TNG here, (Yeah, we don't actually have a "translation")

Thanks for this, I have been out of it for a while, only checking up on some rooms lately. I myself was actually unaware that TK was attacking thy_reaper. We got our expansion blocked by steeler, so he turned into our target. We had to stop cause we ran out of boosts, which caused that battle to shift massively in favor of TK.

Funny to see how much conflict actually was going on near us. 

So, since this discussion has died down a bit:

Today I wiped KalmanRobert. Why? I pretty much wanted only one of his rooms. I had wiped said room including surrounding ones. But I didn't wipe him completely at first. He expanded into another block and I let him live since I had no interest in that block. That would have meant I had to wait nearly 2 weeks for the room to decay before I could take over that room, but I knew that and was waiting for that. In the mean time he rebuild those rooms. So this time I wiped him completely. Why? Because sending 2 additional creeps to destroy just one extra room is a hell of a lot cheaper, easier and faster then sending creeps to continuously attack the controller. 

Is it really intended that when I'm able to wipe a room, and thus bypass someone's defenses, to have to send very expensive creeps for a week or so in order to claim a single room? If I'm able to wipe a player but don't do so to give a player a chance, then I'm certainly capable of wiping the other rooms as well. If I choose not to, I have to wait 1 or 2 weeks before I can take those rooms. Which would be fine, however if I send 2 more creeps and wipe that last room as well, I might only have to wait until he decides to respawn. Since he'd be demolished completely I don't have to worry about him rebuilding either.

So, those rules that prevent a player from quickly losing a single room caused him to lose all his rooms. That doesn't seem right does it? It certainly didn't for me, so I didn't wipe him at first.

I get these methods are in place to prevent people from losing a room quickly. That's good. But the current methods makes it easier to completely lose every single room instead of just that one. Is that really intended?

Since this is the same kind of issue:

Creep.attack also returns -12 ERR_NO_BODYPART if the enemy is in safe mode. If it does have the bodyparts and is at full health, this code doesn't make any sense.

FIND_SOURCES finds all sources in the room.

FIN_SOURCES_ACTIVE finds all sources in the room that still contain energy (and thus are "active")

@artem, Adjusting the value would be a step in the right direction, but doesn't solve the core issue. The point is its easier to wipe a player then to take just one room. Like you said, the long timer is to give the defending player a chance to retaliate and retake the room. That part is something I fully agree with. However, right now it takes something like 2 weeks to get a room down, and if the defender has the room for a tiny fraction of that time the attacker need to restart completely. So the result is that if its a relatively small player you just wipe him/her from the game completely. Then the attacker has the option to "abuse" bugs in the defenders code. If you destroy just one room he can just watch the replays, fix the bugs, then retake his room. So, if you instead destroy the player completely, he has no chance to retake the rooms at all. This option is way way cheaper then taking a single room. Why is taking one room much harder then completely destroying a player? Like you said, attacks can be done in bursts. Every defence has at least 1 or 2 bugs or things the player has overlooked that can be "abused" in the attack. You can wipe a relatively large player within days, sometimes even hours if his defence has a crash or large bug. That is way more effective in time, resources and effort, when compared to taking a single room. If taking a single room is easier, I don't think we'll see player wipes all that often, since the goal of getting a certain room is achieved. We'll probably see some more localized battles for a few rooms, while you can still have large player battles if there is a conflict between the 2 (or more). 

That said, screeps is profiled as a strategy game. Attacking other players is (to me at least) a core mechanic in strategy games. If you can't solve an issue diplomatically, you can threaten with, or use force. Currently that force is either wiping a player, or having no effect in the end. What I would like to see is that its easier to take single rooms, but way harder to completely wipe a player.

@Steeler, You have pretty easily rebuild those rooms you lost, even though you where offline during the attack. That's the main point, there is no real way to take over a room without completely wiping a player. We failed to get all your rooms, since we ran out of boosts. Everything we did to clear those rooms is pointless, since you can easily retake them, but getting them down to 0 is pretty much impossible. Yeah we could have used claim parts to attack the controller, yeah we could have used nukes, but that is pointless for taking over a room. You can still send attack creeps to that room, defend against mine while building a terminal and building towers with it to get a quick defence going in that room. Plus you only have to do that for 1000 ticks and the attackers would have to do pretty much the same, but without a terminal, without towers and for 150000 ticks for just a single level.
The main reason for that statement was that even if you weren't online for a long time, as long as we don't get every single room you can easily prevent losing any room. Or, in other words, its not possible to take a single room from a player if he doesn't want to lose it, without wiping said player.

@artem, its insanely balanced to the defenders favor, causing it to be unbalanced. I get the idea that the only goal this game has is reaching the number one spot in the ranking. There is currently no point to attack a single room of another player, unless you're prepared and capable of wiping said player. Even if you manage to completely wipe a room and destroy all of the other players structures, it doesn't downgrade to lvl 7 for a week. (well, ok, less if you use attackcontroller creeps). If the defender has a single hour, he can reclaim it easily, causing possibly 7 days of progress to be instantly removed. I don't mind it taking 2 weeks or so for the "domination" to unclaim/transfer ownership of the room, as long as that progress isn't instantly stopped. If I want to prevent myself losing a room thats been wiped I can just send a massive army to keep the room clear for just 1000 ticks. There is no way the attacker can spawn enough creeps in time to defend against that, thus the attacker will lose all progress he made on downgrading the controller within a single creep's lifetime.

Again, we don't mind it takes a long time to get a room. Rooms shouldn't be easy to lose, even if you're on a holiday or something. What we do mind is the enormous amount of energy and boosts you need to commit to get a room down to 0, while the defender can undo all of that within a single creep's lifetime. Taking over a single room from a player is impossible, you have to wipe the entire player to get it, since he can then no longer rebuild that room (or he respawns, unclaiming said room instantly). The attacker has a constant and pretty big drain in his energy to block a room, whilst the defender only has small short burst of energy needed to keep the room. No way the attacker can prevent a room for resetting if you send 8 fully boosted creeps. The attacker probably can't even spawn a counter fast enough in those 1000 ticks, let alone spawn, move, attack and reblock the controller.

The changes propose on this thread sound pretty good. Building up a "block" counter like a reserver would give the attacker time to attack the room again, before the defender can reset the entire progress. Downgrade is good for inactive players, not for attacking. With the blocking you both have to work to either reclaim the room or get it down.

"Not quite true. You need only one creep to attackController once per 1000 ticks, and only if it’s killed, then you need to spawn a military squad."


You then have 1000 ticks to spawn creeps, move there, kill the enemy and use the attackController again. While the defender has 150000 ticks to deposit a single energy. And when the defender gets there with just 100 ticks remaining and succeeds in pushing 1 energy back in the controller, he just gained 149900 ticks.
There just isn't enough time to defend against a player retaking a room from that alone, excluding that when it downgrades it retains 90% of the progress so even if the attacker can get it down a level, the defender only has to spend 10% to upgrade it back from lvl 7 to lvl 8.

If my creep that attacks the controller dies, and the other player had send 8 boosted creeps to defend the room to retake it, then I have no chance of stopping him from resetting the progress on the controller in time. I can kill those creeps eventually, but I have to start over from scratch and block it for 7 days again. And if he fails he can probably try again tomorrow, since he has 7 days to do so. 

My statement was as follows: 

Clearing/destroying a room is doable, but takes effort. Taking over a single room is impossible. 

Since the defender only has to drop 1 energy into the controller in those 7 days, he only needs to send a large army capable of destroying your creeps which are keeping the room empty. Doing that once, waiting for those 1000 ticks to run out (which is in the lifetime of that army!) and then dropping 1 energy in the controller to reset the timer to about 7 days. Eventually the attacker will run out of resources (certainly if he's the underdog) so he'll have to stop attacking.

So, the only real way to take over a room is to destroy the player completely, which is very hard to do. Even more so if they are in an alliance. I too "lost" rooms, but in fact, I didn't lose any. I still have those rooms, they just don't have anything build in them. I can just keep dropping a little energy in them to prevent them from downgrading. Then I can just rebuild a terminal en start sending creeps to build the defences in the room and everything else. 

This is what happend with one of the rooms I destroyed from steeler. I did send a few guards in that room, but he could just send stronger ones. We didn't send a claimcreep to block the controller, since its pointless. If the defender enters the room with a large force, you have 1000 ticks to spawn a counter, walk there, destroy the enemy creeps en start attacking the controller again. It is not sustainable to keep a large enough force in the room to block a player from retaking it. 


The proposed solution of a domination means that both attacking and defending gets more gameplay than just throwing resources at each other. Lets say the threshold is 10000 or even 100000, it still takes a long time for a player to lose a room, but the defender doesn't immediately get 150000 ticks of additional time to reclaim it. The defender also has to act in order to not lose the room and not wait till there is only a few 1000 ticks remaining before sending an army and dropping 1 energy into the controller to gain another week.

@Dissi I missed that, yes then it would work as intended It would limit me quite a bit since I have a few rooms spread out, but I'd be able to figure something out (I hope).

To be honest, I don't think a root controller is gonna do much if its just an unlimited cap. Rooms under RCL8 also don't have a cap, so why would I transport all that energy to a room far away, when I can just claim the room next to it and dump the energy in that room? When it reaches lvl 8 just dump that energy into a storage/terminal, unclaim the room and start drawing from the storage/terminal. If you reserve one room in your GCL to do this you can cycle through your rooms to do this. I don't see the benefit of transporting that energy to a room further away. Unless it has other benefits, like being more efficient.