PTR Changelog 2016-09-21

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

This post describes changes on the Public Test Realm. The estimated launch date is September 26.

Reverted energy sources capacity in neutral rooms back to 1,500.
Reverted energy sources capacity in reserved rooms back to 3,000.
Source Keeper lairs now start a new 300 ticks spawning period immediately as the old one is injured, rather than when it is dead. If the old keeper is still alive in 300 ticks, it disappears and gets removed by the new one.
Increased nukers and observers range to 10 rooms.
Increased nuke energy cost to 300K.
Changed nuke landing damage to structures:
- 10M damage to the landing position;
- 5M damage to all structures in 5x5 area.
Added new nuke landing effect:
- If the room is in safe mode, it is cancelled immediately, and the safe mode cooldown is reset to 0.
- The room controller is hit by triggering upgradeBlocked period, which means it is unavailable to activate safe mode again within the next 1000 ticks.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Puciek — Invalid Date

So if someone wants to spend the 300k energy and 5k ghodium (even with mineral changes, not much) they can negate the point behind safe mode? I don't think that I like it one bit, as that together with the increase of damage and range turns nukes from, very much, useless to too much and for rather meaningless change in cost.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

Yes, but you have 50K ticks period to prepare. It was the exact purpose of safe mode - to postpone the action and get prepared - and it's already there in case of nukes.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Puciek — Invalid Date

Well, as from previous discussion it was also to protect you from buggy defense code and to remove, a bit, of the advantage from attacker he gets for being online. With those changes you will throw your nukes first, time them to come at edge of someones sleep time and start attacking couple thousand ticks before they land. If he triggers safemode in that before-nukes time, it goes to waste and he doesn't get a second one, if he doesn't then attacker whacked a lot of walls already and nukes are inbound to do the rest. And if his code broke, or has some issue, he won't have a chance to compensate for it.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

I forgot to mention the safe mode cooldown is also reset. You can activate safe mode while the nuke is flying, and activate it again in 1000 ticks after it has landed. Nuking provides an attacker with a 1000-tick window of "unsafe radiation", and forces a defender to spend 1000 more ghodium.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Puciek — Invalid Date

\In this case, this is a reasonable change, because as long as in the nuke flying period you will reinforce/rampart the walls enough to take the damage + couple K ticks worth of drilling, you will not wake up to every dead base. Although that brings a different problem altogether that earthed recently with safe mode and newbies - that even without attacking you can just spam room spawns with 1 MV creeps and disable it without having to kill. Would it be possible to fix somehow that, so for example during safe mode spawns can spew out creeps a bit further away?

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

This is considered an abuse, report such activity and abusing accounts will be blocked without refund.

(EDIT: misunderstanding here, see below)

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Puciek — Invalid Date

Thumbs up on that! Although it would be really good to have automatic detection of that and killing offending creeps (plus maybe notifying staff) as new player who are mostly affected by that already will not know to report it and will get upset, potentially quit, instead?

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Tharit — Invalid Date

This is considered an abuse, report such activity and abusing accounts will be blocked without refund.

Seriously? I do NOT think that should be considered a bannable abuse. It clearly is some kind of grief playing, but it is obviously in no way prohibited by the game mechanics. And it was kind of obvious that this is possible with the new protection mechanics. While I personally have not tried it, I already saw several other players do it... and when I first read the patch notes I immediately thought that the newb walls were a MUCH better protection because of this issue.

So if this is NOT allowed, then imho the mechanics should be changed.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

Thumbs up on that! Although it would be really good to have automatic detection of that and killing offending creeps (plus maybe notifying staff) as new player who are mostly affected by that already will not know to report it and will get upset, potentially quit, instead?

We do of course monitor such activity on our end. However, it is very hard to recognize automatically whether it is an abuse or just a legitimate new player, it always needs manual investigation.

Seriously? I do NOT think that should be considered a bannable abuse. It clearly is some kind of grief playing, but it is obviously in no way prohibited by the game mechanics. And it was kind of obvious that this is possible with the new protection mechanics. While I personally have not tried it, I already saw several other players do it… and when I first read the patch notes I immediately thought that the newb walls were a MUCH better protection because of this issue.

So if this is NOT allowed, then imho the mechanics should be changed.

Multi-accounting is not allowed by our Terms of Service.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

aeyi — Invalid Date

About the abuse: Is spawning 8 creeps and surrounding a spawn with them a bannable offense?

According to the above it's clear that using multiple accounts per player is bannable.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Tharit — Invalid Date

Artem, I think there is a misunderstanding here. I think Puciek was talking about players "attacking" new players that are still in safe mode by just spawning lots of creeps with 1 move, and use them to block there sources, or spawn. There is no multi accounting involved

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

Oh, right, sorry about that, please disregard.

I thought it was about "safe mode newbie respawns" from the previous discussion.

Spawn surrounding strategy simply doesn't work since when the spawn is surrounded with hostile creeps, it kills one of them immediately to born a creep.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

deadlypineapple — Invalid Date

Edit: So it's "ok" tp spam creeps at safe mode rooms?

(Also the edit window has the black font still)

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

Yes, of course, absolutely.

(Yeah, we really need to replace Zendesk with something prettier already.)

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Atavus — Invalid Date

So which of the old changelog points are still valid?

Will minerals still be halved and have a cooldown?

Is there still a discussion about reservation limit to GCL?

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

The previous changelog has been edited to reflect what changes are cancelled. Regarding reservation limit, the decision is on the last page of the discussion, it is postponed until power creeps are released.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

wicked — Invalid Date

I think it's very hard to understand what was considered a bannable offense here, apart from multi-accounting.

I think if there's some behavior possible in the game, even exploiting bugs, it shouldn't be a bannable offense. If there is some persistent griefing it indicates the game needs to be changed in some way.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Heilos — Invalid Date

I believe Artem was referring to behaviour where people could spawn the old room walls onto peoples armies or in the middle of their empires to wipe them out or cut them in half without the possibility of counter and it was likely people were using a second account to get around losing their own empire.

He said just above that, although it would be rather rude of you, flooding someone's room with 1M creeps is not a bannable offense as you have ways of quite easily countering it.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

artch — Invalid Date

I think it’s very hard to understand what was considered a bannable offense here, apart from multi-accounting.

Multi-accounting was the only case I really mentioned here actually.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

deadlypineapple — Invalid Date

What was the main reason behind the SK room change?

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

SteeleR — Invalid Date

@Artem from Screeps, with this huge buff to the nukes and their area and damage should we be expecting a way to destroy them - for instance by destroying the launching structure of the nuke, cause at the moment there is no way to defend yourself if they space their nukes 1000 ticks apart (or a number of other tactics)

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Atavus — Invalid Date

@Steeler, I think that is the intent (of which I am supportive) to present an method through which a defense can be broken.

Right now, high level defense is already incredibly effective. Ramparts 1 tile from exit + boosted defenders = WIN.

Me and my colleagues tested out combining a conventional attack with nuke landings every 1k ticks. We had 3 nukes land in the same room which took out 1 spawn and the storage, but it was still not enough. With just 2 rows of 10m ramparts romus was able to defend the room despite the nukes. If he had larger ramparts around his storage then even those 3 nukes would have been useless.

There needs to be a way to break stalemates and force AIs to maintain a dynamic stance. Even with these changes, you still need 3+ nukes for a single room in order to make a meaningful impact.

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

SteeleR — Invalid Date

@Atavus, yes, 3+ for a meaningful attack, but at some point it becomes unstoppable, which is the opposite effect or the point is to be able to lose any room?

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

Atavus — Invalid Date

I think the intention is indeed to make no room unbreakable. A choice I certainly approve off.

If you have just a single room surrounded by 10 enemy rooms, then though luck. But the normal scenario will be 10+ rooms on your side, 10+ room on the opponent side. So nukes will be flying both direction and whoever has the most effective military code wins.

Right now we are looking at static warfare ala WW1. Rooms (trenches) are for the most part unbreakable resulting in relatively static frontlines.

This change loosens things up. Why is that a problem?

Reply to PTR Changelog 2016-09-21 on Invalid Date

SteeleR — Invalid Date

it's not really a problem for me, but means that in order to achieve my goals i should be more aggressive which will leave less players in the game. Also, it's not always the case where u and ur opponent have 10 rooms each and being able to destroy a room with no tactic but a simple mass nuke is not a real fair takeover given how much logic and programming is required to protect that room against all other means of attack