Enabling power on rooms
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@flyasd1 There was a post which I can't find, where artch announced something like, some players are worried that when power creeps are introduced to the game, players who have been stockpiling power will be able to launch devastating attacks against otherwise well-defended rooms belonging to anybody who doesn't immediately update their code to handle power creep attacks, therefore to prevent this "breaking change" to gameplay/code, power will have to be explicitly enabled in a room so that players can opt in when their code is ready.
I think if boosts didn't already exist in the game, but we were to add boosts to the game right now as a brand new feature, it would be reasonable to have some sort of soft implementation, as has been proposed for power creeps, to give players some time to prepare to handle boosted attacks.
As another solution to this problem, how about delivering Operators with the offensive abilities disabled for a period such as 3 months? Once the 3 months are up then power creeps can be used in every room. This means that people have 3 months of reminders about power creeps (while they actually exist in the game and are showing up on the UI) to prepare their code to defend against attacks like disruptTerminal. (Of course people who are active on the forums will already be thinking about how to defend against power creep attacks, but not every player is on the forums or good at English).
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@wtfrank This is why a say about beta test. After power creep is came to the game we will have few or more month with balancing parameters. This is how I imagine it. Because without real usage it's very hard to balancing this. So we have a few month to prepare for power creep, but after this we should not have option to disable power creep.
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Coming back to this topic. We have a few ideas regarding this:
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A new Operator power will be added soon:
PWR_FORTIFY
Makes a rampart or wall invulnerable to attacks for 1/2/3/4/5 ticks. Cooldown 5 ticks. Range 4 squares. Consumes 5 ops.
Upgrade on level: 0/2/7/14/22
On max level it will allow to maintain one rampart/wall tile in fully invulnerable state, but with huge ops consumption: 6 times more than one Operator generates. So you either need to store up ops in this room or import it from other rooms (but don't forget about vulnerability to
DISRUPT_TERMINAL). -
A totally new economy/trading/crafting mechanic (and a new structure!) will be introduced which leverages some Operator hi-end power. It will be so important to your economy, so that you will want it in every RCL7 room to gain maximum credits income. In fact, this mechanic will become a major influx of credits in the game instead of NPC buy orders for minerals. A player who manages to maintain and defend a number of RCL7 power-enabled rooms will gain huge trade benefits.
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The second one sounds interesting.
Another idea that came up on slack was to tie power creeps to a room with a cap on how many can be "attached" to each room. That way if you wanted more power creeps you'd need to enable it on more rooms.
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@artch RCL7? What happens when the room gets to RCL8? And why RCL7 and not RCL8? Obviously, I'll just put the credits pooping structure in a room that's an oubliette (Ultra defended with few entrances.) and never raise it to level 8 if it HAS to be at level 7.
And: What, the credits inflation we already have isn't enough? When I first started tinkering with labs, a token got you 1.2M credits. Now it's north of 6M credits. A structure in your room that poops out credits will just drive that higher.
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@tigga Connecting the number of PCs to the number of rooms is a bad idea, because it contradicts the principle of Control Level and Power Level being two separate independent player metrics. If we limited PCs to the number of Power Spawns, Power Level would become a secondary metric that depends on GCL, this is not the droid we're looking for.
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@smokeman RCL8 works too of course. That new structure will be available starting on RCL7.
Tokens price growth shows not the inflation, but former underestimation of them in the past. I always wondered how people are willing to sell 60-day subscription for the amount of credits farmable within a few days. Now it's closer to reality.
Also, this new mechanic will not generate credits from thin air, it will be tied to NPC orders and their supply/demand balance.
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@artch said in Enabling power on rooms:
A new Operator power will be added soon:
PWR_FORTIFY Makes a rampart or wall invulnerable to attacks for 1/2/3/4/5 ticks. Cooldown 5 ticks. Range 4 squares. Consumes 5 ops. Upgrade on level: 0/2/7/14/22
On max level it will allow to maintain one rampart/wall tile in fully invulnerable state, but with huge ops consumption: 6 times more than one Operator generates. So you either need to store up ops in this room or import it from other rooms (but don't forget about vulnerability to DISRUPT_TERMINAL).
Fortify a rampart before nuke hits. No repair cost!
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@orlet @artch Clarification for the new totally invulnerable rampart:
Would that make a creep beneath it totally invulnerable? A perfect bunker to let a creep survive a nuke hit?
Could make for some interesting anti-nuke strats.
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I like the idea enabling some new anti-nuke strats.
A small change that might add a some flavor. Rather than have the nuke intent just kill the all the creeps outright. Have the nuke deal massive damage to all the creeps. Attenuate the damage like a tower starting at 15k to 5k (or whatever constants work best). That would still kill most creeps outright, but should allow for determined players to keep a few creeps alive.
This would pair well with @Davaned's proposal since the API would already introduce the idea that nukes are nearly always fatal.
If the dev's like the idea, I'd be happy to create the pull requests for the processor / constants changes. A dev would still need to update the docs.
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Actually I'm not sure about the anti-nuke aspect of this power. It has to be considered carefully. Most likely it will not be implemented as total "invulnerability", but absorption of some good amount of damage so that you can still break through it using some special attacks like nukes or something else.
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@deft-code We're fine with nukes mechanics currently.
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Hmm I think as soon you activate the safe mode it should also turn off the power.
This should be a good compromise, since this is somewhat finite.
You can directly reactivate power or leave it be once you are in safe mode.
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@mrfaul Y tho
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Totally get the reasoning behind keeping nuke effectiveness untouched.
The game needs some checks and balances. Nukes are there to say that with enough effort anyone can be broken. Without nukes being pure wipes I could totally see lategame bots having automatic power creep instabunker the tick before then stalling hard. We already have executor PC with the turn self invun on a level 10 ability.
That said, possibly the highest level of this ability could turn a rampart nuke resistant. But not the level 1 version of it.
On a side note: The operator ability to create temp ramparts anywhere... Could it be used on top of existing ramparts? Can it be stacked? Can it be used on room exits? Can the fortify power be used on it? That would give ability to make a self rampart then immediately re-enforce it.
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@davaned said in Enabling power on rooms:
Could it be used on top of existing ramparts? Can it be stacked? Can it be used on room exits?
No.
Can the fortify power be used on it?
Yes.
