[Discussion] Uniformity of the world
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Another approach to consider: new resources, potentially shard driven.
I think the most fluid way to introduce regional differences is to have resources that are only (easily) accessible in certain regions. This would foster trade and incentivize outposts etc, giving players challenges and reasons to explore.
Our current resources are too core to the game to be broken up, but a sort of newgame+ resources be created to support it. Some random examples below of powerful but unnecessary elements.
- Portalite: a rare minable resource that lets you interact with portals (opening/closing/retargeting them).
- Genesis: Allows renewing creeps without destroying creep boosts. Or possibly a boost that grants creeps extra TTL beyond its lifespan.
- Potentially something that allows you to boost buildings/generate buffs.
The actual implementation is not that important, but the big difference is a regionality to their spawns. If we have the equivalent of power banks with other types of resources that only spawn in certain regions or even only certain shards I think it would be interesting. Having players adapt their playstyles to use an abundance of a particular resource could be a great way to incentivize certain strategies. Making war easier/more profitable in a region, or changing balance.
Anyone have other suggestions? Most of the others I can think of would be difficult to implement without impacting current players. One options is doing something with strongholds to make invaders different in regions, since that hasn't been added.
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But what happens when you control all three? Can you get the power to snap your fingers and wipe half of enemy creeps out at random?
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You'd need to wipe out half of all creeps. Fair, impartial... Balanced.
Another option for special high-priority locations is some form of permanent portal...
Abyssal Shard A small shard that is only accessible through special portals. Something with high resources but no controllers, so you can't build rooms in it. To access it you have to control the region near the specific portals. Inside is plentiful minerals (potentially even compounds) and power banks.
Add on significant risk, perhaps enormous invasions or very powerful roaming enemies (Caravans of DOOM) and you have an interesting challenge for top tier players to compete and an interesting spectator sport, for both control of the portals and surviving in the Abyss.
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Anyone else have any ideas or comments? I think it would be nice for something to differentiate locations/shards besides server performance.
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I like the idea of having some kind of additional world asymmetry, as a means of stimulating meaningful conflicts. There are many potential ways of doing that. I think it would be hard to get something like this implemented though.
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- Possibly, the relic should be hidden until the room is claimed, or the RCL reaches 5 or something. Then it is revealed.
- Possibly there are temples and relics. Temples are like relics, but temples are immovable, and relics can be slowly moved. Both in the same room give both bonuses, but put the relic in the temple, and you get a third, new bonus.
- Just as there are naturally-prime spots per @wtfrank, the poorest rooms have the highest chances of relics, so it helps balance the map. Those prime spots shouldn't have a chance of relic, but a poor room near the primes spots would have a chance of having one, perhaps. And if there is a row of 3 1-source rooms, nearer to the edge, away from the central axes, with low minerals, that middle room has a very high chance of having a relic.
- The temples/relics would add viability to starting in a bad spot.
- Players might want to position toward the bad spots, rather than right in the middle of the prime spots, or un-intuitively expand from a prime area toward a poor area looking for the relics, or be able to invade and take over a room with a relic more quickly once it is found.
Essentially, add a bonus for having to take a poor spot and make it more viable. Late game, I suppose you would want to get your hands on temple rooms and put relics in them all.
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I agree, and I've shared my idea of how it can be solved in the thread "A different shard" (https://screeps.com/forum/topic/2273/a-different-shard/)
Basic idea: When making shard4, use the 4x4 or 6x6 sectors in the middle for this purpose. Make the area restricted with natural walls and disallow spawning in the rooms. Increase the number/values of sources, and make it accessible only by a new type of portal. (read thread for full context)
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@Jaycephus I've been assuming that these sorts of things won't be in claimable room, but will rather be in contested neutral territory like power banks. That way it's not about being lucky and claiming a room, but rather players in surrounding rooms battling it out, and further players claiming rooms near it.
@Kasami I think thats a good idea. Some sort of non-spawnable/claimable shard with increased resources is a reoccurring idea, it would give players something to work towards taming and with how shard portals work, it would increase player interaction from different map regions. Between the two, I think I'd rather have it not claimable, given that once it gets saturated there will be zero chance for new players to break in to entrenched positions given your specified portal limitations.
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If I understand correctly, the issue here is that such region would serve as a 'portal hub' connecting everyone to everyone (unless we design and implement a non-abusable restrictions).
Plus, I must say that we already have regions of neutral non-claimable rooms with increased resources generation, they are in 3x3 square in the middle of each sector.
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Can such area be a one-way trip for creeps? That would solve the "connects everyone to everyone" problem. Players can send creeps in and claim rooms to create colonies, however, they could not launch attacks from inside the sector on outside stuff. While players from outside would be able to.
At least that's how I imagine that suggestion.
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Wouldn't it much more interesting if they had to use some "altar" to send it back to the "mortal realm"?
So it is a one way ticket to a potential bounty but the entering creeps are l4d.Thinking about a similar mechanic like the helicopter thing in the Division.
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I do think it'd be nice if shards had different colour schemes. Seems like an easy change to make things a lot more visually interesting at least.
As far as other diversity, I'd be all in favour. One of the "problems" with screeps is that there's not much to fight for. Resoures are not scarse and it's not too hard to find space. If 25% of sectors (for example) held some long lasting (say, 1 million tick) unique resource it would be interesting to have wars to fight for control of that resource. Power/space/time/energy "relics" would all suit and would allow players to actually compete for some bonus.
RIght now we have centre rooms and we have highway rooms, both providing resources that could be fought over, but IMO they're not really valuable or unique enough to be interesting.
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I enthusiastically support different color pallets.
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I think it would be more interesting to make the catalyst really valuable by restricting it to source keeper rooms and very low yield.
Also screw the uniformity it would be much more interesting if a sector had only one type of mineral besides a surplus of Hydrogen and Oxygen.I would even make it so that the resource spots have a mineral vane probability what the next regeneration could spawn in a specific room.
i.e.:
- 70% U, 20% O, 10% H
a high value room since it is almost a given to get Utrium after each regeneration - 45% O, 45% H, 2.25% U, 2.25% L, 2.25% K, 2.25% Z, 1% X pretty much worthless but might give you now and then a nice reward for continues mining
- 50% X, 10% O, 10% H, 7.5% U, 7.5% L, 7.5% K, 7.5% Z could be a source keeper room
This artificially creates a unbalance and makes minerals way more valuable then now.
It also would generate the need for some kind of mineral exchange between players in whatever form this may take place.
- 70% U, 20% O, 10% H
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We're going to introduce some new mechanic soon that will diversify resource distribution in the world a little bit. Stay tuned!
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I have been avoiding this topic because I don't think adding a 'new' mechanic to further diversify resource distribution is a good idea at all.
Resources are ALREADY diversified. Many sectors have few rooms with certain minerals already, and there is already a shortage of "good rooms" (Ones with 2 sources, sufficiently open to develop easily.) All what we have now does is give advantage to people with high enough GCL and sufficient combat code to be able to spread out collecting all the "good" rooms at the expense of underdeveloped players and alliances.
Making this even worse seems like a bad idea.
There is already an area in EVERY SECTOR (As o4kapuk has pointed out.) that have hugely increased resource generation, but few people utilize this because the ROI of extracting those resources effectively is very daunting. (And in case anyone says "Learn to code." I already extract from the center rooms.) I don't have to fight for those rooms at all, FEW PEOPLE WANT THEM.
The core problem with any of these schemes I see here is it ignores the root issue... transporting things with creeps is exponentially more expensive the farther away / bigger the resource is. The one proposed feature I have seen that would actually fix this is the Strongholds. By incentivizing a player to well control a sector, they can keep the strongholds suppressed and thus greatly increasing the ROI for the center rooms.
So: Two things to improve this: One: Implement strongholds. Two: Fix the market so it's easier to use it to trade the minerals you have for the minerals you want at a 'fair' price. (Fair meaning consistent in the local shard.)
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Spoiler: it will be new resources, not the existing ones.
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@artch well OPS we know, but just adding a new resource doesn't fix the problem.
IMO:
Ressource are to plentiful to be traded efficiently besides the high level compounds, and virtually useless for low level rooms.
To change that it would be the easiest to make the distribution of different types very sparse.
And move the boosting to the spawning process where the spawn and extensions need to carry the resources.
This way even low level rooms benefit from them and the optional bounty from NPCs if they decide to go on the hunt.The game feels currently very linear without a lot rewarding for trying different options.
Well most of them are only a option if you are high level anyways which is really sad.
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@mrfaul Nope, wrong guess! It's not ops. Ops are only generated by Operators.
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@artch so you add a another unnecessary level of complexity to the game instead of refining the current ones.
I really hope it is something that is actually useful and not a feature creep.Don't get me wrong I like new stuff and I'm happy that you are working on it but still,
the current gameplay doesn't feel satisfying. Especially for new players since "high level" players seem to be impossible to beat.
Which kinda is true. You can boost your creep to ridicules stats, that they are able to just crush any unboosted creep.
Remember the "hit back" discussion.
