Screeps: World News

We're happy to announce that we've just migrated our production server cluster to the new location. This is so exciting for our team, and here's why.

First, the new server cluster is based on brand new Intel Core i9-9900K processors which gives a performance boost to both userland and engine code. Our tests have shown a 15-30% increase in user CPU depending on the load profile. And the tick rate on all shards is now 20% faster—down to 2.2s/tick on shard3!

Second, we've switched our architecture to a containerized pool of applications orchestrated in a Kubernetes cluster. Kubernetes is well known for having a pretty steep learning curve, and this was a serious challenge, but we've managed to find the right guy who joined our team and used his expertise to set up everything properly. Now, this makes our development and deployment process much easier allowing us to test and deploy new features more rapidly. With just one click we can clone the entire production cluster to a temporary instance in private cloud, test everything we need to test, and remove it with one click again afterward to avoid high expenses. This is a thriving technology and we're looking forward to new developments with Screeps World and Screeps Arena that it allows! We already used this platform to carefully test Nodejs 10 and the new game content on the real production world data. Nodejs 10 is shipped now on all game server nodes, and we're pretty confident that we can roll out all new game features (NPC Strongholds, Factories, new resources, Store and Market changes) in the first half of October. Stay tuned!

Discuss this news on our official forum

It's been a long road indeed. The Power resource was introduced to the game in December 2015. The plans for development of the new Power Creeps concept were announced at the same time. Since then, we've heard numerous opinions, deeply analyzed all comments, suggestions and concerns of our community. The concept was changed, readjusted and reworked several times. This wasn't the only reason of the delay of the release: since 2016 we've been focusing on other areas of the project that have more to do with optimization and reworking of the game engine than the game content itself. This was because the release of the game on Steam in 2016 resulted in the influx of players we weren't ready for. However, a great deal of game content has been developed too: minerals, NPC invaders, market system, nukes, room visuals, world shards, tombstones, tunnels, events log. All these things were developed after we had announced Power Creeps, and we believe we didn't spend time in vain but managed to improve the game in many aspects.

But now we are excited to announce the final release of the Power Creeps system in the game! We started its public beta on February 1, 2019 on the Public Test Realm, and after 1.5 months we can say it's polished enough to go live.

What is power?

Power is an end-game mechanic opening a whole new trek in the development of your colony: towards increasing its effectiveness rather than the size of colonized territory. This is how its contents look like:

• You mine a special resource called “power.”
  
• Mined resource is processed in 8-level rooms and increase your account Global Power Level (GPL).
  
• GPL allows for creation of Power Creeps – special hero units – and development their levels and skills (so called "powers").
  

Read more about power mechanics in the documentation.

For now, the first (and likely the main) class has been developed and launched – Operator. All its superpowers are functional and ready to use. All but one (OPERATE_FACTORY) – we'll leave a small intrigue to elaborate on later on our forum. Stay tuned!

Want to try it but don't have sufficient power level? We have a surprise for you: you can instantly upgrade your Global Power Level to 3 right now! The only condition is having at least one Power Spawn in the game. The promo is active 30 days after the release, so Jump into Power Era now!

See API changes in our blog

This is a big game update containing many features:

* New design
* Creep.pull
* Controllers attack improvement
* Other changes

See the full post about these changes in our official blog.

We were all looking forward for shard3 to open. In this post, we are pleased to announce its launch along with some more great news.

First, we’re happy to announce that the free non-subscription CPU limit is raised from 10 to 20. Yay!

And now is the most interesting part. Shard3 becomes our first CPU-limited shard. It limits CPU of all players to 20. Even if you have an active subscription and assigned more CPU to this shard, only 20 CPU will be active there. This means this shard is mostly designed as a level playing field for non-subscription players. They can now compete with all their neighbors on equal terms (CPU-wise), whether they are subscribed or not.

In all other aspects, shard3 is a regular shard with Novice and Respawn Areas and portals from shard2 (temporary closed for 60 days). You can freely travel there, but your CPU will be capped, so having a subscription will force you to learn how to optimize your creeps in the same way as non-subscribed players do.

And the last thing: since you get twice as much CPU now when you buy Screeps on Steam, the free 30-day subscription trial is discontinued. We recommend new players to start on shard3 and buy a subscription if they want to expand to other shards.

This is a big game update containing many features:

* Tunnels
* Room event log
* Unboosting creeps
* Other changes

See the full post about these changes in our official blog.