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

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.

The latest issue of our Screeps World Review is out! Read about the game world progress in the past quarter, analysis of leaders' achievements and successes, and video replays of noteworthy events:

READ FULL ARTICLE

We have something very special for you! New subscription option is available now: Lifetime Subscription! It grants lifetime indefinite access to full unlocked CPU on our official MMO server. Buy it once and forget about monthly payments!

The turning point of the Power Creeps development is just around the corner. This post will show how this mechanics will look in the game and also update our design document. A lot of things have already been described in the previous post, but the mechanics sparked hot debate, and we took a time-out to polish the idea and switch to other important tasks. This process gave us fresh ideas on what to change, and now we are confident the final concept can be viable.

TL;DR Brief summary of the adjustments

• Only one class will be launched initially—Operator.
  
• Any power creep can use its powers (skills) only in power-enabled rooms. Activation requires that any power creep approach the room controller and run PowerCreep.enableRoom(controller). This action is performed once by any player (not limiting to the room owner) and can be undone only by unclaim.
  
• The operator will use a new resource called ops that it can either generate itself or buy in NPC terminals.
  
• See an interactive skills planner below.

READ THE BLOG POST

The turning point of the Power Creeps development is just around the corner. This post will show how this mechanics will look in the game and also update our design document. A lot of things have already been described in the previous post, but the mechanics sparked hot debate, and we took a time-out to polish the idea and switch to other important tasks. This process gave us fresh ideas on what to change, and now we are confident the final concept can be viable.

TL;DR Brief summary of the adjustments

• Only one class will be launched initially—Operator.
  
• Any power creep can use its powers (skills) only in power-enabled rooms. Activation requires that any power creep approach the room controller and run PowerCreep.enableRoom(controller). This action is performed once by any player (not limiting to the room owner) and can be undone only by unclaim.
  
• The operator will use a new resource called ops that it can either generate itself or buy in NPC terminals.
  
• See an interactive skills planner below.

READ THE BLOG POST