I think storages are fine the way they are now. I know this is just my opinion but, when I started 3 - 4 months ago, unlocking new types of structure at each RCL made the progression feel balanced.

I'm not sure what you mean with containers being less supported by the AI, but I've never had a problem using them as makeshift storages to hold mined energy. The API for storages and containers is almost identical, except containers arn't accessible directly from the room object because you can have more than one.

Making more structures available at lower RCL will just remove (or severely nerf) the sense of progression that Screeps currently has.

While I can see the appeal of this due to the number of open-source AI users, it'd eat up a lot server resources to compare uniqueness of code on the scale of thousands of players.

On a side note, those who stick to using open-source AI are not really doing themselves any favors. Firstly, IMO much of the fun in Screeps is making your own AI and evolving/adapting it to the new challenges you face along the way. Secondly, while they do gain an earlier-game advantage, eventually you'll work out how to take one of them down either through trial and error, or by checking out their open code base for weaknesses/bugs/exploits. Once you've nailed one, you've nailed most of them.

That said, there are quite a few who adapt the open-source AIs and change their behaviour. I've nothing against them either way. Maybe they didn't have the time to start from scratch. To me its just another challenge to overcome with my own "from-scratch" AI.

I think its a great idea. The only hurdle would be transitioning from the current bucket system to a structure-based bucket expansion.

I'm not sure it can be applied to RAM though. The main reason being that if someone has 20KB of data stored, then they lose a few expansion structures and drop back to 10KB, what happens to the excess 10KB of data? Deleting it would be extremely annoying for the player. Blocking access would require a lot of extra checks and processing on the server-side.

The cost of handling it both in AI and on the server-side of things, would make it highly unviable.

I'd also prefer the hole to be closed. Not to mention fixing it will likely save a smidge of server bandwidth too, which is never a bad thing.

This will help a lot with drawing things like CPU/performance meters/bars, which you generally want visible in any room.

I love it when we get a small change with sizable benefits to it.

Ah that definitely puts some perspective on it.

Thanks Dissi!

Regarding power itself, will there be any way for power to "drain" out of the system to prevent oversaturation of the power market?

Every other resource has this, except power.

It is my understanding from the design doc that when a power creep dies, there is no loss of power. You regain 100% of it.

Once the majority of players have as much power as they need in their account to do whatever they want with power creeps, they'll most likely sell all the excess on the market , which would eventually saturate the power market.

This of course has a knock on effect for newbies if the price drops far enough for power to be much easier to buy than to acquire from power banks themselves during earlier GCL levels.

Obviously, this will take months to start showing signs, but I'm just wondering if it has been considered at all.

Perhaps there is already a sink and I'm just too blind to see it being the relatively new player that I am.

Same here. I've been getting the issue every few ticks for the past 3 - 5 hours. It seems to happen very randomly.

@Dissi Tying it to GCL sounds pretty reasonable. I say that as a GCL2 player.

EDIT: @Artem but that's just as good.

Thanks Artem! I realised right after posting the pic that my rushed code was a bit too rushed.

 EDIT: Knocked up a quick (fake) wall planner with visuals:

module.exports.loop = function () {
    let fakeWallBoxSize = 20;
    let inc = fakeWallBoxSize - 1;
    let startPos = {x: 10, y: 10};
    let endPos = {x: startPos.x + fakeWallBoxSize, y: startPos.y + fakeWallBoxSize};
    
    // Draw a rectangle made of dots. Fake plan of some walls just for testing!
    for(let rn in Game.rooms){
        let room = Game.rooms[rn];
        
        // Left-Right
        for(let x = startPos.x; x < endPos.x; x += inc){
            for(let y = startPos.y; y < endPos.y; y++){
                let tileStuff = room.lookForAt(LOOK_TERRAIN, x,y);
                if(tileStuff[0] == "wall")
                    continue;
                room.visual.circle(x, y, {fill: "#00FFFF"});
            }
        }
        
        // Top-Bottom
        for(let y = startPos.y; y < endPos.y; y += inc){
            for(let x = startPos.x; x < endPos.x; x++){
                let tileStuff = room.lookForAt(LOOK_TERRAIN, x,y);
                if(tileStuff[0] == "wall")
                    continue;
                room.visual.circle(x, y, {fill: "#00FFFF"});
            }
        }
    }
}