3. NPC resource trains

NPC resource trains


  • I logged in today and saw this steaming along the adjacent highway towards the portal:

    0_1536407185377_train.png

    The middle creeps were carrying 5000 XGH2O each. They are all NPC creeps.

    Devs, this looks epic! This is such a good idea. I can't wait to have a go at raiding one! 😄

    Has anyone else spotted one of these? I'm intrigued to know how often they appear and what resources they might carry.


  • Ok, apparently this was added ages ago! https://blog.screeps.com/2017/10/npc-events/


  • Sadly they're boring and only carry XGH2O. I have a small campaign to make them carry random boosts. I need more signatures though as @o4kapuk is not convinced.

    👀

  • @Tigga I wouldn't call them boring. Perhaps we can term the subject under developed.

    The game is definitely better for having them as is evidenced by this newbie's excitement.

    It adds a nice layer to the world's individuality.

    I do agree, that the concept can be developed further. I'm personally a fan of the NPC stronghold subject.


  • @Tigga, I think XGH2O is probably the best resource as a reward. I also agree that the idea should be better developed. It's tough to code up for a rare event.


  • I would write code to harvest these, but it is impossible to test in a reasonable time frame, so I never will.


  • I've actually been around for quite a while, but this is the first time I've seen one. Perhaps this event is too rare?

    Which definitely raises the issue of how to code and test for something that hardly ever happens. Especially as there doesn't seem to be history available in highway rooms?

    I'm definitely in favour of anything that adds more variety to the game and encourages combat. NPC strongholds sounds like a good idea.

  • Dev Team

    They are not that rare. As far as I know, it's at least 3 trains per shard active anytime.

    History for highway rooms is available for periods when NPC caravan cross the room.


  • They're certainly not as frequent as power spawns, but they're not exactly rare.


  • The feel rarer than they are because you'll typically only be aware of them if you're actively looking. They are rare enough that it's quite hard to debug if you're not able to be at your PC much.


  • I'm going to agree with @Tigga here. While I quite often see one choo-chooing next to my rooms, they are not that common enough for me to even bother writing any specific code for their detection, because debugging that would be a royal pain in the aft. I'd have to babysit the game for possibly very long time.

    1 Reply

  • @orlet this sounds very much like a problem of your own creation. You could for example, only try and intercept them while you're at your computer and are able to debug them.

    ☝

  • Would be kinda interesting if there were periods of very high spawns of trains. Having a couple event days a month where there was 15 active trains per shard could be a cool community day and could incentivize people to write code/engage more on that day.


  • This is a bit of a tangent, but I think that a thing that Screeps desperately needs is a better sim, or at the very least least private server commands to spawn various NPC events such as resource trains. (The "create an invader" button on public servers has been broken for well over a year now.) (EDIT: I'm just dumb) Currently, the sim is literally nonfunctional, and on the private server, it takes a lot of work to set up and test a given rare scenario (testing defenses/offenses, NPC events, etc.) if it is even possible in the first place. Things that would be nice to have as private server commands or in a new sim environment:

    • createInvader(roomName, melee/ranged/healer, small/big, amount=1): spawn an invader(s) in a room (might still be nice to have as a console command though)
    • createNpcTrain(roomName): create an NPC train in a room
    • createNpcStronghold(roomName): create an NPC stronghold (once this feature is completed)
    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @muon said in NPC resource trains:

    (The "create an invader" button on public servers has been broken for well over a year now.)

    Could you please elaborate? I've just tried this button and it seemed to work perfectly fine for me.


  • @artch Wow I feel stupid. 🙃 I just went to test this one more time, and I realized it wasn't working because you can only place the invaders on exit tiles... It's been a while since I've interacted with the manual UI, so I guess I had forgotten that red text = invalid placement. (It might be worth clarifying this though, or removing the exit-tile-only restriction.)

    I do still think it would be nice to have options to create the other NPC events on private server though!

    👍

  • @muon The sim does actually work, but it starts paused with a UI that says it's running - you have to toggle play/pause to get it to actually start. This one got me for a while as well.


  • @SystemParadox Perhaps "literally nonfunctional" is a (very small) overstatement, but aside from gradually slowing down to unmanageable tick rates, the sim is missing several crucial features that public/private servers have, such as IVM, multiple rooms, etc.