as 40 T3 Attack parts combined with short range towers melt everything. The repairers out-repair ranged attack. At this point it doesn't matter what you do as the attacker so long as the repairers are reasonably well coded.
Perfect example of a powerful defensive response that triggers. What a great thing to exploit! Walk a few boosted creeps into a room, trigger their defense creeps to spawn, then have the creeps walk on to their next room and trigger the same thing. Keep walking them around and trigger defense responses. You can easily get them to waste 5x your mineral cost and trigger in a number of rooms at once.
Basically, I'm saying that a persistent attacker can always reverse engineer your code and find some loophole. Either to cause significant damage or significant waste. Given enough time an AFK player's base can always be broken.
Recycle. Boost only when the room is contested. Your attack is going to cost more than the defense in all but spawn time.
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@Tigga Great, now you pop in and out periodically locking up spawning for expansions with the defense creeps. Oh you don't recycle? Then you walk in, spawn defense creeps, then come back when they only have 300 TTL left and trigger their boosting. The chain can go on. You can keep thinking up something, but the point that I'm stating is that no matter what code you right, if you aren't active it can be reverse engineered and exploited somehow.
The point you're missing is that defense is inherently reactive. You have to think up everything someone might use and come up with some basic defense for everything. But on offense you can be creative and iterate. And the more protections against edge cases you add, the more sacrifices on pure defense you make and more chances that something goes wrong.
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I diasgree. Firstly, defenders can iterate. Secondly, resources aren't really an issue for many players on the MMO server. Sure, maybe you could find a way to make me spend more than you, but really, it doesn't matter much unless you're going to maintain that for a few years.
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My argument has never been that things are stacked in favor of offense. Everything is tuned to give defense an advantage, from towers to ramparts to even just TTL. My point is that no passive defense is unbeatable. If you code something and then stay AFK, you can get taken out.
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@davaned if it takes longer than my personal lifetime to break your defenses, then your defense is unbreakable.
That being said, even if you are able to force someone into spending 10x what you did on the attack, you still have to exceed the income of their entire empire to even make their numbers start going down.
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Yeah, which is why terminals are the main problem in sieges imo. Hence why I stated that we needed a power that would block terminals (and was grateful we got one). Its not that hard to do effective attrition strategies vs a room, but the issue remains that resource teleportation makes it an all or nothing. To destroy a room you must destroy the empire.
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The problem with the anti-terminal power is that it only works against players who are willing to accept the risk. If a player has a ton of credits stored up and doesn't care about the economic bonuses of a power creep, they can just not enable powers and there is nothing an attacker can do to deal with it.
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It's definitely not a perfect solution. And really, I think the best option is to just do a few rooms with power creeps and super amp their production so that you are generating tons of energy and minerals, rather than split it up.
The truth of the matter is that warfare in this game isn't that well done. It's got some interesting strategies you can employ, but there is nothing to gain from combat and the shear difficulty of cracking proper rooms means that stagnation is embedded in gameplay. It's more of an economic and management grind game with the option of combat. If you choose to partake its really only for the challenge, not because it gains you anything.
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As someone who have one of the best defense systems, I'd like to add my two cents. There are indeed many of clever thoughts I see here, but still there is something to be said.
It's theoretically possible to have a perfect defense, but, in practice, it's extremely hard to write. First of all, you need time for coding, and, more importantly, you need test cases for your code. On other words, you need someone to attack your rooms. The stronger the attack is, the better defense you can create. I was lucky enough to be attacked by one of the most capable raiders (of course, in times of that battle I didn't see it this way, but now I do), but this is rare. And without a good attack on you, there are too many things you need to consider, too many things could go wrong... and you have no motivation to do it.
Terminals? Go ahead and overflow them all with some cheap mineral, it's extremely unlikely that anyone has a code to detect this kind of attack and create market orders to free his terminals. Be creative! As said before, an attacker have the advantage of being proactive, he is able to find a breach or uncovered case. Like, throw a nuke into a wall. Boosted repairers spawned? Ok, throw a nuke into labs block (not many people cover them with ramparts everywhere). Rampart construction sites didn't appear? Congrats, you just found a breach.
The game mechanics are deep. It's always possible to find a way to fool any defense, and the only way to have a perfect defense is to experience all kinds of attacks ever possible (and if a defender survived them all... he probably deserve to sleep well). The only perfect defense is a defense that being upgraded.
