PvP Game discussion
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If the root controller proposal takes place, then we can probably consider removing this RCL progress saving mechanic, it won't be needed anymore, controller downgrading will be permanent and non-undoable. Does it solve the issue for you?
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Attacker: multiple creeps defending said controller from any creep reaching it
Not quite true. You need only one creep to
attackControlleronce per 1000 ticks, and only if it’s killed, then you need to spawn a military squad.
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"Not quite true. You need only one creep to
attackControlleronce per 1000 ticks, and only if it’s killed, then you need to spawn a military squad."
You then have 1000 ticks to spawn creeps, move there, kill the enemy and use the attackController again. While the defender has 150000 ticks to deposit a single energy. And when the defender gets there with just 100 ticks remaining and succeeds in pushing 1 energy back in the controller, he just gained 149900 ticks.
There just isn't enough time to defend against a player retaking a room from that alone, excluding that when it downgrades it retains 90% of the progress so even if the attacker can get it down a level, the defender only has to spend 10% to upgrade it back from lvl 7 to lvl 8.
If my creep that attacks the controller dies, and the other player had send 8 boosted creeps to defend the room to retake it, then I have no chance of stopping him from resetting the progress on the controller in time. I can kill those creeps eventually, but I have to start over from scratch and block it for 7 days again. And if he fails he can probably try again tomorrow, since he has 7 days to do so.
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While I agree with your general theme that combat favors the defender a little too much, you and your team ignored some pretty important mechanics that would have made a big difference. First of all, the attackController mechanic which you mentioned, several of your rooms were in close range to steelers and you could have used this to destroy his safe mode charges.
Also, you can nuke to end a safe mode. After you do this, there is a 200 tick period in which the defender cannot safe mode again. You might get a demonstration of how one might use these mechanics together to their benefit. Planning for the strong likelihood of using safe mode would have meant building up some nukes and using them strategically.
My biggest complaint about safe mode is that it doesn't seem to fit well with any of the other game mechanics. It is just a deus ex machina that doesn't really add to the enjoyment of the game. It also doesn't fulfill its original purpose, which was to stop a player from getting steamrolled a short time period due to defense bugs. If the attacking player has the resources and the code to support it, they can completely negate any benefit from safe mode.
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@Artem:
I like the root controller proposal but I think those are separate issues. Resetting the downgrade timer is just too easy right now and that is only partially fixed by removing the RCL saving, although it would already be a step in the good direction.
"You need only one creep to
attackControlleronce per 1000 ticks, and only if it’s killed, then you need to spawn a military squad."That's completely true, however the the "defending" party just has to make sure that your new creep doesn't reach the controller within 1k ticks. This is insanely imbalanced as you will probably understand yourself as well.
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If we can't get rid of safe modes (which I think would be the simpler and better solution), maybe something like your idea would be a nice thing to offset it. Completely wiping a player with decent code and the ability to maintain it during the attack is near impossible, partly due to the long downgrade timers and partly due to safe modes. Perhaps this is the balance that the devs are hoping to achieve. People who are looking for a PvP experience in which you can completely decapitate another strong opponent are probably going to be less satisfied with screeps.
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- Also, you can nuke to end a safe mode
A nuke, when launched, takes 50K ticks to land, a safemode lasts for 20k ticks. It's not a viable counter for safemodes. You only get 200 ticks to "attack" the controller, this is way too short.
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This is insanely imbalanced as you will probably understand yourself as well.
It’s not “imbalanced”, it’s balanced in defenders favor. Taking over rooms is not supposed to be easy at all. It has a huge grief potential which can scare away some players who are not able to monitor their Screeps every day.
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I actually really like both of Qzar suggestion of how this issue can be resolved, but strongly disagree with his thesis that a defender is at a good position no matter if online or offline - you attack a room when you see how it can be taken down - ranged units, mass units, consecutive attacks and such so in a case of a well-prepared attack a defender has no chance no matter if he only needs to boost ATTACK or not.
In the case of our war i was away for about 3 days with very limited net access - so the result - a well structured attack based on the weaknesses of my defence lead to a loss of many rooms without the option of me countering it, still - a week later i don't have time to do so.
Due to the fact that everything in this game is done at a really, really slow pace and you need to automate everything so it plays by itself there is rarely the case where u have prepared code for all possible scenarios or the time do it in a couple of days when being attacked and have to defend the rest of your rooms - my experience there shows that each next attack on you exploits something you failed to oversee, which is totally normal and the best way to find it and patch itThe proposed ideas are good, but not enough in favor of both parties, so i would suggest something in addition:
- if we're going with the domination counter - trigger an automatic safe mode for the duration of that domination to the nearest room of the defender so he can actually engage in that domination fight
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> players who are not able to monitor their Screeps every day
But this is not the problem, the problem is more the ease they get for "resetting" the timer. I'm fine with defending a room from being taken over for 14 days. I'm not OK with 13 days of invested time being reset in 1 tick.
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People who are looking for a PvP experience in which you can completely decapitate another strong opponent are probably going to be less satisfied with screeps.
Yes, Screeps is not intended to be a truly PvP-based game. It is the Arena feature that we have in mind when we think about all the PvP fun in the first place.
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But this is not the problem, the problem is more the ease they get for “resetting” the timer. I’m fine with defending a room from being taken over for 14 days. I’m not OK with 13 days of invested time being reset in 1 tick.
This can be solved by removing downgrade progress savings, right?
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- A nuke, when launched, takes 50K ticks to land, a safemode lasts for 20k ticks. It's not a viable counter for safemodes. You only get 200 ticks to "attack" the controller, this is way too short.
I was under the impression that the cancellation happens upon launch instead of upon landing, is it the other way around?
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@artem, yes but only partially.
Problem is that you still got about ~6 days of downgrading to do on a RCL 8 room.
Obviously that can be done quicker with CLAIM creeps, but due to their expensive nature you can only create 1 for 500 ticks at a cost of 10500 energy (15 CLAIM 15 MOVE). Attacking a controller is currently a bit too expensive.
I think that another part should be able to block controller upgrading ( WORK ) and should cost energy. if you can "build up" blocked time like reserving a controller while it costs energy you have an extra "cheaper" way of blocking the resetting of the downgrade timer more efficiently.
Personally I think there should be a clear difference between blocking upgrades and downgrading controllers.
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But this is not the problem, the problem is more the ease they get for "resetting" the timer. I'm fine with defending a room from being taken over for 14 days. I'm not OK with 13 days of invested time being reset in 1 tick.
I strongly agree with this, it took a lot of effort to make that progress on the downgrade, doesn't seem fair to be able to wipe it out so easily.
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Problem is that you still got about ~6 days of downgrading to do on a RCL 8 room.
Why is this a problem? A lot of Screeps players only check their colonies once a week. Such a player may have spent many days to upgrade this room to RCL 8, why do you want him to lose it in a single moment?
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@Steeler, You have pretty easily rebuild those rooms you lost, even though you where offline during the attack. That's the main point, there is no real way to take over a room without completely wiping a player. We failed to get all your rooms, since we ran out of boosts. Everything we did to clear those rooms is pointless, since you can easily retake them, but getting them down to 0 is pretty much impossible. Yeah we could have used claim parts to attack the controller, yeah we could have used nukes, but that is pointless for taking over a room. You can still send attack creeps to that room, defend against mine while building a terminal and building towers with it to get a quick defence going in that room. Plus you only have to do that for 1000 ticks and the attackers would have to do pretty much the same, but without a terminal, without towers and for 150000 ticks for just a single level.
The main reason for that statement was that even if you weren't online for a long time, as long as we don't get every single room you can easily prevent losing any room. Or, in other words, its not possible to take a single room from a player if he doesn't want to lose it, without wiping said player.@artem, its insanely balanced to the defenders favor, causing it to be unbalanced. I get the idea that the only goal this game has is reaching the number one spot in the ranking. There is currently no point to attack a single room of another player, unless you're prepared and capable of wiping said player. Even if you manage to completely wipe a room and destroy all of the other players structures, it doesn't downgrade to lvl 7 for a week. (well, ok, less if you use attackcontroller creeps). If the defender has a single hour, he can reclaim it easily, causing possibly 7 days of progress to be instantly removed. I don't mind it taking 2 weeks or so for the "domination" to unclaim/transfer ownership of the room, as long as that progress isn't instantly stopped. If I want to prevent myself losing a room thats been wiped I can just send a massive army to keep the room clear for just 1000 ticks. There is no way the attacker can spawn enough creeps in time to defend against that, thus the attacker will lose all progress he made on downgrading the controller within a single creep's lifetime.
Again, we don't mind it takes a long time to get a room. Rooms shouldn't be easy to lose, even if you're on a holiday or something. What we do mind is the enormous amount of energy and boosts you need to commit to get a room down to 0, while the defender can undo all of that within a single creep's lifetime. Taking over a single room from a player is impossible, you have to wipe the entire player to get it, since he can then no longer rebuild that room (or he respawns, unclaiming said room instantly). The attacker has a constant and pretty big drain in his energy to block a room, whilst the defender only has small short burst of energy needed to keep the room. No way the attacker can prevent a room for resetting if you send 8 fully boosted creeps. The attacker probably can't even spawn a counter fast enough in those 1000 ticks, let alone spawn, move, attack and reblock the controller.
The changes propose on this thread sound pretty good. Building up a "block" counter like a reserver would give the attacker time to attack the room again, before the defender can reset the entire progress. Downgrade is good for inactive players, not for attacking. With the blocking you both have to work to either reclaim the room or get it down.
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>>Why is this a problem? A lot of Screeps players only check their colonies once a week. Such a player may have spent many days to upgrade this room to RCL 8, why do you want him to lose it in a single moment?
It isn't I encourage it. The downgrade process being reset in 1 tick is the thing that seems off. Here is a small example of why I think it should be revisited:
Player D attacks player X
Player D is online 24/7 because he has no life (me)
Player X is online 2/1 because he has a life (the guy I attack)
Day 1: Player D starts an attack on Player X- Player X doesn't have time and thinks "I'll check this weekend"
- Player D is trying to get through the walls but they're quite high level walls ( 200 million )
Day 2: After 24 hours of sustained attack Player D breaches the wall and demolishes all buildings. The timer starts to downgrade.
- Player X still knows something is up but has no time
- Player D start by placing a defensive squad around the controller to prevent reupgrade
Day 3: 24 hours of downgrading have been ongoing, only 100k ticks left!
- Player X still not online
- Player D is happy, no attempt has been made yet to claim back controller
Day 4: Same as the day before, 50K ticks downgrading left
Day 5: Player D has "work" day today and can't be online / fix bugs / alter code
- Player X has time, sees attack squad, performs a single attack and does 1 tick of upgradeController after keeping the room for 1k ticks.
In this scenario in the end player D spent about 4 full days of attacking, which was negated in maybe 1 hour by Player X.This puts a HEFTY burden on the attacking player. A way to to downgrade controllers is not enough. If an atatcker could attack a controller for 4 days, it should take the defender at least 2~4 days to get back to the old levels using the same effort. The immidiate reset to 150k cooldown for RCL8's seems off.
Possible solutions:
- attackController mechanism which allows for "damage" to controllers. This can be repaird by doing upgradeController (hits / hitsMax like walls, but for ControlPoints)
- allow buildup of blockedController time to at least 50% of controller tick downgrade levels (150K ticks can be blocked to 75K ticks). The defender should also perform attackController to remove said blocked property, maybe even twice as fast. 1 tick of attack on defender = 2 ticks off of the blockedController property.
- allow the attacker to build up a structure over the existing controller which locks down a controller, and has to be attacked by the defending player, can be build up like walls
There might be more solutions to this problem, but time-wise compensation seems more elegant.
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I tend to agree with qzar / dissi on this. Presumably, if you make a concerted attack against another player's room, your goal is to remove that room from their control. From a balance perspective, I originally thought that the stage where you're attacking a fully built room would be the most costly in terms of resources / time spent, but unless you wipe the player, the downgrade phase is far more costly, both in terms of resources / time and in terms of lost progress if there's a short lapse in your offensive push. That seems backwards.
To look at it another way: let's say you have a GCL 15 player you want to attack with no allies to help them. All of their rooms are pretty close together, reachable by you, and have comparable defenses. Will it cost you more resource / time / effort to attack one of their rooms and push it down to RCL 0, or to attack all 15 of his rooms and remove his creeps / spawns so he can't rebuild? Assuming the player decides they don't want to lose that one room, this is not an simple question to answer, and that seems really silly, that it might be less expensive to wipe a big player than to take one room from them.
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The point of long downgrade timers is that you have to not only implement a burst attack (or more likely exploit some bug in the defender's code), but also prove your superiority of holding this room for some time in order to take the room from him. Otherwise it becomes too easy to steamroll a player with a simple defense glitch that he is not able to fix in the next 2-3 days due to lack of time. It is a much more dangerous aspect for Screeps player base than the relative lack of satisfying PvP (it's a programming game after all, not CS:GO; also, wait for arenas).
The defender/attacker balance could be fixed by signficantly increasing the
upgradeBlockedperiod from 1K ticks to X ticks, what do you think is the appropriate value?
