[Discussion] Uniformity of the world
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@mrfaul One day you'll be a high level player and you'll be able to attack other high level players. Screeps is built in part around RPG mechanics, of course higher "level" players are more powerful. It's a powerful incentive to increase your level. At the same time, once a room hits RCL8, which doesn't take all that long in the end, even a low GCL player could put up a challenge to many more established players.
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It would be interesting to have a resource that high tech options requires to run. Like people have described, having a resource that boosts buildings in some way, or is required to create a particular building.
For example:
- observers always felt like a fascinating building to me. If I could consume a unit of some resource to get an observer tick within a 40 room distance I'd definitely find a use for it.
- Or what about a resource that you can use on a controller to prevent structure decay in a room with? Like a pause on roads/ramparts/containers running down. I could see high level players optimizing cpu with that.
- A special rare mineral with boost that you can use on claim parts to extend their range. This would let you claim further than normal/attack enemy controllers more effectively. Eg unique mineral, used to make one of two boosts. Parts can be claim only but range is double, parts can attack controller only but way more power.
I can see lots of "special case" boosts that wouldn't be broken but would be interesting in very low quantities on the map.
I'm excited to see what @artch and his team have come up with, ideally I'd like to be very rare and special so that it feels closer to an event when it is nearby.
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@wtfrank said in [Discussion] Uniformity of the world:
70% U, 20% O, 10% H
a high value rooma completely worthless room45% O, 45% H, 2.25% U, 2.25% L, 2.25% K, 2.25% Z, 1% X
pretty much worthlessthis room is quite attractive to me, but nowhere near as attractive as a 100% H room50% X, 10% O, 10% H, 7.5% U, 7.5% L, 7.5% K, 7.5% Z
could be a source keeper roomfar less attractive than either a 100% X room or a 100% H roomYup, you just proved my hypothesis about the current perceived value of the minerals, "base minerals" are far more valuable then the "actual stuff that does things".
It is my intention to make the base minerals overabundant so that the prices of the other stuff becomes somewhat relevant.Currently players have no problems to get their hands on any resource just by looking around them, and only a few boost are getting used frequently.
This results in a very unattractive market place besides the fact that it is currently overpriced due to the "front up" tax.The reason why I want to move the boosting to the spawning mechanic is :
A: to reduce complexity
B: to increase the use of the other boosts which are seldom used currently because they are only attractive in low RCLs anyway (or in a all out war)Also since low RCLs need the stuff in the first place, good logistics become more important too.
My main gripe with screeps is, there
isn't a lotenough that rewards the players brain to keep him engaged.
Read this and maybe you understand what I meant: Brain satisfaction toolI love screeps for what it is, and I know a lot of thought/math went into the constants which are the base of the game.
This appeals to programmers, but truth is, the average Joe is the one who brings the money to keep the wheel turning.
A lot of people I know who tried it always said the same to me: "feels dead"
I only try to convince people to try screeps when I'm sure they could have fun with it.
But since the real "fun" starts after a significant time investment most people abandoned it beforehand which is really sad.
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@mrfaul Obviously compounds are more valuable than base minerals. They represent cpu, energy, and time spent creating them. However most of them are not needed frequently, and so base minerals represent flexible options. Most people can create their own compounds fairly easily.
Consider it logically: If I'm mining all of the minerals I need to create a T3 compound I'm using, why would I bother buying it from the market during ordinary gameplay? Part of the game involves intelligent expansion to make sure your empire has access to a good spread of resources.
Now, in times of conflict etc demand might exceed your ability to supply, which is when you buy from the market. Or maybe you're short on one piece of a compound, so you buy more H from the market. That's why the market for base minerals is much more liquid, because most players are filling small gaps in their production supplies vs buying completed compounds. Most high level players are not going to waste their credits buying a premium priced completed product.
My main gripe with screeps is, there isn't a lot enough that rewards the players brain to keep him engaged.
Secondly: Screeps is inherently an openworld self-driven game. If you're looking for a hand-holding reward system it's not a good match. It gives you access to everything up front, you have to write the code to actually make it happen. I disagree with this, screeps is entirely about using your brain. Unless you know how to code without thinking, which I'd be damn impressed.
My personal gripe with pacing is two part:
- Tick times are very slow, so it just plain takes a while for things to happen in game. This is good and bad, as fast tick times mean you could lose a room to an attack before you could get to a computer. But I'm personally in favor of faster ticks because it makes things more interesting.
- the amount of work to get to a functional baseline is high. You're not competitive until you get fairly far along, but that's entirely because of the amount of code you need to write. Put in more time -> better rewards. Hoping things get handed to you -> no progress.
Simply put @MrFaul: You're GCL 5 with 1 room and no remote mining. So the tick times are not the issue, but the code is. This is yours. If you want to do new things, you need to do it yourself. Frankly, you've taken your first baby step but gone no further. No matter what the devs change with end game content, if you don't write something that can handle having a second room you're never going to get better. My advice is think big and invest in a good design rather than duct-taping with room .name hacks, but whatever gets you off the ground.
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@mrfaul said in [Discussion] Uniformity of the world:
Yup, you just proved my hypothesis about the current perceived value of the minerals, "base minerals" are far more valuable then the "actual stuff that does things".
They're absolutely not - if there was a room that spawned XGHO2 directly that would be a far better room to most players than any existing room containing merely a base mineral.
But since the real "fun" starts after a significant time investment most people abandoned it beforehand which is really sad.
It really depends what you find fun. I was gripped from the start trying to figure out the API so that I could harvest one room effectively and get it to the next RCL level so I could make my base bigger.
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How about a less homogeneous world?
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@Davaned @wtfrank
Seriously it is funny how you come exactly to the same conclusions I have but don't see my point.
But getting my point across is not one of my strong points.
I'm not talking about compounds and what I meant by "base minerals" are only
and 
since those are necessarily needed in big quantities.
With "actual stuff that does things" I was referring only to
, 
, 
, 
and 
.The whole point is to drastically re-balance the minerals so trading becomes a thing if not a necessity.
As @Davaned already pointed out you can produce anything currently yourself since in 99% the stuff you need is just around you.
By artificially increasing the demand by making it very very hard for a player to get everything the market becomes your best friend.Heck I would even go so far with rooms with no energy but a mineral and controller so you need to constantly supply it in order to harvest it.
That in combination with @Ciber's world proposal would be really fun. Then it is actually viable to fight for a strategic advantage.
To put it bluntly I want create a pseudo job system where people need to think about specializing their creeps to do certain tasks.
Only then will player interaction develop naturally.
P.S. The script running on the official server is the botched tutorial stuff since I only play on nonpublic private servers with friends.
And sits mainly there to ultra slowly collect GCL.
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You seem to be implying that trading is not a thing.
Trading is very much thing right now. You don't want to have to rely on getting the perfect balance of minerals especially given you have a varying need for boosts. Market is heavily used.
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@tigga yes it is used.
But still, I wouldn't call it a integral part of the game.
IMO that's a shame. In it current state it wouldn't make big impact in gameplay if we would get rid of it.
You always would have every necessary thing around you it is just more time consuming at all.
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Uhm well I should stop writing stuff past 12 pm my "articulated finesse" drops near zero
I think my last post was slightly misunderstood.@GimmeCookies and @Davaned please elaborate your negative reactions.
I maybe able to explain what I want to achieve then.
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@mrfaul " In it current state it wouldn't make big impact in gameplay if we would get rid of it." Start playing on public for a while and you will understand that the market is needed in this game. Especially on shard3 where not everyone has good enough code to claim one room of each mineral
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@gimmecookies OK if that is your view point I'll accept that after all it is a discussion.
Now make a thought experiment what would happen if the market would just vanish istanly.I'm looking forward to your conclusion.
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@ciber I think this would be a game changing thing, if they added this i'd be extremely happy, you could maybe manually place your controller then you have a certain area that is now claimed by you, then maybe you could put down things like claim extenders that allow you to further expand your base or "area". Then this compound with areas where maybe "supply crates" spawn and you could go there to get some boosts, but if you want the higher boosts from these crates you first have to defeat a boosted guard, I also think it'd be a cool idea if even the players weren't able to see into rooms they don't have vision, like there are no buildings there until you go and look and then later if you go back in look you'd see the buildings that you saw, but you'd have to go back to update the buildings. This would give players a REAL reason to scout. I really do think it'd be cool to see something that you contest. Of course the map would have to be on a new shard but id think it's worth a try.
Sorry for any weird sounding things or grammatical errors I don't have time to go back and look through what I typed.
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@communication you are jumping to far ahead
his suggestion just changes the world gen.But it is good to have enthusiasm
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@mrfaul Do you have any experience using the market on the main world? You might not be getting a realistic impression of it if you've never used the market on a server with a population.
If it was suddenly removed, probably 1 in 5 empires would start to collapse over time. Many new settlements would die off, people often use boosting/terminal transfers extensively for bootup time.
Tons of people do GCL farming via market.
Any new player would be at an enormous disadvantage. Until you get 10+ rooms, you probably don't have all the minerals you need in sufficient quantities to make what you'd like. Even after 10+ rooms, you often have gaps in your supply chain where you need more H/X/etc than you have, so boosting would stall.
Finally, anyone who doesn't keep large banks of boosts on hand would be extremely vulnerable to warfare. People absolutely rely on the market for quickly gaining stockpiles of minerals on defense.
If your argument was that the market could be better I would agree with it. I'd love to see more interaction built into it. However, you said it wasn't an integral part of the game, and I disagree with that. @mrfaul said in [Discussion] Uniformity of the world:
@tigga yes it is used.
But still, I wouldn't call it a integral part of the game.
IMO that's a shame. In it current state it wouldn't make big impact in gameplay if we would get rid of it.
You always would have every necessary thing around you it is just more time consuming at all.Of course, technically you are right in the long term. Because if they removed the official market, players would definitely create their own market after some time. The official one is just more convenient, even if it does have a 5% tax.
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@MrFaul @Communication @Davaned if the market were to totally vanish, it'd prob revert to exactly how it was pre-market. ppl in #trading would advertise what they needed to get rid of, and other players would agree to a trade, 10k of 1 mineral for 10k of another, etc
the Market was a game changer, in that you could automate that. getting rid of it would be bad for the game, as it would do exactly the opposite of the entire premise of this game: automate things.
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So to sum up, if the market vanishes all what happens is it results in a giant inconveniens.
New players are at disadvantage regardless besides the fact that advanced players can crush them they are also penniless.
But would there be actual Gameplay lost? (Besides the automated trading and I'm only talking about the market it self not the terminal)
People would self organize, I see that as a plus.Oh one thing, I don't want to get rid of it, I just want it more interwoven with the game.
You see there are subscription tokens which are not really traded partly because the value/afford feeling is off.This doesn't just affect the market it is apparent in the entire game. There is just not enough worth fighting for.
Rooms almost don't matter much, minerals are plenty, power... hm, well it is there.
There is currently nothing worth enough that could aggregate a conflict besides a personal grudge.
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@mrfaul said in [Discussion] Uniformity of the world:
But would there be actual Gameplay lost? (Besides the automated trading and I'm only talking about the market it self not the terminal)
This is incoherent. You ask a question, then immediately redefine it, to exclude all the ways that gameplay would be lost and get the answer you want.
Rooms almost don't matter much,
In a given sector I might find that there are less than 5 rooms I would consider colonising.
Have you actually played the game?
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@mrfaul said in [Discussion] Uniformity of the world:
People would self organize, I see that as a plus.
I see it as a minus. This is a game about automation. I don't see any reason why the market shouldn't be automated. Self-organization using out-of-game methods is bad IMO.
You see there are subscription tokens which are not really traded partly because the value/afford feeling is off.
Subtokens are P2W. They let you take outside of game resources ($$$) and turn it into an in game advantage (credits). Now obviously the "W" part doesn't come without good code. I don't really see sub token trading as a major part of the game and I certainly don't think it should be promoted further.
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@tigga said in [Discussion] Uniformity of the world:
I see it as a minus. This is a game about automation. I don't see any reason why the market shouldn't be automated. Self-organization using out-of-game methods is bad IMO.
Subtokens are P2W. They let you take outside of game resources ($$$) and turn it into an in game advantage (credits). Now obviously the "W" part doesn't come without good code. I don't really see sub token trading as a major part of the game and I certainly don't think it should be promoted further.
Yes using out-of-game methods is a minus, but we have enough in-game tools that those methods are not necessary just convenient.
After all programmers are lazy by nature.
Creeps have public memory segments and the say method.
Granted implementation of a communication protocol is annoying but also very rewarding.
Even the Gmod community managed to boil down to some common interfaces for inter-mod use.
And that community is 80% based on narcissistic script kiddies, which included me at my humble beginnings
I see no reason why this community shouldn't be able to achieve something way more sophisticated.
If you view subscription tokens as p2w I can't deny that completely.
However I also view them as a really big chance to bring a coherent value feeling to the game which is necessary for a working and thriving market.
Every form of currency is a intrinsic value based on availability and demand, and currently this is totally off in Screeps economy.
It would be much more interesting if a specific amount credits in Screeps would be generated for actually bought subscription tokens.
This way the credits would be finite and inflation is based on real world demand.
At the moment inflation is through the roof since credits are somewhat infinite due to the current redistribution mechanic.
Also I think it is fair that "advanced" players have the ability to minimize their costs by leveraging sub tokens.
To put it frankly the sub tokens should be the way to play this game a infinite amount instead of the lifetime subscription.
@wtfrank I'm sorry if some of my posts seem incoherent but I assure you that my thoughts are very so.
I just have a very bad habit of using implications that are very clear for me but you can't look into my brain.
So please bear with me and ask me if you find some of my arguments nonsense.Also how you view rooms is totally up to you, everybody uses their own metrics there
And please stop to assume that I don't play the game just because of that excuse of a script which is currently on the server.