3. Seasonal Idea: King of the Hill

Seasonal Idea: King of the Hill


  • Alright, hear me out on this, I have a neat seasonal idea

    Overview

    The map has structures called Emitter Stations (or something like that) scattered throughout that take the place of controllers. Players compete over the emitter stations with creeps containing CLAIM parts to score. The rules around scoring with emitter stations are intentionally left simple to keep the barrier of entry low, while allowing complex combat code to thrive.

    Rules

    • Emitter stations have an inherent quality. The greater the quality, the more score granted per CLAIM part
    • Emitter stations are fairly uncommon, only 2-3 per sector
    • Emitter stations close to the center of the map are of higher quality on average with the inverse being true for the outer reaches. This gives top players (who would dominate regardless) a place to compete over, mid tier player a decent place to compete with each other, and new players fairly safe places out of the way to skirmish with one another
    • Emitter stations score using the following formula (working beta) Score Gained = [claim parts present] * [quality multiplier]/([num players with claim parts present]^2). This makes alliances possible but not profitable enough for top players to consider it (and subsequently monopolize the center)

    Rationale

    The idea behind a game mode like this is to encourage new players in, provide a shallow learning curve with a high skill cap, and keep combat out of owned rooms.
    This gamemode encourages new players in by providing a good area for them to duke it out away from the titans that could wipe them. Starting in the corners of the map would be a bad idea for a mature codebase, as the quality multipliers would be too low for them to score as much as they could otherwise. Not only that, but spawning a creep with a claim part and having it stand ontop of a flag placed near an Emitter Station is fairly easy to do with slightly modified tutorial code.
    This game mode does not have much to speak of as far as new game mechanics go. It doesn't have new resources that spawn around the map and it doesn't require complex supply lines. Instead it opts for emergent complexity. Screeps only rarely requires players to engage in creep versus creep combat where one side doesn't have the massive advantages of ramparts/towers. Standing armies are expensive in screeps, so in order to properly capitalize on as many emitter stations as possible players will need to develop complex scouting to see attacks coming and spawn defenders to meet them. There is potential for an interesting game of cat and mouse there. In addition, we have the complex problem of creep versus creep combat. This is one area I would be exited to see a more developed meta in.
    At the end of the day, screeps is already full to bursting with mechanics to write code for. There is remote mining, refining minerals, boosting, invaders and mining SK rooms, power, automatic layouts, and a million other things on all but the most advanced player's TODO lists. I personally find it hard to justify joining seasonal to write code that is only useful in a seasonal context. If the rules encouraged me to build a really cool scouting and creep vs creep combat manager that is another story.

    Anyways, thats my idea. Thoughts?

    TLDR: Simple king of the hill gamemode that would be easy for newbs to get into, hard for advanced players to master, and that has some use cases in MMO

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    • Emitter stations have an inherent quality. The greater the quality, the more score granted per CLAIM part
    • Emitter stations are fairly uncommon, only 2-3 per sector

    too easy for single player to control them with this set. I'd say every room has it, and regarding the quality:

    • owned rooms have lowest multiplier (ie. x1)
    • reserved rooms : x 2
    • empty rooms : x5
    • sk rooms : x8
    • central rooms with portals x15

    imo that would force some calculation about how to control area and should disallow easy snowball of top players, while still giving some competitiveness for weaker players.

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  • too easy for single player to control them with this set.

    I disagree. If you could build ramparts and towers then yea it would be a done deal. Since you not only have to hold the room with creep alone, but you have to protect a bunch of big CLAIM creeps camping next to the collector it makes it harder to hold.

    Another reason not to have too many collectors is the substantial energy cost to saturate them. You need a continuous supply of max size CLAIMers to max out a collector's intake, a significant drain if every room has access to the ability

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  • "Since you not only have to hold the room with creep alone"

    i think most (if not all) of S1 and S2, top20 players can own a sector for themselves

    that means that the 2-3 rooms/sector are quite untouchable by anyone else for scoring due to limited TTL of claim-body creeps. Only 'disrupting' might be possible, but still that would mean that player would probably have to sacrifice his/hers score-defence (since not owning a sector)

    That alone would mean that the gap between top-players and everyone else would be huge.

    With every room possible to score, there is still option for mediocre/new players to participate in some way, allows some agreements like in S1 to mitigate weak-player wipe, and there would be some more creativity with army of smaller claim creeps over big area or focusing on holding fewer more worth rooms with bigger claimers