3. PTR Changelog 2018-08-20: tunnels

PTR Changelog 2018-08-20: tunnels


  • That diff has a few instances of _.any(roomObjects, {type: 'wall'}) or swamp. As far as I know walls, swamps, and plains are never in the roomObjects list in the processor. That check is always false and possibly expensive.

    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @deft-code There are wall objects in simulation for user-created terrain walls.


  • So i have a bug and a couple questions.

    Bug: Harvesting seems broken in PTR simulation. I wanted to test if i could still harvest a source from a tunnel. I could, but at the same time i found out that harvesting does not work if it would give you more energy than you can hold and it no longer drops energy on the ground, the harvest just fails, even though it still returns 0. Energy still does not drop to the ground even if you have energy equal to your capacity.

    The idea of harvesting from inside of a tunnel brings up other questions:

    1. Will we ever see areas of rooms that are completely surrounded by natural walls? Due to the inability to construct tunnels in a hostile room i understand that these areas would not be fair in normal rooms, but what about in Source Keeper rooms? or center rooms? It would be interesting to have extra high yield resources locked behind natural walls so that we have a higher maintenance cost involved with collecting them. Or even high difficulty NPC strongholds surrounded by natural walls so that you have to construct tunnels while under attack in order to reach and attack the structures.

    2. Are all actions intended to be able to be performed from inside tunnels? Upgrading the controller, attacking, ranged attack, heal, ranged heal, etc? I haven't delved too far into the combat implications of this change, but there will likely be all kinds of new defensive strategies allowed by this change that may not have been considered.

    3. Tombstones and dropped energy will have to be able to be on top of natural walls, what about containers or any other structures besides ramparts?

    EDIT: Also just found that roads show up on top of constructed walls now even though you cannot walk over them. I'm assuming that you cannot "tunnel" through constructed walls. If so, the road should probably not show up on top of the constructed wall.

    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @helam

    Bug: Harvesting seems broken in PTR simulation

    Thanks, fixed.

    Will we ever see areas of rooms that are completely surrounded by natural walls?

    That's an interesting idea, but requires some more development, so not for the moment.

    Are all actions intended to be able to be performed from inside tunnels? Upgrading the controller, attacking, ranged attack, heal, ranged heal, etc? I haven't delved too far into the combat implications of this change, but there will likely be all kinds of new defensive strategies allowed by this change that may not have been considered.

    Yes, all actions are allowed. I don't think it would be a game changer in defense since creeps in tunnels receive damage as usual (both ranged and melee). Regarding combat, it is more like removing wall tiles with maintenance cost.

    Tombstones and dropped energy will have to be able to be on top of natural walls, what about containers or any other structures besides ramparts?

    Only roads and ramparts can be constructed on walls, no other structures allowed.

  • Dev Team

    This feature is now supported in private server ptr branch:

    npm install screeps@ptr

  • @artch yep, was cached. Thanks.


  • @wtfrank Yes, that could happen. The main problem is that a creep shouldn't be able to stand on a wall when there isn't a road on it. This would be a little inconsistency in the game.


  • Source Keeper already do

    1 Reply

  • @saruss They stand on a keeper lair. I'm talking about blank walls. That wasn't clear... Sorry.

  • Culture

    Amazing change. Nice work!


  • I assume these would function the same as roads where they can only be created in neutral / owned / claimed rooms?

    1 Reply

  • @indijosh covered in penultimate line of post!

    Other usual rules apply: you can build roads in neutral rooms, but any construction in hostile owned rooms is prohibited.

    🤘

  • This post is deleted!

  • Again, this was just optimizing for energy, not CPU.

    I think you need to consider both. IMO every step you hauler takes costs between ~2 energy per tick in CPU costs. That is to say that if you give me 0.2 CPU/tick I think I can make 2 energy/tick out of it.

    So lets take an example of a max size hauler with a round trip time of 160 ticks. Lets say my room has 8 of these serving my remote sites and all my current roads are on plains and I don't do any sharing.

    Energy cost for haulers per tick: 8 * 50 * 48 / 1500 = 12.8/tick Energy cost for roads per tick: 80 * 8 * 0.002 = 1.28/tick CPU cost: 8 * 0.21 = 1.68 CPU/tick.

    With one extra CPU you can usually get about 10 extra energy harvested. So therefore the total energy/tick of this room spent on remotes is:

    Total energy: 12.8 + 1.28 + (1.68 * 10) = 30.88 "enegy"/tick.

    For what I'm about to do the road maintainance is a pain, so I'm just going to throw it away. Lets call total energy a conservative 29.6 energy/tick then.

    Lets now say that it is possible to cut the total journey time by 12.5% using tunnels. That's 10 tiles off every one-way trip. This would let me use 7 haulers instead of 8. What is the break even point? Ie. what is the most number of tunnels I would want to build.

    Well first off I'm saving ~3.7 energy/tick by cutting down my haulers. This is my budget. If I take your math above and agree that tunnels cost 0.2 energy a tick, that means I could build 18 tunnels and still turn a (very small) profit. These 18 tunnels would reduce the number of plains roads by 80, or ~4.5 roads per tunnel. Your result neglecting CPU was 10.

    I suspect the real number is somewhere between: my case was designed to hit the breakpoint of saving 1 hauler, your case neglects CPU altogther.

    So my prediction is that with the current upkeep tunnels will be in the occasional remote room but far from all of them. Owned rooms and SK rooms may be more popular. I think it's fine as is.


  • @artch What is behavior of attacking tunnels? I assume they can be destroyed similar to roads. Are creeps in a tunnel killed instantly if the tunnel is collapsed? I guess they could just end up stranded in the middle of the wall.

    1 Reply

  • @davaned I mentioned that before. They just get stranded as you said.

    @artch said in PTR Changelog 2018-08-20: tunnels:

    @duckymirror Nothing happens is intended behavior.


  • @artch said in PTR Changelog 2018-08-20: tunnels:

    Also, you can now build ramparts on walls as well in order to protect expensive tunnels.

    Ok, also a side question: if ramparts can be built on walls, does that mean we can build them on room controllers too? And if so, will the rampart protect the controller from getting attacked?

    🤔

  • Ramparts don't protect against attackController. It seems like they should. Along these same lines it should be possible to rampart the extractor as well.

    It should be a quick PR to fix those.

  • Dev Team

    Update:

    • Reverted ability to construct ramparts on natural walls. Tunnels still have enough their own hits, but they are considered to be dangerous place without an option to be easily defended.

    • Tunnels cost increased from 100x to 150x.