Just happened to me also. Submitted a ticket and it got fixed immediately (thumbs up for super fast support!)

Still i have to discover it myself and report it, as my code had been not executing the last 3,5 hours. I hope for a fix for this soon.

Np, they can only spawn at exits:

https://docs.screeps.com/invaders.html

Did you try creating it at an exit tile?

My main motivator for this is to use it in the SWC or Botarena (and perhaps it makes sense for the upcoming Arena game?) where you always start with no rooms. Basically i want my script to find the location for the first spawn instead of me guessing and having to create a special handling of first room for the room planner (my normal room planner does not place the spawns as the first structures). Ideally the script can optimize the location for the base layout better than me.

I also agree this is a niche application, but it is something that is requested from time to time in the slack forums and (to me) it sounds possible to implement without to much effort. It also feels in the spirit of the game to automate everything.

Yeah, i think instead of a special setup code it should just run my script for a set amount of ticks, my script will then place a spawn construction site which should be instantly built as its the first spawn. This way you will not need to run code for all players who dont have spawns, this is triggered by a button press in the client. You can then stop this execution if the script failed to place a spawn within some reasonable amount of time, where the player would either need to press this button again or simply place the spawn manually.

@o4kapuk I never tried it, but from what i understand it does not call my own room planner, it has a seperate set of functions to do it "offline", so i would need to export and rewrite my own room planner to python to make it fit the needs of my own planner. Its quite interesting, but makes me have to maintain two different room planner projects for it to work.

@o4kapuk I think the player would still need to choose what room to claim, just not place the first spawn. That way he would claim the controller in the room, providing vision for his script who can then calculate the base layout and place the spawn. It is a special case scenario, as you dont respawn that often (except in botarena and swc) and you need to have code for creating your base layout, but it is a common request i believe.

I like the idea of the "setup code" button. If the problem with placing spawn by code is just that you want to avoid running code for all players that dont have a spawn, this would solve it. Have some button for claiming a room, this will enable running your code even without a spawn/creeps/structures etc for a set period of ticks before timing out. Means your code can run and place the first spawn automatically, but it will only run for some ticks before it would get disabled if the spawn fails to place within the allowed time automatically.

What i am observing is an increased general cost for all my functions when the heap is "flatlining". Calling my own gc functions had no effect, same as calling the offical gc(). Only a code upload resets the heap for me.

I am seeing the same thing as descirbed by @TuN9aN0. After the heap limit was increased 6 days ago the heap stats started "flatlining" and cpu costs increased. Basically ive not had anything in my bucket since the increased limit.

The only code i have that reacts to the heap limits is my own garbage functions that runs at certain thresholds of the heap size, deleting certain cached objects once the limits are approached. I guess its possible that my caches are getting too big, i will attempt to clear them also after a certain global age has been reached in addition to the heap limits approached and see if this can help.