3. Newb question: What RCL level is required for SK harvesting?

Newb question: What RCL level is required for SK harvesting?


  • My base is on Shard3, Room E14N37. I'm currently at RCL4. Due to a poorly made decision, I'm now in a situation of not having enough sources to harvest. I'm now harvesting 2 sources at near full effciency. This means a steady income of 20E/t minus maintainence costs. However I can't find any more sources that are close enough to harvest. I don't consider attacking other players an option since I fear I may be roflstomped. I'm currently planning to harvest SK sources for more income. This is an interesting challenge only for a newb, since at RCL7+ it's easy to roflstomp those SKs. My questions are:

    1. How do these SKs behave? I've heard that for server performance, SKs are very brainless (rushing to close combat creeps instead of trying to kite them) and they will ignore any creep 5 tiles away. Is that true?
    2. What's the combat mechanic? I've seen that close combat creeps counterattack on every close combat hit. How does that work?
    3. Do they attack infrastructures?

    My current plan:

    1. If they are stupid and there's no counterattack, then I'll coordinate 2 x (24T 8M 8A) creeps. 2 should be enough in this case.
    2. If they are stupid but they counterattack every time they are attacked, then I have to wait till RCL5 and use a (26T 10M 13A) creep to defeat it. I'll have a healer supporting my creep in this case.
    3. If the SK has intelligent AI then I'll simply give up since I can't find any solution without costing too much CPU.

    Edit: I'm at RCL5 now, and I haven't began yet due to a NPC stronghold blocking in the way. It turned out to be case 2. Since the SK respawn every 300 ticks, I'll add another healer to fix the damage.

    It is more difficult than I originally thought, since I have to deal with invaders and strongholds. I'll not consider defending against other players for now, since harvesting SK is difficult enough, and there is enough SK for everyone. I doubt if anyone harvests SK in shard3.


  • https://github.com/screeps/engine/blob/master/src/processor/intents/creeps/keepers/pretick.js may be useful - that's their code.

    1 Reply

  • Be aware that Center rooms also spawn invaders after 100K energy is harvested. Those invaders can be T1 boosted in the SK rooms and T3 boosted in the portal room.

    I haven't seen many RCL5 SK mining set ups. Most solutions target RCL7+. The AI is very simple, but they respawn 300 ticks after the SK is damaged. So keeping them dead is large investment in spawn time.

    I've been curious for a while whether it'd be worth it to passively harvest the center room. Focus on smart pathing to get there and back safely, then retreat for 1500 ticks once invaders show up.

    Another option I've seen once was taunting the invaders to keep them from attacking your other creeps. But that was before the invader rewrite, it might not work anymore.

    3 Replies

  • @deft-code said in Newb question: What RCL level is required for SK harvesting?:

    Be aware that Center rooms also spawn invaders after 100K energy is harvested. Those invaders can be T1 boosted in the SK rooms and T3 boosted in the portal room.

    Worth mentioning this is only true if there's a stronghold in the sector.


  • @deft-code I used to do this when I first started playing and only had <RCL6 rooms: "I've been curious for a while whether it'd be worth it to passively harvest the center room. Focus on smart pathing to get there and back safely, then retreat for 1500 ticks once invaders show up."

    It's actually fairly trivial and quite profitable even if you just pause spawning for 1500 ticks, but ideally you should have a flee and reassign for those creeps.


  • @tigga Thx for the code. Seems that their movement is quite braindead: just move towards source. They ignore infrastructures and also ignore creeps out of RangedAttack range. They won't try to move towards my ranged creeps and away from melee creeps.


  • @deft-code said in Newb question: What RCL level is required for SK harvesting?:

    Those invaders can be T1 boosted in the SK rooms and T3 boosted in the portal room.

    Invaders can be T3-boosted in both SK and portal rooms.

    ☝

  • Oh shit, I better let all my creeps in the SK room suicide as soon as they see an invader.


  • I feel bad sorry!