PTR Changelog 2016-09-21
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Edit: So it's "ok" tp spam creeps at safe mode rooms?
(Also the edit window has the black font still)
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Yes, of course, absolutely.
(Yeah, we really need to replace Zendesk with something prettier already.)
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What was the main reason behind the SK room change?
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@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)
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@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.
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@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?
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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?
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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
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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
A simple nuke launch can be counteracted by simple ramparts/walls building on the landing area. It’s just a war of resources. If it is a mass nuke launch, then you’d need to build massively as well. This seems fair.
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@Artem, the new nukes have an area of 121 room positions.. if in that radius i have 40 buildings that's 40 * 5m + 5 = 205m worth of ramparts over 50k ticks which is a constant build up of the ramparts with 50 unboosted WORK and over 2m energy required. Seems unfair that someone can do that just for reaching rcl8 in his room
