PTR Changelog 2016-09-19
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This looks like a much better solution if the issue is excessive reservations.
The issue is excessive energy. But we can deal with it in different ways.
I greatly prefer limiting reservations, but I’m concerned about how rooms you don’t plan on mining but are still important for territory control would be affected. Could there be some secondary type of reservation where the sources are still capped down to 500 energy, but you obtain territorial control of the room to prevent players spawning in it?
Some time ago, when reservations were not increasing energy sources, there were almost no players who reserved something just for control sake. I doubt it would be a very demanded feature.
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How long ago was that? The player population has grown substantially even since I have joined, and I'm concerned about territory control with the number of players who are looking for places to spawn being so high. I know for myself that the way the map features around me are designed that a few rooms are important to the navigation of my creeps around my empire, but I don't want to mine them for multiple reasons.
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My thoughts-
* Nerf the source keeper rooms more than you're planning on it. Even if you don't nerf the reserved rooms the source keeper income is really unbalanced right now, and if you do introduce a cap on number of reserved rooms then it will make the source keeper rooms even more valuable since they don't need to be reserved at all and thus wouldn't count against the limit. In the case that you do introduce a cap I would recommend putting the SK rooms down to 3k.
* Don't put H and O at exactly the same as ZKUL. Maybe nerf them a little, but not to the extreme you're talking- at least not until after we'd seen how these other changes take affect.
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Artem, first of all, thanks for listening to the community.
Thanks for explaining the problem, which really is energy abundance. I can certainly say that this seems plausible. When I turned off power processing for 1 day my storages were full within 5 hours, and bugs ensued. Let's battle that problem together.
For n00bish his statement about territory control, E6N11 is a perfect example of that. It prevents invaders from spawning at certain areas, which is useful, If we're going with this change this should be a must. It's also amazing for annoying players by preventing them from mining certain areas.
I DO like the GCL*3 change, my only worry is current player locations as well. some rooms will only have 1 source, which will probably become obsolete after this patch. this can be fixed by either "reserving" the territory compared to "boostSourceClaim".
It does raise the issue:
- Current player locations are picked based on certain expansion idea's, these might be thrown overboard now.
- What happens with current reserved rooms? Will random rooms be unreserved?
I currently got 134 reserved rooms and 28 owned rooms. With this new proposal I would have to cut back on 47 rooms. Which is fine by me. I will probably drop the 1-sourced rooms, and just reserve the territory.
Theoretical resource limit for my GCL will be ( 29 + 87 ) * 2 * 10 = 2320, which isn't close to what I'm running on now, but I can adjust.
For me personally It will also require less code changes to get this running, I don't have to re-look into the energy calculations whatsoever.
------------------------------ Mineral thoughts ----------------------
Minerals did get hefty nerfs lately:
- 20K to 50K timer increase
- Now 50% mineral decrease for all minerals, and H and O by 75%
What is the real reason behind it? It now seems impossible to boost all your rooms 24/7 with XGH2O. Was this the goal? The market was quite healthy lately, and was stabilizing. It seemed to work well. This change might throw it off again.
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Don’t put H and O at exactly the same as ZKUL.
Don’t forget there are twice as many H/O rooms as Z/K/U/L on the world map. That can be approximately matched to XGH2O formula (the most used compound).
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I know there are twice as many rooms, but people have been claiming rooms based off of the current structure. That means that for the market, and peoples empires, to properly respond it's going to take time as people unclaim rooms to reclaim and build to RCL6 the newly more valuable H and O rooms. For that reason alone I think it makes sense to phase this in.
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I'm totally against the reservations limit unless it counts towards sources and not rooms - e.g. u get 6 boosted sources in the reserved rooms, but not allowing us to reserve rooms basically negates the idea of it.
All the players that complain about the reduced reserved room sources are at low GCL, so increasing the owned room energy sources from 3k to 3.5k should fix their concerns with not much extra energy input into the game
SK rooms definitely need more nerfing
I'm also sharing Dissi's and tedivm's concerns about the H and O minerals - there may be twice as many on the map, but noone has claimed twice as many of it, so maybe reduce them by 50% as the rest?
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I'm totally against the reservations limit unless it counts towards sources and not rooms - e.g. u get 6 boosted sources in the reserved rooms, but not allowing us to reserve rooms basically negates the idea of it.Id suggest seperating claiming and boosting sources, and requiring a claim to unlock the sources.
1 claimbodypart doing creep.boostSources(controller) gives... 100ticks of boost, but they disappear if the claim runs out.
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> 1 claimbodypart doing creep.boostSources(controller) gives... 100ticks of boost, but they disappear if the claim runs out
This makes claim creeps more expensive than the source gain.
I think the gcl limit is a great idea, but maybe we should call it mining outposts and normal outposts.
Mining outposts can be reserved like now and increase source count.
On the other hand we have outposts, which can be reserved. This should yield 2 "reservation ticks"
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So, my own two cents are that the original balance changes seem like a good idea. It takes some adjustment in the meantime, but it's not a "breaking" change. It just means that the current behavior of some AIs would become inefficient or counterproductive. I like the original plan because it places a natural limit on energy (i.e. a point at which it's impractical or unwise to reserve another room) rather than just implementing a hard cap. Natural limits are, I think, more interesting from a gameplay perspective. Viability of remote mining is then limited by how efficient you can make your mining operation, not by some arbitrary number.
Big thanks to Artem so far for engaging with all the feedback, it's great to see you're interested in (and responsive to) our thoughts. I think some of the concern stems from the fact that, as players, we are all constantly seeking more resources. This makes the thought of scaling them back both unpalatable and scary, but I totally agree that excessive resource abundance is a gameplay problem right now. I would much rather experience short term pain in adjusting to a change in how efficient some processes are, then end up with a lot of artifical / arbitrary game limitations in the long run.
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I like the GCL*3 limit for reservations better.
Nerfing remote mining makes it much harder for new players to get a foothold.
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Another pile-on comment: GCL*3 limit makes a lot more sense. I had to rely on single source mines to get up through GCL4 given where I started. 3000 -> 2000 for a single-source room means actually very close to zero profit unless you size haulers, add roads built + repaired, add containers, have remote mine defenders, and don't have bugs in any of that.
Having rooms surrounded by two-source rooms available for remote mines does seem to give a bit too much energy. SK's seem pretty heavy too. Some adjustment would be nice.
The mineral changes seem harsh... but not as breaking as reducing single-source mines to be profit-less.
If two workers harvest the same extractor in the same tick, do one or both succeed?
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So since the market has required essentially a rebalance of the entire game and a restructuring of the most basic ideas of the game that have existed for over a year now (that is, keep your rooms spaced out to mine the most sources), is it safe to assume we will be doing this incredibly annoying dance all over again for the next big update (which I am 100% sure is not power creeps)?
Also I want to point out that it's ridiculous that you have the time to do this but you don't have the time to give the reasons for doing it because of "OSS server" (which I personally really don't care about)
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I'm not a fan of most of these changes. Harvesters mining minerals every 6th tick? What will all these harvesters be doing for their 1000+ downtime ticks? It's not enough time to get anywhere else to do something productive. Why not just raise the cooldown and lower the amounts some more? Seems like an unnecessary energy/cpu sink. Even T3 boosted harvesters will be much slower than before the changes.
1 source reserved rooms will be much harder to get energy-positive. Why take away the option to control the nearby 1 source rooms? Is it to impose another cost on players looking to reserve nearby rooms to stop NPC attacks in their main room?
I've been energy starved.. Maybe it's expected to be a requirement to have SK harvesters at mid-level GCLs?
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If we go with the cap of 3 reserved rooms per 1 claimed room, can you just make all room having 2 sources right now? Otherwise it's just incredibly annoying with large swath of rooms being empty -- realistically no one will ever claim 1-source room anymore, nor reserving them.
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First off, thank you for engaging with the community on this and sharing your rationale. It is difficult to see the big picture as a player, it isn't easy to look past how a change like this will affect you. I'm willing to bet there is a lot informing the decision that I have no way of taking into consideration.
That being said, it seems like one huge energy sink will be power processing, and players just don't have incentive to do that yet. I share dissi's experience, once I turn off power processing I start to run into energy overflow problems very quickly. Perhaps power-creeps will bring their own bonuses to energy gathering that will offset that cost once the feature is introduced.
Nerfing mineral quantities is probably a good thing. It will weaken my position considerably in relation to the other players who are contending for the top ranks, but it does seem a little unbalanced to be able to boost as many upgraders as I do. I think making the quantities consistent is also good. As it is, a certain room can be an otherwise great settlement choice if it weren't for the fact that it hosts an H/O mineral, and you already have that coming out of your ears. This re-balance should make those rooms attractive again, and make picking your next room a little less like finding a needle in an H-stack.
I think the reserved-room limit seems like a bad idea. It will be harder to establish a buffer between you and other players. It will also be harder to reserve a future room choice to keep it from being turned into a novice area (which is bad for you and bad for the novices). If this were to happen, I think additional mechanics should need to be adjusted as well.
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To add on to my previous comment, I don't mind if you make all rooms having 2-source AND nerfing their energy + reservation limit to GCL*3. My concern was more on the fact there would be a lot of rooms unused otherwise, which I dislike (it would limit some kind of room design/ game play). You can tweak the energy output to get to the number that you like.
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after a heated coffee-less discussion here are a few more suggestions:
- nerf the 2-sourced reserved rooms as intended, but don't nerf the 1-sourced rooms, giving some hope to the newly players that are surrounded by such rooms
- boost the owned rooms sources so that the new players can more easily establish their empires
- nerf the SK rooms even more energy-wise
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So since the market has required essentially a rebalance of the entire game and a restructuring of the most basic ideas of the game that have existed for over a year now (that is, keep your rooms spaced out to mine the most sources), is it safe to assume we will be doing this incredibly annoying dance all over again for the next big update (which I am 100% sure is not power creeps)?
And again, I repeat:
This change has nothing to do with the market balance, supply/demand, orders, etc. It’s all about large-scale economy balance - i.e. overall resources produce and consumption in the game. Their distribution between players is unrelated.
We were concerned with the resources balance long before the market had appeared. And yes, the next major gameplay feature after open-source server is power creeps, as stated in our Roadmap.
Also I want to point out that it’s ridiculous that you have the time to do this but you don’t have the time to give the reasons for doing it because of “OSS server” (which I personally really don’t care about)
Doing this means merely changing some constants. “Giving the reasons” means publishing (and polishing) a lot of inner raw info, which would require order of magnitude more efforts.
What is the real reason behind it? It now seems impossible to boost all your rooms 24/7 with XGH2O. Was this the goal?
This is exactly the goal - to not be able to XGH2O-boost all your rooms with your own minerals. Otherwise, you have no incentive in importing resources.
The market was quite healthy lately, and was stabilizing. It seemed to work well. This change might throw it off again.
We are not concerned with the market yet, it’s too young.
What happens with current reserved rooms? Will random rooms be unreserved?
It’s a legitimate question (in case if we go for reservations limit) that I don’t have the answer to yet.
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After crunching some numbers this morning I've come to the conclusion that the nerf of max claimed rooms to GCL*3 is better.
Numbers on this with current change:
Upkeep with 3k: [579.80] - profits - 1110.20
Upkeep with 2k: [468.09] - profits - 658.57It will almost halve my energy income, but still keep my CPU usage the same, leaving me no room to focus on other parts of my code.
If we get a GCL cap, I'd probably stop mining the rooms I only want to protect and own, but not actually mine.
If the GCL change would go through It would also free up roughly 45 CPU on my part.
> This is exactly the goal - to not be able to XGH2O-boost all your rooms with your own minerals. Otherwise, you have no incentive in importing resources
I have optimized my mineral intake a LOT with the sole purpose so I could do this, I had to buy H, K and X on the market to sustain it. With the minerals I'm still wondering if this will become possible, even with buying minerals on the market, I was actually importing minerals before the change.
