There is simply no need to send energy across the map. Buy local or just set up an ORDER_BUY.

If you need to estimate credit/energy overhead costs to maximise profits you can use the energy sending cost and multiply it by the cost it would take you to buy more energy (Highest buy order + 0.001 in my case).

The market is fine IMHO; just one more programming challenge to overcome.

@smokeman said in Ramparts should be weaker than walls and they both need a nerf:

Hence, my base position that the max settings are 10 times too high.

So some people are unwilling to make the investment is the reason we should set the cap lower?

Wherever you set your cap (or lack thereof) for walls is all about your priorities. I'm starting to be more energy hungry and leaning on my active defensive more so I simply don't want walls that high and have the luxury of thinking about where I want to set them.

The argument that seems to be being made is that rooms are too hard to take, with walls maxhits being the most visible cause due to the players you are facing. Rooms being hard to take is currently being addressed in other ways (controllers got the dev spotlight recently).

Another real problem I feel (due to the opponents I tend to face and where my offensive code is at) with taking a room is that as long as you can get energy into the walls it's an uphill battle on top of all the other mechanics that favour defence, wall maxhits included.

Nukes help since you can wipe out a room's creeps but as it stands now to attack a room you effectively attack however many rooms are supplying resources to that room, all the way up to the alliance level. Perhaps even up to the shard level thanks to the market and the deep credit reserves some players have.

But that is me just shining light on yet another mechanic that works in favor of defence. Every player you talk to is probably going to have different opinions about what makes defence so strong.

So a few things:

I've seen higher level players opt to not upgrade past 30mil because of the heavy investment 300mil takes(1). That is exactly what is going on; up front cost for a payoff down the line. The thing is they have to upgrade every tile to 300 mil. An attacker only has to punch one hole.

Is that balanced? I don't know but it's important to keep in mind.

Nurfing walls/ramparts will do nothing for the imbalance between new players and old since there is already very little difference between two players in regards to walls (sans time upgrading) when taken on their own. Active defences and tower placement are king.

It will make a room take less time/investment to crack for sure but i'm not sure how much easier it will be to crack any given room unless you render walls/ramparts worthlessly weak.

Nerfing can also make it harder on newer players. Anything less than what will go down in a few creep lifetimes puts a massive amount of pressure on active defences to pick up the slack.

Hell I would argue that even if they where logged on at the start of an attack they couldn't write the code fast enough against a coordinated(2) attack. This is of course assuming they have the time to get the walls upgraded, newbies and all.

Put it at anything more than a few creep lifetimes and the players with well written defences won't even notice the difference against all but the most determined of attacks. And that's if they even bothered to build their defences all the way up anyway.

Changing upkeep amounts is the only workable suggestion i've seen so far. But strictly speaking a lot of defensive layouts have a lot of 'fat' that could be trimmed(3) and I feel there are unexplored strategies that could prove even more optimal than present(4).

We could just end up back where we where in the attack/defence with a new, dare I say, scapegoat. The problem is systemic and while walls are a part of the problem they are not the problem.

Use the extra GCL you have over them (due their massive standing investment) to level a couple more nukes at their room or something.




(1)Starting to lean towards this camp myself. But interestingly my code starts to break down for varying reasons if I where to try to use it.
(2)I'm talking your typical boosted squads. No matter how you slice it defensive code takes iterating and quite likely, boosts both take time. Many players simply do not work on defence until the enemy is at their gate.
(3)Solid lines of ramparts work well for some things but are not the most efficient design for energy use IMHO.
(4)Eg. New bunker designs, moving towers for walls out, exploiting unreleased mechanics etc. Actually I'm convinced that some combination of walls out & walls in simultaneously is the most optimal defensive (if not economical) solution.

Which shard is affected?
All shards

What happened?
Related: https://screeps.com/forum/topic/2285/after-intershard-travelling-placed-on-a-portal

A creep was placed on an active portal to shard 3 after moving through a shard1->2 portal.

What should have happened?
Creep should be placed in open space.

How can we reproduce this?

Have a large number creeps navigate to another shard. This other shard needs to have two close portals.

It is possible to see me attempting this at https://screeps.com/a/#!/history/shard2/E10N30?t=10111162

You can see my creeps making it to shard 3 here: https://screeps.com/a/#!/history/shard3/E10N40?t=20560

@shibdib The cool-down doesn't effect boosting. I take advantage of that in my own unboosting.

Ultimately it's 'free' minerals if you can code around the limitations. In particular most lab setups have two labs that never act as a target for reactions that can be used as well.

Does such a dis/advantage need smoothing out?

I am strongly against basing anything around holding onto a room long term for the simple fact that it can be quite crippling to hold onto a room that you simply don't need.

I'm also not convinced a survival leader-board is all that informative and feel it might even be counterproductive. New shard opened up? Boxed in by the next dissi? Too bad you have a 3 year survival high score!

@tigga So that a player that is still working out how to even farm power can be kicked over without hope of counter by a player who has had a chance to figure out how to get at creeps that can literally cripple (or in extreme cases, shut down) a room?

This has to be opt in.

@wtfrank said in Warfare Ranking:

I don't understand how this capped at 0 thing would work to avoid abuse. If everyone starts at 0, and no-one can be sent below 0,

As an example: Everyone starts with (assuming killing a rooms is worth at most 1000 points) GCL*500 + 10% of their ranking last month. Done; Players not actively participating are only worth a fraction of their empire (but can't opt out entirely) while those who participate are on the hit list for the others that do participate.

finding someone who doesn't care about the ranking

I'm sure they will care about you coming and kicking over their rooms though.

or finding zombies to mess with.

You can only kill a zombie once.

"damage to structures and creeps in controlled rooms"

does not always correlate damage done to an empire (just energy spent) while RCL damage is directly correlated to wasted potential due to less spawns, less labs and yes, energy spent on that RCL.

And it would be simple to track and well correlated with military combat.

Do we want to track throwing stones ineffectually at one another or do we want to track murder? Anybody can throw a few creeps at a room. I want a warfare ranking to measure as close as possible the damage done to another players empire. Not energy, not creeps, not structures empire

You can't truly hurt an empire by killing a few creeps. You hurt an empire by razing a room to the ground while optionally signing their controller with profanities.