3. [GCL] GCL - Circumventing the "cap" is ridiculously easy

[GCL] GCL - Circumventing the "cap" is ridiculously easy


  • Inactive terminals should not be usable in any way for remote transmissions.

     

  • Culture

    Deactivating inactive terminals alone would not solve this. It only takes 1.8 million energy to get to RCL 6 to enable it again.

    You'd only have to boost with XGH2O for 300k energy and you can do it the same way using storage.

  • Culture

    I also think the 15energy cap at RCL8 is odd. Either ratelimit everywhere or not at all. If we're worried about people climbing GCL too quickly then we can solve that in other ways.


  • Inactive terminals don't receive energy the way active ones do, although they used to. The response was to change the storeCapacity to 0 so that resources could still be sent, they'd just fall on the ground. 

    I'd be a tad salty if this were to change because I asked about this clarification to begin with and the devs were well aware of the mechanic and adjusted it in a way they thought was more fair. So I've written code and made infrastructure to take advantage of this. It should also be noted that the discussion is being spurred but the player I passed up partly due to this mechanic 😄 Although I do think his heart is in the right place.

    It doesn't really result in snowballing. The intervals between my GCLs is taking longer and longer. It is just going a faster than it would otherwise. If your intent is to make it so that all players level up at the same pace, that ends up being a pretty boring game. It then becomes more about how long you've played rather than how clever you are with your code.

    XGH2O is still valuable, it still gives the bonus that it would otherwise. This is just something on top of that.

    It also doesn't just benefit high GCL players. This strategy becomes viable as soon as you start seeing longer intervals in between your GCLs. I was doing something like this as early as GCL8. 


  • It also isn't some magic wand, it takes a lot of resources to upkeep that much energy. 

  • Culture

    > If your intent is to make it so that all players level up at the same pace, that ends up being a pretty boring game. It then becomes more about how long you've played rather than how clever you are with your code.

     

    This was not my intention. It was more to make it more fair between higher level rooms, and give more opportunity to optimize.

    Since this tactic is seems here to stay, anyone can do it and the 15 energy limit seems off compared to this. Just "dedicate" one of your rooms to this tactic and you're golden for a long time when you got excess energy to lose.

    The upkeep is definitely high ( E6N18  burns through 90 energy/tick terminal upkeep alone), there will always be a certain limit. You can only do ~1400 actions/tick if you optimized it to smithereens.

     

    For player growth: the 300 CPU limit will obviously limit your actions.

     

    Personal gains with the new tactic:

    1 creep doing 15 (or 30 boosted) energy/tick or 1 creep doing 40 (or 80 boosted).

    Both take 0.2 CPU to complete. Effectively I got a gain of 266% in CPU to reserve ratio. Well worth it, but feels broken


  • I agree that the 15 energy per room limit seems off, and this mechanic seems inconsistent with that if the purpose was to limit the rate of player growth. Personally, I've found this mechanic to add a whole new layer to the game. Suddenly it matters how efficient your SK rooms are, since you actually have some way to use that energy. Also, figuring out the best way to leverage this so that I'd have more minerals than I would otherwise was really fun.

    Keep in mind, once power processing matters, this might no longer be the best use of energy. But this could still be one way to spend energy strategically.

  • Culture

    bonzai, I appreciate that you've invested your code in this but that's not a good enough reason to keep the mechanic- by that logic I should be able to have more than 100 flags for the rest of this game, because I followed the rules that were given at the time. Obviously I'm pretty salty about that change, just like you might be able this one, but that alone is not a reason for not doing something.

    If this tactic is allowed to stand then we should also remove the 15e/t cap at RCL8.


  • tedivm, I agree, the devs should listen to the community on this. Still gonna reserve the right to be salty!

    I think nerfing this is an objectively bad idea. Skorp put it really well, the way it is now there is pretty much no incentive to be efficient with your energy harvesting. At some point each player starts making progress at the very same rate. Just look at the player progress graphs in the monthly review. That's not a competition, that's just a waiting game. Perhaps lifting the cap on all controllers is the answer, at least it would make things more consistent.

  • Culture

    I, for one, welcome a return to growth curves like these 


  • It seems to me that the 15/tick limit serves three purposes. 

     

    1. To make is that that RCL8 rooms can't snowball and totally boost GCL well beyond what a RCL 5 or RCL 6 room could. 
    2. To encourage the use of XGH20
    3. To encourage established players to go get new rooms even though it means giving up a RCL 8 room.

     

    So what ever solution, 

    #1 seems like it's broken. You can have an RCL 3 room "out produce" an RCL 8 room. I agree with the goal, but the limit doesn't seems to actually accomplish it. I think that is part of the problem. If the RCL 6 room was capped at 15/tick too then this would be a non-issue

    #2 seems like it works. It's currently the only way to "legit" break the 15/tick cap.

    #3 This may or may not be working I don't know. 

     

    I see two fixes.

    Fix A) 

    Add the cap to all levels but make it sliding. cap = RCL * 10 or something. Boosts can still break the map as before. So a RCL 6 room is only going to get 60/tick. For people building the room, they have to decide if it's wort it to take the GCL loss, and really boost the room using tons of outside energy, or build at/near the cap. Because the cap is there, the incentive to use these "less reputable" methods fade. But using a dead storage to rebuild a room is still viable. 

    #1 Snow balling is kept in check, though the limit is raised a bit. I can argue that RCL 8 rooms should be more valuable then RCL 6 rooms.

    #2 Boosts are still important.

    #3 You probably won't want to move rooms and give up your RCL 8 room. I don't know if this is actually different from now or not.

     

    Fix 😎

    Keep the RCL 8 limit but apply the increase to the GCL only when you go up in RCL and only the first time.  When you git RCL 8 GCL progress applies normally. 

    For example RCL 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 would only increese GCL 3 times. This would have a lot of ripple effects though. Downgrades become horrid, as all that energy you poor into restoring a RCL is just lost. Loosing a room means loosing the RCL progress that would have gone into GCL. On the upside it makes holding on to a room more critical. 

     

    #1 Same effect as now. 

    #2 Same effect as now

    #3 Still no real idea

    Fix B is the larger game changer, but could introduce more fun.


  • I think this mechanic can stay to allow players going for leaderboard 1 the opportunity to pump as much energy as they can, but to prevent the gcl getting out of control, Change it that only RCL 8  rooms count towards GCL after GCL gets to 10 (all rooms still count towards leaderboard).

  • SUN

    why not have all (your) buildings removed when you unclaim ? 

    this would fix this issue nicely , and prevent abuse


  • It's not just about unclaming, it's also about just downgrading.


  • @ChaosDMG That's awful, there would be no way to catch up. Or at the very least catching up would take decades. 


  • Well if they do anything to prevent it now it will be hard to catch up for players that didnt use this opportunity.

  • Culture

    It's not only the issue of GCL/tick It's also the issue of CPU per GCL

     

    Currently, when you have a level 8 room you can do 15CP per 0.2 CPU while other rooms realistically can do 40CP per 0.2 CPU.

    I personally have 30 rooms costing at least 6 CPU when all upgrading.

    Yet I can achieve the same with dumping energy into another room and use 1 room to do all the upgrading.

     

    This is why I think the current limits should be revised, or at least needs some balancing.

     


  • I agree some balancing need to happen. It should not be possible to earn more GCL in RCL levels 1-7 then you can in RCL 8. 

    That said, there is already a MASSIVE gap to cover if a new player is trying to get onto a top 10 list. 

    There needs to be someway that the game can "adjust" so it's not just who has been playing the longest, while at the same time, there should be a benefit to a carefully crafted long standing empire. 


  • Have structures decay, and not be repairable when the room is below the RCL level for the structure. 

    If a terminal decayed at a rate so that by the time the controller decade to RCL 4 the terminal popped, the issue would largely go away. 

    It would also still allow for some recovery via terminal in a dead room. 

  • Culture

    Yeah, I think this is the best solution. Simply making structures decay when the room level can't support them would solve this issue. It still allows people to raid their neighbors to steal resources, since structures will need time to decay, but it prevents abusing those structures existence.