But this is going to make every attack become more drawn out and easier for the defender to make up for the subset of players that can't code decently robust defense code.  I honestly believe that the main reason people have trouble with defense is because they don't have a good environment to test their defense logic in.  The only way to do it right now is to either do it in PTR (which is slow) or by doing wargames (which is expensive).  Even with those limitations, I was able to get my defense code to be pretty solid through those wargames with Atavus.  If I had the ability to test out more scenarios, I could make even more robust code.

Having that 10,000 tick delay just makes it more likely that people will have the chance to actually test out their defense code and fix it (although they're still having to test it in production in that scenario).  It's helping to ease some of the pain, but it's also going to make every significant assault a drawn out and tedious affair.  It's (partially) fixing one problem while also introducing an entirely different one.

If I have to wait 10,000 ticks whenever I want to attack someone, that means I would have to wait over 9 hours at current tick rates.  That means that if I want to siege someone, I'll either have to start the siege in the morning & hope that they trigger safemode, or I'll have to automate sieging (which is a hell of a lot harder than automating defense).  If they do trigger safemode right when the attack begins, then I can head to work and do the siege afterward.  If safemode is instead triggered later, then there's a decent chance the room is going to come out while I'm sleeping.  Then 27 hours of window to siege.  But that doesn't mean that I'm going to be attacking when the defender is online. If I have an idea of what timezone they're in, I'll trigger safemode, wait for the cooldown, then attack while they're asleep.  It just means that I have to announce to them a day beforehand that I'm going to be sieging their room, which really sucks, because it completely removes the option for element of surprise (even surprising defense logic or resource balancing logic - not necessarily surprising the other programmer).  If the goal is to give the defender a chance to test out their code, I really don't think this is the best way to do it.

It sucks to lose your shit, but it's also a part of every RTS out there.  It also sucks that players are gonna leave because they lose their rooms, but even more players are leaving because it's a programming game, and it's gonna be hard to play.

Either players need to start doing more war games so that they can test out their defense code, or there needs to be some other way of testing your defense code. You can't ensure that your defense logic will work unless someone attacks you. For most people, that isn't going to be a mutually agreed upon fight.

Yeah, large players already aren't being killed, or even regularly attacked.  They already don't have much to fear in the way of people assaulting them - this will give defenders a tool for solving a problem that doesn't exist.

But then it means that the attacker potentially can't fight in their timezone.  The defender will be able to almost always ensure the fight happens in their timezone.  It's just moving the problem to the other player.

I'm cool with the idea of making it easier to defend, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it.  If a room is going to die, having an extra 10k ticks to defend it won't make any difference other than making that room more tedious to attack (and forcing the attacker to code in logic to detect safeMode - is there going to be something in the API that will allow us to easily detect if a room is in safe mode?)  Assaults will turn into "Launch an attack, see them go into safemode, stop the attack for 10k ticks, launch the attack again."  It's just delaying the attack by 10k ticks.  This solution feels like a way to make players feel more comfortable with shitty defense logic (even though they won't actually be safer)

Additionally, this will benefit top tier players even moreso than lower tier players - generating Ghodium is a lot easier for top players than lower players.

I like the idea of us having more tools for defending, but this doesn't feel like it'll be a tool that will generate fun/interesting gameplay.  This sounds like something that will just make it that much harder to attack (and defenders already have a big advantage).  Rooms in safemode will have an extra 10k ticks to prepare defenses, and an extra 10k ticks for assistance to come from the rest of your empire.  Something that would give us more options for defending and attacking would be awesome.  Maybe the ability to remove boosts as a defender and harden/protect them as an attacker?  Or some way to boost towers into overdrive, making them do more damage but also use more Energy?

I dunno - it'll be worth waiting to see what happens on the PTR, but this feels like it goes against the spirit of the game for me.  The challenge of having to create code that can successfully defend my empire while I'm asleep (and outsmart the logic that others have created) is one of the reasons that I play this game.  There's no outsmarting a safemode room - just waiting.

Whoops. Should be "but are either unwilling or unable to spend money on CPU Credits"

I have a few friends that I think would really enjoy playing this game, but are either unable or unable to spend money on CPU Credits. I'd love to be able to give them some credits so they can try it out without having to spend any of their money. I'd have them do the twitter thing, but quite a few of them don't have twitter.

If I'm reserving a neutral room, does the energy I put into the controller contribute to my GCL?

Thanks! Wasn't too sure what the best way to avoid the if was.

Hey y'all, I've found myself needing the ability to reverse a path, so I wrote a little script that I'd like to share!

https://gist.github.com/waveofbabies/d4d8e9cfeb47e358f62b