@o4kapuk Thanks, Goggles! I'll consider is solved.

@art999 Using the API was going to be my go-to if there was no traction with the help request. I was going to wait a few more days first...

You are correct! Thank you!

Ok. So, the text boxes DO NOT WORK. Actually, they work great, they allow the numbers to be changed and then the numbers are what you changed them to in the commit dialog. Unfortunately, the commit dialog simply doesn't use what the text boxes made. You MUST use the sliders.

The sliders, of course, lack enough meaningful resolution. But! You can use the arrow keys to move them instead of the mouse? Yes you can! That works great! You just have to be careful to not move the mouse.

Then you can press OK, accept the new numbers and you're golden.

Well! That fixes my problem, but points out an absolutely glaring bug in the UI. As such, I'll leave this as UNSOLVED until it's fixed.

For whatever inexplicable reason, I can't reassign the CPU allocated to each shard. I have 0,240,20,20 (shards 0 to 3) currently assigned, and have been trying to reset it to 0,230,30,20 since the weekend. No dice! It all looks fine and dandy on the interface... confirmation dialog has all the correct numbers on it. But when I press the commit button, it just resets to the original values.

@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

@semperrabbit

Edit: another comparison: losing a GPL for deleting a power creep would be the equivalent of downgrading someone's GCL for respawning... Both are a horrible idea, and would upset players.

I don't think this is a valid comparison. When you respawn, you lose everything in the world. You lose time spent to build your previous empire, and now need to rebuild it from scratch. Frequent respawning is discouraged so greatly already, that there is no need to add some additional penalty to it. On the other hand, if there was no delete cost (or it's too low), rebuilding Power Creeps would be painless. One could do that all the time. Think of it as if someone respawns constantly keeping all his world assets. Not fun.

No. It's apples and oranges. It SHOULD be painless to rebuild a Power Creep. Just as it's painless (For a high level player) to rebuild a room. People delete rooms ALL THE TIME to build new ones... it doesn't decrement their GCL. Your example of a FULL RESPAWN is ... facetious at best.

So, what PROBLEM does Power Creeps ACTUALLY SOLVE, if any? It's not a parallel development path... in fact it increases the cost of development several fold. The only logical use in that regard is to get your GCL to a sufficient level and THEN segue to PC development.

Ok, fine. I can be down with that. But what problem does it ACTUALLY SOLVE, other than "Oh gosh. 6 months in and I've utterly demolished this game." Which does not happen in screeps. Ever.

The problem it solves is the time it takes to level a room to level 6 to get the TERMINAL. That one building that solves all your problems.

With Power Creeps, I can use OPERATE_SPAWN to blast out mules to send energy (In the form of recyclable creeps) to the room I want to get to level 6. So it can get a TERMINAL.

Just set the level for a Storage at level 3, and the level for a Terminal at level 4. Done. Problem solved. Noobs will be all "Woo! Storage!" And ignore the Terminal. After all, it's useless to them until level 6. Mid level players will be working hard to develop their terminal code early, and advanced players will just do WHAT THEY'RE ALREADY DOING. Which is use complex systems to mule up their forward bases to level 6.

@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:

@davaned Imagine you have 10 rooms and 10 power creeps. Their cooldowns are designed in a way that one PC can maintain one room or a little bit more. Now you have to make a choice: would you use only 3 powers in every room, operating only 3 types of structures, or use all available powers, operating all structures, thus producing higher economy efficiency but with less ops efficiency.

I'm curious about something. Have major changes been made to the cost of power levels? Originally, it was an exponential growth curve (EVERY PL cost more than the one before it.) making something like "10 rooms and 10 PCs" essentially impossible unless you had ginormous piles of PL. Which... you wouldn't have with a mere 10 rooms. Let's see... 10 rooms each with a PC that has 15 ability points, so you can have 3 in several skills (as per your example.) That's 150 total PL. Total power processed: 22,349,193, the 150th one cost 320,497 power. And of course, if you foolishly delete one, you pay a 24 hour penalty before rebuilding it, and 320,497 power.

@artch RCL7? What happens when the room gets to RCL8? And why RCL7 and not RCL8? Obviously, I'll just put the credits pooping structure in a room that's an oubliette (Ultra defended with few entrances.) and never raise it to level 8 if it HAS to be at level 7.

And: What, the credits inflation we already have isn't enough? When I first started tinkering with labs, a token got you 1.2M credits. Now it's north of 6M credits. A structure in your room that poops out credits will just drive that higher.

Full disclosure: I think "open source" bots are a cancer to begin with. The game is SUPPOSED to be about writing your own code. That doesn't mean you can't help noobs get going, just not write their code for them. Instead, help by suggesting algorithms and correcting individual lines of code they have syntax problems with. It's their job to write and debug their own code.

However, you can't stop the signal (Or git). And it's pointless to even try. If people want to 'cheat' and start with a fully trimmed up code set, there isn't anything you can do but ignore them.

That said, the 'problem' isn't the bots. The 'problem' is the sandbox aspect and connected nature of all shards. Even shard 3, which is the official "Noob Shard" has no restrictions on the use of, say, boosts in combat. If I wanted to literally annihilate shard 3, I would just establish a foothold with a portal, import T3 boosts through said portal (Or manipulate the holes in the market.) and go to town. Sure, it would take a while... I would have to leapfrog 2 base rooms from sector to sector, but it would be effective.

Even if you limited code size to 50K on shard 3, bot makers would just take it as a challenge to make a noob version of their bots that fit in 50K. It would still have many times the expansion capability and efficiency of an actual 'noob' player.

All that said: The only real solution is provide an actual noob shard. One that provides a GCL limit, a market limit, no portals, and a PvP limit. Of course, then you'll find out two things: The vast majority of people have no interest in PvP and people don't want to subscribe, even if it means they can only play 5% of the game. Once you get there, you might realize that the most sustainable path the game could take is NPC combat instead of PvP combat (Invaders / Strongholds / NPC colonies) and trimming the upper limits of player power (Dumping Power Creeps, Hard limit of GCL to 10 or 15, etc.)

TL,DR: You can't stop bots anymore than you can stop people from running multiple colonies or forming alliances. All you can do is design the system around that.

I'm having the exact same problem: [11:02:35 AM][shard1]Order 5c27b0b56e6fa00924837c7a returns null

The order is persistent, and only goes active / inactive. It goes inactive when the terminal is full and cannot receive more.

When the terminal becomes available: it turns to: [11:09:34 AM][shard1]Order 5c27b0b56e6fa00924837c7a returns [object Object]

Same order. It was never cancelled. Only difference in active/inactive status.

Edited to add an update about 25 minutes later:

It seems fairly clear that Game.market.get OrderById(id); only looks in the global list filtered by active status. Knowing that the ID I was looking for would always be my own order, I changed it to: Game.market.orders[order_id]; to search only in my orders... which contains all MY orders regardless of active status.

That works fine. It always returns the object as you'd expect. What this means is Game.market.get OrderById(id); is minimally useful as it's ONLY guaranteed to work on active orders. Which... you almost certainly JUST GOT A LIST OF... so you already have all that info.

How about just not put in big orders. It's not like you can't make it bigger any time you want, dozens of times an hour, 24 hours a day if you need to.

The only reason I can see to even do this is to manipulate the order listing by having a zero amount order that exists forever, and thus, will always be at the top of the list when activated. We need less of that, not more.

Don't get me wrong. I think the 'market' needs some serious fixing. But not like this. As such, my counter proposal is to change the list order to favor NEWER orders if the price is the same. Then people would just cancel the order and put in a new one instead of feeling the need to go through these gyrations to keep ancient orders alive. Think of the extra cost of cancelling (loss of deposit.) as a tax for abusing the market.

Fair disclosure: I abuse the list order all the time by putting in small orders and increasing then as they get low and changing the price to move them around.

If I couldn't do that without incurring an extra fee, I would just ratchet the price down faster instead of trying to match the best price... thus facilitating better "price discovery" for all.

I suggested that already. I still can't remember which does what and have to constantly look it up.