sparr -- I for one can't wait to get auto-nuked by an NPC

Proof: https://screeps.com/a/#!/room/E5N18

@coteyr if alliances want to do that, they can -- but they have to pay the transport costs. At a range of 16 rooms, for every 2 energy they send to you, only 1 arrives. There's no reason to try to limit that, if an alliance wants to waste that much energy then their enemies are going to have an easier time walking in.

I dunno, we want to encourage things like diplomacy and alliances -- why shouldn't we allow it? Remember that if they're not close to you, they're still paying terminal fees that are quite high.

As for the cooldown, you'll always have to take the room out twice, as the cooldown won't be in effect until after you've beaten the first room.

I like that idea, but how about instead, you make the root controller 2-4x more effective at building GCL, and adjust up the required GCL to level up?

Although, even just taking that at face value, depending on the cooldown (eg 20k ticks) you can still get 100% of your control points that you're getting today -- you just have to be smart about how you move and store energy.

I definitely like the idea of having a "central", "core" room that presents a strategic target -- maybe given power creeps have an infinite life span, you could only allow them to be spawned from a root room?

Bonzai, you can still, prior to unclaiming, ferry 900k energy into a storage to get the 1.8m CP required to reach RCL6. This is what I do.

Personally, I still have no problem with people "bypassing" the limit -- it's similar to uncapping and it takes actual effort (code) to do. I do, however, think that we need another energy sink in the game. Perhaps we could have labs take energy to run? Maybe some uber-sink involving keeping a portal from opening (pay 200 energy/tick and a portal will not open in your sector)? Maybe pay 20m energy to choose where your portal will open next.

What about increasing the bucket size to 10k? I reckon people might get sour if they filled their bucket with power only to have a reset storm hit (which resets their bucket to 5k anyway)

Well, 1 unit of power costs 50 energy to process, and let's pretend 6 energy per unit to harvest. If we round that from 56 to 100, then double it to 200 GCL (double because 1 energy = 2 GCL) I think we've got a suitably "bad" exchange. I think 250 GCL could also be an acceptable exchange rate.

6 energy per unit to harvest -> 3 generations of 1 attack creep (4k) 1 heal creep (6k) = 10k per gen = 30k to harvest an average of 5k power.

If you allowed ongoing power purchases, maybe 500 GCL for 1 power to really discourage it except in emergencies -- but I think 200 could work as a one-off thing (vs an estimated cost of harvesting it of 60 energy). What does everyone else think?

I agree it isn't ideal, but to same problem exists even if you do have visibility when you place the sites. You can only place 100 sites, so enemies could easily walk around them. If you made it so they couldn't walk around, then an enemy could walk over them on purpose with a 1 move creep to set whatever you've got off. -- You don't get a huge benefit.

There are also out of band ways to watch rooms, like through an external client or replay watcher.