4. Superfluous ConstructionSites - Relocating structures

Superfluous ConstructionSites - Relocating structures

  • TMB

    Sometimes I've been willing to move around certain structures.
    Extensions are easy to move, you get a lot early and you having one less ready while you rebuild it somewhere else won't hurt. Towers are fine, they're not critical to the economy, you get a spare early, and you can still replace them with creeps in some way.
    Spawns however... They are quite expensive to build (15k) and required to make the creeps that will build them. You don't get a spare until very late. Though it's not impossible for a single creep to build a whole spawn within one life, it still require careful consideration: not every simple creep can do it, travelling distance will cut your leeway by a lot, fail the deadline by one tick, and your land is finished. (Assuming you don't have another room nearby that can assist with the spawning.)

    Thus I thought, how convenient would that be if I was able to start pouring energy into an additional construction site before I actually to remove a building.
    Not only would it make relocating more sweat-free, but being able to pre-place multiple ConstructionSites would make much easier to plan ahead the layout of a room at futur RCL, and have creeps starting to build these as soon as possible.

    In details, this feature would work like this :

    • We would be able to place one or several more ConstructionSite than we can actually build. (I'm leaning for multiple, and I'll detail at the bottom.)
    • Superfluous ConstructionSites can always be filled up with energy. Completing a superfluous ConstructionSite would either result in an inactive Structure, or the ConstructionSite simply staying as is until enough Structures are removed.
    • ConstructionSites could implement the isActive property from structures, and the red overlay on the map, letting know whether the a will complete upon being fullfilled.
      ConstructionSites would be marked as inactive as soon as the sum of Sites and Structures is above the max structure amount for the current RCL.

    How many ConstructionSite/Structures should we be able to place? The max amount+1 is just enough to safely relocate a critical structure, but the limit I'm specifically thinking about would be calculated with :

    Math.max(
    CONTROLLER_STRUCTURES[8][$structureType],
    2*CONTROLLER_STRUCTURE[$roomRcl][$structureType]
);

    This way, you are always given just enough ConstructionSite to plan ahead the location of all your structures for max RCL, and still enough to let you relocate all your structures at once even at high RCL.
    Road, Rampart, and Walls of course don't need to have their limit upped since it's already physically impossible to place down so many sites in one room.


  • I agree that relocating is really annoying and I also had some thought about it that have gone in your direction.
    But in the end I don't like the idea because it would allow for "backup" structures that spring into action as soon one is destroyed.

    HA I just had an idea, artch introduced the pull mechanic how about we utilized that to move active buildings.
    Lets say the (building cost / 300) equals the the fatigue generated to pull the structure. This could introduce some interesting mechanics.

    👆
    1 Reply

  • @mrfaul Pulling structures sounds awesome!! I'm terribly bad at planning colonies, and i often change structures' location. Storages with a lot of energy and spawns are the two cases where it becomes harder to change location. If we were allowed to pull them would be great!

    What about being able to build (in example) another storage and, as soon as it's built the other one gets destroyed?

    1 Reply

  • @calfa said in Superfluous ConstructionSites:

    What about being able to build (in example) another storage and, as soon as it's built the other one gets destroyed?

    There a way to many edge cases to make that not feasible also it wastes a great amount of energy.
    Besides how would you move your resources if your old container gets destroyed the instant the new one is created.

    1 Reply

  • @mrfaul You are right.

    The only benefit of doing this is that you destroy your old storage only when the new one is already built. The other way, first you destroy it and then, while the dropped resources are decaying you must build the new storage which takes some time, specially at low RCL.

    Anyway, your idea of being able to pull structures is a lot better, and would be great in my opinion.


  • You could see this as a player challenge: implementing a "move structure" function yourself 😉 I'm not a fan of having this supported by the game. Let pull remain creep only.

    It's not that difficult either after RCL 4. Just ensure you have a storage with sufficient energy.

    • CONSTRUCTION_COST["spawn"] is 15,000
    • BUILD_POWER is 5 in the game constants, so 15,000 / 5 = 3,000 work actions.
    • RCL 4 allows spawning [6 WORK, 6 CARRY, 6 MOVE] creeps.
    • 3,000 / 6 = 500 ticks of creep.build() with a single builder.
    • Because the builder has equal WORK and CARRY, it's used all energy it can carry after 10 ticks.
    • Therefore haulers effectively need to replenish 6 x 50 = 300 energy every 10 ticks.
    • Because RCL 4 allows for [17 CARRY, 9 MOVE] creeps they can haul 17 x 50 = 850 energy per run and move every tick on roads.

    That should be enough to solve the rest of your puzzle. The pieces don't match up perfectly, but there are numerous ways to work around that.

    ☝
    1 Reply
  • TMB

    @MrFaul
    One thing we could do to limit their use as backup buildings is reduce the health and max health of active building the more ReconstructionSites and the more progress there is : let's say having all ReconstructionSites set up and fulfilled would limit all other structures of that type to 1HP.

    Pulling structure would be a good idea too; it's a little odd, but it also solves the issue of moving the content of storages along with the storage.
    Though that would mean the position of structures is no longer constant, and that might be a breaking change for some.

    @keenathar
    That is assuming the room you wish to remodel is RCL4 or above, which you doesn't reach in a snap, and 3,000 ticks of not being able to spawn creeps is still 3,000 ticks of other activities being potentially halted.
    Even with the perfect code, relocating would still be major inconvenience at lower RCL, not in term of how I can script this, but in term of how much it may impact the rest of the room's economy even if I do it right, and especially if I do it wrong.

    1 Reply

  • I think moving/pulling is quite simple to achieve all you do is updating their position,
    well and add the move command so they can accept the pull request.
    (... why do I now think about git hub... 🤔 )

    I think that is a very cheap method without the need of big changes, a lot of updates and unnecessary edge cases.

  • TMB

    For pulling, all the edge cases I can think about are :

    • Pulling structure nearby or onto a room exit.
    • Pulling a rampart into another rampart.
    • Pulling a road onto another road.
    • Pulling a container onto another container.
    • Pulling structures into a tunnel.
    • Pulling the room controller.
    • Pulling an extractor (wouldn't be an exploit, but would be pointless)

    It's allowed in the simulation to stack structures on top of each other, so we know it may happens if we're not careful.

    Another alternative that comes to my mind: fully embrace the idea that a superfluous site is solely for reconstruction.
    The site has to be linked to an existing structure: if the structure is destroyed, the site is destroyed as well; when the site is complete, it produces a carbon copy of the linked structure, thus including content and current HP. (Might as well say that the site would teleport the linked structure, but I prefer giving a whole new ID to the relocated structure.)
    In that case they might not exactly be ConstructionSite, rather a new Class that derives from ConstructionSite, and they would not be placed from the Construct menu, but from a "Relocate" button on a structure's inspector. From the script, they would be placed through a .relocate(pos) function of an existing structure.


  • Most of that is fixed with the same check that the construction sides use...
    so not really a concern in my view.
    And roads walls etc. should be unmovable anyway there no point in moving those.

  • Dev Team

    I'm not sure that I understand a game value of the proposed feature... but I definitely see how this breaks existing game values. Wisely choosing how to build and how to maintain your room is not an 'unnecessary obstacle' for anything, it's a challenge that makes the game deeper. Like, a player can't destroy his structure when hostiles in the room for the sake of balance.

    As for your problem, you probably should raise your room to RCL7 which support two spawners, build second and then safely rebuild the first one.

    2 Replies

  • @o4kapuk yes I'm not complaining but could be fun watching creeps pulling on buildings 😆
    but I'm still a bit annoyed that there is no option for allowing your script to set your first spawn.

    That is still manual I would much prefer to click "Spawn in here" and let the script handle it, maybe with some kind of "first function" that allows to place it.

    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @mrfaul if we run code for all players who don't exist in the game world every tick at each shard, the game would be unacceptably slow.

    I think there was an external script for spawning somewhere in the community, try lurking around.

    1 Reply
  • TMB

    @o4kapuk I understand that a room's layout shouldn't be changing every day of the week, but the spawn is the very first thing you have to place in order to start a room, when there's nothing else around to guide your choice; RCL7 is the penultimate stage of the room.

    Having to plan ahead the entire history of the room before allowing myself to take the very first step is not something I'd be fond of, neither is having to carry an initial misguided choice until the room is basically finished.
    So it's more for quality of life than actual gameplay.

    As for your solution, I can't "just" rise to RCL7, this one will take a lot of time; it's a room-scaled game ending to my novice eyes, and I have yet to reach it in any of my rooms.

    (Aside, I don't see how destroying structure during invasions has anything to do with game balance. The only advantage I can think of is destroying tunnels to block off accesses, and that's still very situational.)


  • If you have at least GCL 2, you can claim a neighboring room and use that room for spawning until you can rebuild your spawn.

    👍

  • FWIW I've written code to relocate any structure in one of my bases, and it's not an unsolvable problem. To relocate storage, it evacuates all resources into terminal before destroying the storage, and vice versa. This wouldn't work pre-rcl 6 but I can live with that restriction. To relocate a spawn before the 2nd spawn turns up at RCL7, I enforce a minimum amount of energy in a storage, and spawn a certain number of builder creeps before destroying the existing spawn.


  • @o4kapuk said in Superfluous ConstructionSites - Relocating structures:

    @mrfaul if we run code for all players who don't exist in the game world every tick at each shard, the game would be unacceptably slow.

    I think there was an external script for spawning somewhere in the community, try lurking around.

    That is true but I never said anything about that, I talked about a button that runs your "setup code" which could be exported like the main loop.
    And I personally don't view relocating structures as that difficult I just thought pulling structures could look really funny.
    I just have this picture in my mind of a train of screeps all desperately pulling at one spawn 🤣


  • I like the idea of the "setup code" button. If the problem with placing spawn by code is just that you want to avoid running code for all players that dont have a spawn, this would solve it. Have some button for claiming a room, this will enable running your code even without a spawn/creeps/structures etc for a set period of ticks before timing out. Means your code can run and place the first spawn automatically, but it will only run for some ticks before it would get disabled if the spawn fails to place within the allowed time automatically.

    ☝
    2 Replies

  • @estecka said in Superfluous ConstructionSites - Relocating structures:

    That is assuming the room you wish to remodel is RCL4 or above, which you doesn't reach in a snap, and 3,000 ticks of not being able to spawn creeps is still 3,000 ticks of other activities being potentially halted.

    I explicitly stated that as a criteria, hardly an assumption. After you've played a bit longer, RCL 4 isn't as daunting anymore. In some players are able to reach it within the safe mode after respawning, so in less than 20.000 ticks (roughly 16 hours). You'll get there 🙂

    Additionally, I said 3000 work actions: it would be 3000 ticks if you used 1 builder with 1 WORK part. Divide the number of actions by the number of WORK parts used to build each tick, like the builder with 6 parts in my example, and you'll get the total number of ticks spent on building. At RCL4 this can be finished in 500 ticks with a single builder, which gives a lot of margin for error (delays).

    @estecka said in Superfluous ConstructionSites - Relocating structures:

    Even with the perfect code, relocating would still be major inconvenience at lower RCL, not in term of how I can script this, but in term of how much it may impact the rest of the room's economy even if I do it right, and especially if I do it wrong.

    Well, yes, it is an inconvenience. But everything in this game is. Not being able to control creeps like in an RTS is an inconvenience. Not having vision in certain rooms is an inconvenience. Pathfinding brings inconvenience. Some structures have .store and some having .energy brings inconvenience.
    Overcoming these challenges is at the core of this game.

    1 Reply

  • @geir1983 I also like the idea, it's a bit odd that I have to handle two cases - my bot builds the room around where I manually placed a spawn, vs the spawn is placed based on how my bot decides to build the room.

    👍