@artch The reactions on the original post should lend some weight, and @o4kapuk can speak for the slack conversations.

This would get me to resub if it had <=1 sec ticks.

"JOINED INVALID DATE LAST ONLINE LESS THAN A MINUTE AGO"

Screeps feels tuned so that someone who is engaged with the game on a daily basis is favored in most conflicts.

For example, the difference of attacking someone who is AFK for a coupel days vs someone who is active is a huge change. This is just another extension of that, where if they come back they can recover quickly from losses, but if they ignore it they can lose everything.

I'm with @artch on this, I think its a (mostly) healthy way to keep people who care about the game significantly engaged. It might be tuned a little too strongly, but when you remember it took someone probably a month to build up that room to level 8, losing half of that while afk is a downer.

I have an idea for slowly introducing power creeps to the game. Certain of the aggressive type power creeps could have a small chance to spawn in level 8 room invasions, or as part of the convoys bringing resources etc.

Basically, you can have a limited ability set npc power creeps that players can experience before it goes live. That way players will start thinking about countering them before they go live, similar to how room invasions start players considering defense before they get attacked for real.

Naw, nothing preventing you from placing buildings on top of roads nor should there be. I just have a script that deletes my roads under unwalkable structures. Just an optimization to be addressed

Has there been any rough timeline announced? Are we looking at next month? Summer? Fall?

@artch Excellent, really glad you'll add a terminal power. One of my main complaints about warfare in screeps is its really hard to benefit from it, its almost always purely destructive. Making raiding potentially worth it will be cool.

I agree with the healing, although maybe an ability that vampire drains another creep hits as an attack that heals the executor. I do like the challenge of having an immortal (via renewal) raiding squad that runs around and can self sustain with mining and renewal.

My main complaint with military/work not being combined is that there is 99% a right choice. You wouldn't spend your limited power on a creep that has a useless ability. At best right before you plan to attack you will make a creep with the offensive abilities, and then suicide it when you are done with it.

I think most of the fun comes from thinking of ways to use abilities, not which ones you get to use. But there is definitely some burden of complexity with combining the powers. I think if you get the data on it you'll probably find that its at minimum 90%/10% going to be eco chosen each time. Thats a bit of a shame, because there are so many cool things that are unlocked by the more offensive options, but they are outweighed by the general usefulness of the defensive. Abilities that have offense and defense built into them (berserk unlocks a lot of potential, for example) are really well designed imo. Anyway, just a thought to potentially open up more options.

As an aside, I'd love to see more abilities that affect the terrain. Like one that creates temporary roads (eg TTL of 10) or swamps, or walls. Things like poison gas or non-aggression safemode zones would be more out there but also options. I think fights in neutral rooms could use some more interesting tactics, and this could be one way to unlock it.

Quick idea:

Stasis - Target creep rendered invulnerable and can do no actions for 3 ticks, medium cd, and are unwalkable terrain. Taken out of the battle (shut down their power creep, remove their healer) or defensive to give your creeps time to prepare (save a creep close to death, block a key location, defend against an ability).

To flesh out the executor drain ability: Drain: Deals X damage (increased by berserk), creep heals for X. Excess healing forms a shield for the next tick. Creep parts destroyed by this lose their boosts.

This to me seems like an interesting tradeoff of which offensive ability do you pick. Do you pick punch, for the utility? Do you pick drain, for the self-sufficiency? Snipe, for the range? You'd only pick one, maybe two.

Whats the benefit then? Spend all your power purely on eco, then suicide a couple of creeps half a day before you go offensive? I feel like its not a system that encourages interesting gameplay, its just a slowdown mechanic on an already slow gameplay experience.

As a general thought: It might be worth considering combining some of the weak mirrored abilities.

Disrupt Spawn and Operate Spawn (or Encourage and Exhaust) are both fairly situational, and you'd probably not want them in most cases. But if it was one ability that let you do either much more flexible. Also, it will allow more powers to be added.

The other benefit of combining offensive and defense is that users won't take as huge a penalty for the 99% of the time they aren't on offense. Sure, it won't be fully optimized, but at least it's not useless that you sunk most of your levels into an attack power thats worthless. Similar to how a work part can be used for repair or dismantle, if you only got one creep and had to pick to do one or the other.