Screeps: World News

We're announcing our new little project: Attack Rank Monthly Video. We automatically recorded all spawn kills during March 2020 and displayed a few of ticks around every event, with total number of kills by players. We hope it will be feasible for us to make such a video every month.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This is a minor update containing the following features:

• Reverse reactions in labs
  
• Room status data in game API
  
• Many various improvements
  

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

We've been brainstorming a lot lately. We brainstormed the architecture of a Persistent/Seasonal server separation in our Kubernetes cluster. We brainstormed how decorations system should be themed and organized. We brainstormed the financial aspect of Screeps as a business. We brainstormed what would be the mechanic or our first season on the Seasonal World. We also brainstormed a math model for the player rating in Arena, but it's a whole another story... What is really important here is that eventually, when all the coffee was drunk, we came up with a new streamlined concept of in-game account resources that we want to announce in this post.


The most important announcement to begin with: recurrent subscriptions will be discontinued, and 60-day tokens will be replaced with 24-hour tokens.

Yes, there will be no subscriptions in the game anymore. If you have an active subscription, it will remain active indefinitely, but you will not be able to activate a new one. The only method to unlock full CPU in your account will be using a CPU token. This will unlock your CPU for 24 hours. All current 60-day tokens will be converted to 60x 24-hours tokens automatically.

Moreover, we will introduce a game API method to activate a CPU token, and a way to check whether your CPU is unlocked or not currently. This way, you can program an auto-renew mechanism on your own based on your preference, using CPU tokens stored in your account.

The CPU unlocking system is needed to compensate for the server resources spent on running your script, but the recurrent subscription system turned out to be a suboptimal way to achieve this. Many people are unhappy with recurrent payments nowadays. Using CPU tokens, you can buy bundles of 10, 30, or 90 tokens, and control how your CPU is used according to your in-game circumstances.

Along with this, we will introduce two new account resources: Pixels and Access Keys.

Pixels are needed to pixelate (create) decorations for your rooms and your creeps. Also, you can convert any decoration back to pixels.

Access Keys are used to join a season in the Seasonal World, or a special event in the Persistent World. One season may require, say, 5 Access Keys to enter. And season rewards will also yield Access Keys, Pixels and CPU tokens to those who made it to the top of the season.

All these account resources can be obtained in two ways:

• Purchased at our official store, which is currently under development.
• Traded on the in-game market or Steam Community Market.

We're going to provide a fixed amount of all account resources on the in-game market by NPC orders as well. It will not be huge, but the one who's willing to participate in these mechanics using only in-game credits will always be able to do so.

We believe that this system has very appealing qualities in its design.

First, it is reasonable:

• We sell CPU Tokens because we allow you to rent real server CPU time in our cluster.
• We sell Pixels because our designer worked hard on the graphics that enable this "hat economy."
• We sell Access Keys because they unlock more game content that we regularly develop, add, and maintain for your fun and benefit.

Second, it is fair: although we sell it at our official store, but we also provide a legitimate way to be involved using in-game mechanics only.

And third, it is simple: it's just resources! No subscriptions, no recurrent payments, no pay walls. The only three things that we're going to sell are these three resources. And they are tradable in-game entities, not some licenses or privileges.

We will release all these 3 resources in the next major Decorations update. Access Keys will be discounted for 50% until the first season starts.

We are deeply convinced that this system will streamline our business model and secure further development of the game so that Screeps will continue its story.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

UPD: One more screenshot of this feature - a room decorated in blue.

Hello everyone!

We're happy to introduce one of the biggest content updates in Screeps! We tested it since May on the PTR and private servers with your help, and now we're ready to launch these exciting new features.

IMPORTANT: Although we put our best effort to make this update as less breaking as possible, some things in your code may break due to the new improved API. See the API Changes section below for details.



A new structure is now available at RCL 7: Factory. It allows for creating many new types of resources. Four of these are very special — we have added new raw resources to the game. They have Deposit game object type and can be occasionally found in "highway" rooms. You can harvest them as usual, but they will exhaust over time and have a limited lifespan. Deposits are distributed unevenly across the world map: one resource type per map quadrant (NW, NE, SW, SE).

Using factories, you can produce new resources that we call "trade commodities." These are resources that NPC market traders are most interested in. They have no other purpose other than to be sold and generate credits. Producing high-level commodities is the most profitable business in the game.

The factory mechanic is tightly linked with the OPERATE_FACTORY power. The full use of factories will be possible only by leveraging the coordinated work of multiple Operators.

We have developed four production chains of high-level trade commodities (for each new raw resource type). This is how the market now looks:



We're very excited about this change since it provides much more interesting crafting and trading challenges in the game. If you're an economy gamer, you'll definitely like it! But what if the fighting aspect of Screeps appeals to you more?

See documentation: Commodities

PTR forum topic Draft discussion



NPC Invaders now have a home!

If you check your sector on the map now, you will see that one room in each sector is claimed by the "Invader" user, and has its base in it. This is a place where all invader creeps in this sector originate from. Now, if you attack and destroy this NPC Stronghold, invaders will stop appearing in this sector until a new stronghold reappear elsewhere.

If you leave the stronghold untouched, it will spawn lesser cores in rooms nearby and reserve them. You'll have to destroy the core to proceed harvesting energy there.

There is one more reason to conquer an NPC Stronghold — it contains resources in its treasury. Every stronghold has a few containers, and the core structure ruin also will contain resources after you destroy it. Here is an example of a level 5 stronghold loot:



We will continue working on the stronghold defenders AI to make it an exciting fighting challenge for players of all levels.

See documentation: NPC Strongholds

PTR forum topic Draft discussion



We also introduced a new concept of ruins, which is similar to tombstones. When you destroy a structure, it does not disappear but drops a ruin object. All resources are moved to the ruin's store. In general, player structures ruins have 500 ticks of decay, but some special cases exist:

• InvaderCore ruins will last the same equal time as the remaining EFFECT_COLLAPSE_TIMER on it.
  
• When a user respawns, all structures are converted to ruins with 500,000 decay time.
  
• When a novice player initially spawns into the room with another player's structures, all structures are converted to ruins with 100,000 decay time.
  

See the official forum post for full API changes list and their discussion.

Forum post