NPC Strongholds

NPC Invaders now finally have a home!

We've deployed NPC Strongholds mechanic to the PTR for testing. Strongholds are spawned in all sectors on all shards. See the previous discussion to get more understanding of it. There are subtle differences from described there:

• Invader Cores do not return damage on attack.

• Invader Cores of all levels always have 1,000,000 hits.

• There are two new "natural" (non-power) effects in Structure.effects:

  • EFFECT_INVULNERABLE means the structure is temporarily immune to attacks (Invader Core uses this effect while it's deploying the stronghold in the first stage);
  • EFFECT_COLLAPSE_TIMER will remove the structure when the timer is over. Invader Core will be respawned almost instantly

• The most valuable loot is stored inside an Invader Core and only visible when it's destroyed.

Keep in mind that defenders' logic is still under development, it will be much stronger after release. Also, all loot resources are placed with 1 unit amount, the formula is under development.

Ruins

We also introduced a new concept of ruins which is similar to tombstones. When you destroy a structure, it does not disappear but drops a ruin object. All resources are moved to the ruin's store. Basic player structures ruins have 500 ticks of decay, but some special cases exist:

• InvaderCore ruins will last exactly the same time as the remaining EFFECT_COLLAPSE_TIMER on it.

• When a user respawns, all structures are converted to ruins with 500,000 decay time.

• When a novice player initially spawn into the room with another player's structures, all structures are converted to ruins with 100,000 decay time.

This is how a room of a destroyed or respawned player may look like:

API Changes

• Introduced StructureInvaderCore prototype.
• Introduced Ruin prototype.
• RoomObject.effects elements now have either power or effect property.

This update is deployed to ptr private server branch (version 4.0.0-beta.6) on both npm and Steam:

npm install screeps@ptr

There are two new CLI commands to make testing strongholds easier:

> help(strongholds);
Available methods:
 - strongholds.spawn(roomName, [opts]) - Create a new NPC Stronghold, and spawn it to the specified room. 'opts' is an object with the following optional properties:
    * templateName - the name of stronghold template to spawn, default is random
    * x - the X position of the spawn in the room, default is random
    * y - the Y position of the spawn in the room, default is random
    * user - id of user which stronghold structures should belong to, default is "2" (Invader)
    * deployTime - delay in ticks until the stronghold is deployed
 - strongholds.expand(roomName) - Force an NPC Stronghold to spawn a new lesser Invader Core in a nearby room.
Stronghold templates:
 - bunker1 [Level 1 bunker-style Stronghold]
 - bunker2 [Level 2 bunker-style Stronghold]
 - bunker3 [Level 3 bunker-style Stronghold]
 - bunker4 [Level 4 bunker-style Stronghold]
 - bunker5 [Level 5 bunker-style Stronghold]

Resources in strongholds seem to be bugged:

I guess it should be more than one unit?

I can see Ruin details a lot, I hope we recieve it all in the websocket

room.find(FIND_TOMBSTONES).forEach(tombstone => {
    if(tombstone.creep.my) {
        console.log(`My creep died with ID=${tombstone.creep.id} ` +
             `and role=${Memory.creeps[tombstone.creep.name].role}`);
    }
});

How I think ruins should look like, for consistency and to make it easier to detect what was destroyed (for rebuilding or clearing relevant cached values):

room.find(FIND_RUINS).forEach(ruin => {
    if(ruin.structure.my) {
        console.log(`My ${ruin.structure.structureType} with ID=${ruin.structure.id} was destroyed`);
    }
});

Question: If I destroy a structure to create a ruin with a 500 tick timeout, can I use that to essentially bypass the "can't withdraw from a nuker" constraint? With proper placement, it should be possible to yoink the up to 400K energy from the Nuker's ruins to the storage in times of dire need.

An Invader Core has two lifetime stages: deploy stage and active stage. When it appears in a random room in the sector, it has ticksToDeploy property, public ramparts around it, and doesn't perform any actions. While in this stage it's invulnerable to attacks (has EFFECT_INVULNERABILITY enabled). When the ticksToDeploy timer is over, it spawns structures around it and starts spawning creeps, becomes vulnerable, and receives EFFECT_COLLAPSE_TIMER which will remove the stronghold when this timer is over.

What is to stop me from placing 50xT3 boosted dismantle creeps on the public raparts and as soon as the core becomes open, just chewing it down very quickly? The stronghold ramparts will protect me, and my damage/tick is huge.

Also, how do the structures handle a creep being where they want to spawn?

I'm not sure I understand why we need this two-phase deployment.

I guess I'll wait until they're on private servers.

EDIT: Oh. Now it's fast. Thanks!

TypeError: Cannot read property 'energy' of null
    at exports.make.register.wrapFn.Object.defineProperties.C.RESOURCES_ALL.reduce (:41357:40)
    at Array.reduce ()
    at new  (:41355:29)
    at Object._storeGetter [as store] (:41284:12)
    at Object.get [as store] (eval at exports.defineGameObjectProperties (:1093:9), :7:61)

When doing:

for (let ruin of room.find(FIND_RUINS)) {
	loot += _.sum(ruin.store)
}

Specifically, _.sum(ruin.store) seems to be failing. Not sure which room or ruin, just saw it in some logs.

EDIT: Could be I'm getting the store of a ruined object that didn't have a store property - like a wall? Probably my fault and I was just confused by the error.

EDIT2: Ok, the issue shows just seeing if there is a store property on a ruin: if (ruin.store) {

W9S39 [ruin (extractor) #5d84b9f57c29e164bd6fcf85]
[16:01:53][shard2]TypeError: Cannot read property 'energy' of null
    at exports.make.register.wrapFn.Object.defineProperties.C.RESOURCES_ALL.reduce (:41357:40)
    at Array.reduce ()
    at new  (:41355:29)
    at Object._storeGetter [as store] (:41284:12)
    at Object.get [as store] (eval at exports.defineGameObjectProperties (:1093:9), :7:61)

https://screeps.com/ptr/#!/room/shard2/W0S20 tick 19029510

Caravan creeps with no owner that aren't visible (but are clickable) on the room view, but are visible on the map view.

@eduter We're currently working on structure information in ruin, should be on PTR later this week.

@QGazQ all ruins are walkable.

@Smokeman yes, with proper placement you'll probably be able to loot ruins before ruin decays.

@Zyzyzyryxy building on top of ruins is allowed. If you're fast enough, you can build something on top of a ruin, destroy it again and stack ruins

@duckymirror no, this is a bug, we'll investigate it, thanks.

@Tigga creeps standing in the deployment area will be removed. We're currently reworking stronghold/controller interaction, strongholds will claim rooms where they are. Thanks for reporting the Ruin.store issue, the fix will be deployed to the PTR later this week. Caravans should be already fixed.

Previously an object in that array was guarenteed to have a power field. This is no longer true. Any code that assumes it does will fail.

1. The current AI will fill towers to 1000 energy if they drop below 500. It is also possible for the player to withdraw energy from hostile towers. Depending on the order of operations a player could farm a stronghold for 500-1000 energy/tick per tower by emptying the towers out with haulers.
2. Less bad, but if a stronghold can spawn a 50 part creep with 40 T3 boosts in 50 ticks then those are farmable for 240 T3 boosts in 50 ticks. Now a squad of 4 50xT3 boosted creeps would cost 200 T3 boosts in those 50 ticks, but once you've cleared out everything but the invader core you can probably farm pretty cheaply.

An update deployed, now strongholds have ownership on their base room.

How does that work if the stronghold is in a centre room with no controller?