PTR Changelog 2018-08-28
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I like the cap-per-part idea.
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Having a 70% return for energy and 100% return for boosts seems really inelegant to me and is another weird edge case/bit of artifice I need to internalize into my code. Yuck.
Issacar's critique is on the money. You are patching the problem in the wrong place. The real problem is that CARRY is so inefficient.
It would be better to just remove recycling entirely than to introduce magic thresholds for when certain things happen, which is a design crutch. Recycling is already an edge case strategy that, if you are not transporting energy via HEAL parts, really has no use and is it even worth the CPU it costs to invoke.
Capping per part is an even grosser solution. What problem are you even trying to solve? This is only a problem because of the other design kludge introduced when you made RCL 8 rooms cap out on GCL production so the game now has this weird mechanic of temple rooms.
I think we should leave this alone and focus on shipping power creeps instead.
If it really needs to be addressed, the stupid answer is to make HEAL parts cheaper so that CARRY parts are better for transporting energy. The cost of HEAL has no impact on the game at all and could literally be anything.
My 2c
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I would disagree on the heal part cost. Heal is very strong and with lower cost, it really would change balance, special for lower rcl rooms.
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In all fairness at 70% I would still use HEAL carriers for my temple. At small distances it would still be superior. Changing the return to 70% doesn't add any interesting decision point, it's just less energy efficient but still unrivalled. With capping energy returned I would simple end up recycling CARRY haulers, I still wonder if that makes things better. Isn't a hauler being recycled for it's energy still an 'exploit'. It's carry is so crummy it's not worthwhile to send it for a return trip...
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@tun9an0 Recycling for transporting purpose is not an "exploit" in any sense, it's a valid strategy. It just needs some rebalance to make it more aligned with other strategies, so that you may decide not to use it in some circumstances (currently there are none).
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@artch Without increasing energy carry there is no alternative. Boosts are too expensive (and I would recycle the boosted hauler on arrival also). The energy per rmove intent is just too low. Perhaps a new CAPACITOR body part or something combined with CPU taxed 'chargeCapacitor'/'dischargeCapacitor' could make long distance energy logistics more natural/viable. Currently I would not loot a storage full of energy that is more then 4 rooms away just cause the haulers to do so cost more...
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@tun9an0 Energy is not intended to be easily movable. Yes, looting energy (unlike other more valuable resources) may not be profitable, this is per design.
Of course you often want to recycle haulers at the destination, it doesn't depend on how much the return is, you would want to do this with any return.
I think we'll stick with 125 limit per part and close this matter for now.
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125 energy limit is deployed to the PTR, the first post is updated.
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I would disagree with shedletsky's opinion that HEAL should be cheaper and that recycling should be removed. HEAL is already very powerful and recycling provides interesting strategies. However, I do think that it would be worth considering buffing CARRY boosts. Currently the manufacturing cost is the same as ATTACK / RANGED_ATTACK / HEAL boosts, but I don't think that 4x carry capacity provides nearly the same utility that 4x damage/healing does (ignoring the fact that the healing further synergizes with XGHO2, which I personally think is a bit overpowered).
For example, assuming 100% lab efficiency and using T3 boosts, if you want to move a full storage worth of resources from 3 rooms away using 40 move / 10 carry creeps, it will take you 25 creeps and 3.56 million lab ticks for the entire operation. The same amount of lab ticks could boost 20 creeps (5 full 2x2 squads) with 10 tough / 40 (attack/ranged/heal) / 10 move bodies, which, in the hands of the right players, is more than sufficient to take out most rooms. I would argue that taking out a room is worth far more than faster and slightly cheaper resource transport.
One final thing I would add is that I think a big factor that limits the usefulness of CARRY boosts is that containers are limited to 2000 capacity, which is only slightly higher than the max unboosted creep carry capacity. I think it is worth considering adding an
EXTEND_CONTAINERpower to the operator power creep, which would increase the capacity of a container from 2000 to 8000 (max boosted carry capacity) for X ticks. (This would really need to be useable in outpost rooms to be useful, however, so I'm not sure how that would work with enabling/disabling powers in a room.) Alternately, simply increasing container capacity altogether could make this boost more useful on a day-to-day basis, and I don't forsee any balance problems with this change.
