just an amazing game
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Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying this game. So many nuances and game-changers along the way. The rules and the goals for the screeps-world are simple but there are an infinite number of ways you can achieve those goals and also your own meta-goals that you have as a player. Just because it is simple doesn't make it simplistic, I can appreciate the planning and creativity that must have gone into a simple system that can still do so much. It ends up being so much more than the sum of its parts.
There are so many game-changers as you progress through the game, first with the new structures you get as your RCL increases, then with the new capabilities you get as you increase your number of rooms. Even at GCL 13 I'm finding new ways to do things completely differently that weren't quite possible before.
It is unlike any other coding experience or gaming experience I've had, and I just really enjoy it.
I was surprised to find out the size of the dev team, simply amazing that so few people can run a successful MMO. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the ratio of players to employees was bigger than some of the big name MMOs. I hope it is an enjoyable and sustainable amount of work for all the folks involved, because I'd like to play screeps for a long long time.
Also some appreciation for the veteran players that found the game early on and stuck with it. Obviously it wouldn't be around if it weren't for you as well. Screeps has a solid player community and you got us off on the right foot.
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+1 to this.
One of the things I really appreciate is the approachability for new players and how CPU use is structured to support that. When you're just starting out on your first room, you really can't overuse CPU unless you're doing something horribly wrong. Then as the game progresses and your influence grows, you start (gently, at first) running into things that are taking more CPU time than they should, but even the most basic of optimizations gives you enough headroom to keep growing. Then you look at the top players, and CPU optimization is almost all they think about. They're coming up with creative ways to stretch every last bit of usefulness they can out of it.
I also appreciate the way the base library is organized. The obvious, first level stuff that you want to do with creeps is readily accessible. There's quite a bit of depth to the available information, but it also leaves what I assume are some intentional gaps, things that technically work, but might not provide things in exactly the way a developer would want them. This is, after all, a programming game. I'm sure many of us have added quite a bit to the core objects to support our goals.
Finally: a shout out to power banks. I know there's a discussion about whether power creeps make sense in the game balance, but mechanically the concept of power banks is brilliant from a game design perspective. It provides an energy sink for players with more energy than they can spend, and it provides an incentive for otherwise peaceful players to implement code that could be very easily converted to be useful in assaulting remote rooms. Many players would never develop code for this without such an incentive.
Your team and efforts are much appreciated. Looking forward to more!