PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps



  • Disrupt Tower is missing a cooldown description in the create power creep window


  • Dev Team

    @geir1983

    Shard 1 / Room E2N11

    This room indeed has a power-enabled controller. Didn't you enable it? I don't get what's wrong with this case?

    Disrupt Tower is missing a cooldown description in the create power creep window

    Thanks, fixed.


  • Dev Team

    Update

    Power Creeps respawn cooldown has been set to the production value of 8 hours.

    Also, this cooldown now is triggered when a PC dies of old age too. Otherwise it allows for too many abuse cases when it's beneficial to wait until PC dies and not renew it.



  • @artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

    This room indeed has a power-enabled controller. Didn't you enable it? I don't get what's wrong with this case?

    I was just not sure if it was intended that you could use the regen_mineral in this case.

    Renaming creeps also needs looking at, its possible to do, but you have to do it blind. When pressing the Pencil icon next to the PC name on the Overview page the name disapears. You then need to delete all characters by holding down backspace and then write the new name without seeing what you are typing.



  • I don't like the power level cost of deleting power creeps. The cost should not scale so much, it would be easier to digest if it were a constant. I also don't like that deleting a high level power creep and deleting a low level power creep have the same high cost.

    @artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

    Each player has 30 experimentation periods initially, and we will replenish them from time to time when major balance changes occur.

    These experimentation periods do resolve (though somewhat artificially) the issues above, but would any of these replenish naturally over time, even without major balance changes?

    There will definitely be times when I (and probably other players as well) will want to do a massive change in code base or strategy, just for fun or to change things up. Losing potentially dozens of power levels to do this would be devastating, and in some of these cases I feel like I would rather respawn than lose those power levels.

    I would rather not have to respawn, but it does seem preferable to me over losing many power levels in some cases.

    Can we have our experimentation periods replenished when we respawn?



  • @artch can we mabye not have the cool down be in hours, and instead ticks? 14400 at 2 seconds a tick would be 8 hours.

    There is nothing wrong with useing hours, it's just harder to code is all. And if your useing code that can 'plan' kinda, it's a lot of randomness to have, cause tick times are not very predictable.



  • @artch there is a problem when trying to "swap" places with power creeps and regular creeps. Normally when two creeps tries to move to each others position they just swap places, but it does not work for a pc vs a normal creep. At first i thought it was my code somehow not detecting the power creeps correctly to resolve traffic issues, but i also tested moving two creeps by console so that they would swap places, but it also does not work, even with an empty main loop.


  • Dev Team

    @helam

    Can we have our experimentation periods replenished when we respawn?

    All power creeps are deleted without losing levels when you respawn. Replenishment of experimentation periods is something that we need to carefully consider, not ready to answer yet.


  • Dev Team

    @alaricdragon And which shard's ticks should we use then? Respawn cooldown is for the unspawned PC, i.e. it's in the account, not in the world.



  • @artch I would say we use the ticks of the shard were the creep died, but that can be an exploit, if you send your power creeps into another shard before they die. Can't use the shard they spawned on because that is even simpler to exploit. (Always make your power creeps on the fastest shard)

    Mabye use the shard that the player has the most cpu in, cause that is we're that's players 'base' is? And if it's the same for 2+ shards go off the number of claimed rooms, then spawns, then creeps. Or if doing something like that is to heavy on the systeam, mabye just the lowest numberd shard out of the shards with the same cpu?

    I don't know the best way to do something like that, cause I'm not very active in screeps yet.



  • @geir1983 I can confirm that my PowerCreeps and Creeps can't swap places. I didn't go as far as you did to confirm that it isn't my code.


  • Dev Team

    @geir1983 we were able to reproduce and fix the issue, thank you for the report!

    👍