Posts made by Kasami

In the Screeps game notifications for the seasonal server, the links to the room has the format:

https://screeps.com/a/#!/room/shardSeason/ROOMNAME

The correct format should be:

https://screeps.com/season/#!/room/shardSeason/ROOMNAME

I really like the idea of disabling terminals in seasonal, but I agree that it's a good idea to introduce such features over time. Disabling market might be enough for the first season.

I'm really excited about this!

I also think it's much easier to get new players involved in screeps as you can show of a match over maybe 10 minutes, and explain the concepts, choices and factors causing a victory.

Trying to explain my presistent screeps-bot to a colleague right now requires a weeks course!

I really hope this will open up the screeps world to a bunch of new people, and I can't wait to begin coding my arena-framework!

The answer was simple substring matching, which means "RoleName" (without the star) works when all of that role has that string in the name. Similarly "Hauler" will apply the decoration to all creeps with Hauler in the name.

Thanks to Yoner and donatzor for answers on slack!

How does the name filter for creep decorations work? I was expecting either regular expressions or "RoleName*" to work, but I haven't been able to figure it out.

I can't figure out how big InterShardMemory can be.

Do it share the 2MB limit with Memory or does it have a separate limit?

Hope you come back later, Steve. Thanks for the SWC-organization and our other encounters in Screeps!

I have seen a bug where if you sit on shard1/E1N1 and change the url to shard2/E1N1; then use the minimap to look at a nearby room you end up on shard1 again.

Not sure if that has caused your problem, but just in case it is related.

That explains it, I'm not checking if I'm the owner when I run foreach on all PCs in Game.powerCreeps.

@artch

I'll try to setup some tests to check that, tell me if there's anything else you would like me to try to capture about the tick or environment.

I saw it maybe two-three times in total last night, without any obvious system.

Can confirm this error, was just sitting and debugging a similar case.

I'm extending prototypes, and this gives a similar error of memory is undefined at infrequent intervals:

PowerCreep.prototype.getHomeroom = function (): string {
    return this.memory.homeroom;
}

As long as the closest wall is not at max HP, you will have a structure for closestDamagedStructure. The last if (except attack) will "overwrite" your earlier repairs.

This will probably fix it (using else if):

    if (closestDamagedWall) {
        tower.repair(closestDamagedWall);
    }
    else if (closestDamagedRampart) {
        tower.repair(closestDamagedRampart);
    }
    else if (closestDamagedStructure) {
        tower.repair(closestDamagedStructure)
    }

I agree, and I've shared my idea of how it can be solved in the thread "A different shard" (https://screeps.com/forum/topic/2273/a-different-shard/)

Basic idea: When making shard4, use the 4x4 or 6x6 sectors in the middle for this purpose. Make the area restricted with natural walls and disallow spawning in the rooms. Increase the number/values of sources, and make it accessible only by a new type of portal. (read thread for full context)

Yes, I so want this!

At least consider it when/if you are making another normal shard. Use the 4x4 or 6x6 sectors in the middle for this purpose. Make the area restricted with natural walls and disallow spawning in the rooms. Increase the number/values of sources, and make it accessible only by a new type of portal.

My main concern still stands, the world is kind of boring. A SE-sector on shard1 and a NW-sector on shard 2 is basically the same thing. Don't get me wrong, I've got a todo-list longer than I want to admit, but I feel like I've tackled most of the big things. I also think there's others who feel the same way.

Combat code can always be evolved further, and SWC has been a great motivator for many, me included. On the MMO-server however, there's little reason for me and many others to further develop it, unless we participate in war games or just plain destruction.

There's enough space for anyone with at least decent combat code to wipe out some newer players around you for new rooms. There's no reason to attack some of the more established people, except reasons stated in the last paragraph.

What I want to see is an area that is more desirable than the average room/sector, where you need top notch combat code to establish yourself and hold on to the rooms. Maybe a big alliance will just take all of the new space, but that's fine. Maybe it will not be very many who are able to try to establish themselves, but it can be a showroom for advanced to combat tactics and a place for "world news".

I still feel that this adds a lot of new "game content" without taking much development time or make the game any more complex. It makes the world more interesting, and it can be a motivation for both new and more established players.

I feel the world is currently too homogeneous, and want to propose a new shard type that can add some new challenges to screeps, especially for the more experienced players.

This is a new shard with the standard map properties like shard0-2, but without the possibility to spawn directly into it. It is also quite small, maybe about 16/36 sectors starting out. The only way to establish a base on the new shard is going through a portal like intershard expansion between the current shards.

The portals however is not permanent, and go from all the current shards. They have even shorter duration than the current intrashard portals (less than a day). The penalties to creeps is the same as the current intershard portals. The short duration is both to make it hard to use much time to establish a room on the other side, and quickly move portals around the normal shards to allow as many people as possible to travel to the special shard.

The only new feature I see for this request is a new portal type, otherwise it will function as normal. I think it can give players some new goals, and can fuel alliance/diplomatic play.

With some more custom features I think this can be even more interesting, and I've thought of some possibilities:

• Richer rooms, either by adding more sources or higher energy values.
• Because it is a small shard, it can be a faster shard. Tick duration of 2-3 seconds?
• Special properties like harder invaders, tougher source keepers

The custom features might require additional customization, but can make it even more desirable to colonize. I think this could be a make the game more interesting with regards to combat, alliances and new "features" without too much development time.

(Yes, it is a bit inspired by Wormhole space from Eve Online).

Would like to hear what you think, and please add any additional ideas for making the world less homogeneous.

Lastly, any chance of seeing a road map or developer updates any time soon?

I think it is fine adding this as a power creep ability.

Terminals are powerful in sieges, but without backup of active and well coded defender-creeps most rooms are probably breakable with enough effort (resources and code).

I think very few players have defenses that can be considered unbreakable, I certainly do not. With actively modifying the code and instructions to attacking creeps, I think almost any room is breakable, unless the defender puts in the same effort in code and time. If they do, I think it is fair that they are basically unbreakable. The terminal-blocker ability will be a way to maybe break them.

I've been moving rooms from shard0 to shard1/2 to reduce heap size, and have a similar experience as Tigga visible rooms was close to 200. I've now reduced it to below 180, and have no longer problem with heap size. It is probably a combination of your improvements and my room-reduction.

I'll add graph of global age for the last month, where most resets the last 10 days have been code uploads.

@gankdalf said in Power Creeps update:

@kasami Although the rampart has X number of hits, it could potentially be repaired (maybe?) which is considerably easier to pull off than HEAL even though it only lasts 50 ticks.

For defense I see multiple uses for SHIELD, depending on how it will work. Like blocking passages, splitting up units and protecting own units.

However on the offense, even if it can be repaired, the logistics of having repairers present, hauling in minerals etc is unsustainable for long-term fights.

About offensive use of operator.

The skills DRAIN_EXTENSION, OBSTRUCT_SPAWN, OBSTRUCT_TOWER and to a lesser degree DRAIN_SOURCE will be used in hostile owned rooms, which for end-game players basically means RCL8. With 6 towers this means up to 3600 dmg each tick. With range and OBSTRUCT_TOWER this can be reduced a bit, but usually you have to account for at least 3000 dmg each tick. A T3-boosted healer with 30 HEAL can heal for 1400 each tich, which means you need 3 at melee range. If the defender has active defenders or PC (with OPERATE_TOWER) it is even more tricky keeping the PC alive.

What I'm saying is that PCs also need some sort of dmg-reduction to be viable in the offense.

The SHIELD is up to 25k every 20 ticks, which means a bit over 1k reduction every tick. But it requires energy and is stationary. It can help a bit, but not enough to counter a well defended room.

The OBSTRUCT_TOWER as it stands now only reduces one towers output by 50 %, which is not that useful. I think this should at least obstruct all towers in the room, if not it will be useless at RCL7 and RCL8.

DRAIN_SOURCE is underwhelming, it basically means disabling one source for the opponent for each level. I think this should be changed to BLOCK_SOURCE that extends the cooldown with a huge amount. Dedicating a high level PC to just disabling a few sources seems to have little effect. Parking a normal creep with harassment-code seems to be a better choise.

The OBSTRUCT_SPAWN is meh, expensive to maintain and only delays active defenders by a little bit. I think it should have a much larger debuff, like 100s of % at lvl 5.

My attempts at designing an offensive operator results in a very expensive (in power level-terms) creep with underwhelming abilities of making a small shield, reducing tower dmg of one tower, and delaying spawning a little bit. The only use would be draining extensions, if it can get close enough. And it will be hardcountered by any rooms with active defenders or power creeps.

My conclusion is basically that is can be used on low-RCL-rooms, but my power levels will go to economic operators. What I would have loved to see is the ability to disrupt terminal, labs or links, that might make them viable for RCL8-fights.