Claming new room

Requirements

If You have claimed less rooms than your Global Control Level (GCL)You can claim another one.

Simple overview how to claim new Room

To claim new room You need to do 6(7) things:

• send a creep with CLAIM body part to not owned room
• have said creep successfully perform .claimController() action
• put construction site of Spawn
• bring builders from already-owned rooms
• build Spawn
• keep Controller from Downgrade and loosing Room Control Level (RCL)

Optional (quite often required)

• Defend new room from Invaders / other Players

Things to think about

Before considering claiming a new Room:

Claiming new room comes with some cost:

• Spawn Time required to spawn builders
• Energy cost of builders
• possible initial energy load of builder (if You're not sending them empty)
• possible need of sending combat creeps to defend new room
• CPU cost of multiple creeps going on multi-room voyage
• CPU cost of some extra creeps building new room
• do You have enough CPU to run this room after it's developed fully

Which can be summed up as:

• do You have enough CPU
• do You have a room that can support setting up a new room

If You're short on CPU (i.e on Shard3) or would need to disable some parts of Your code to claim a new room it should be well thought before.

Same for situation when Your rooms are attacked or energy-starved.

Things to consider when picking new Room

If Your empire is healthy then You need to find suitable room to claim, and this are some things to consider while picking room:

• how far/close i want the new room to be from my base
• does new room have 2 sources (1 source rooms tend to develop slower)
• how many potential remotes are available, how many sources they have (the more the better)
• what mineral does new room should have (in general it's best to pick room with mineral You don't have, early on it's good to have an O or H for basic Boosts, focusing X early is not always best choice)
• does new room has other players around
  • are they aggressive
  • do they have Remote Mining Rooms close/overlapping with Your room
• what's the purpose of the room
  • access to PowerBanks or Deposits
  • access to highway in general
  • control of area

First-time expansion

If You have just started game (or did not expand yet) it's a special situation, that adds another 3 questions:

• do You have code organized in a way that can run 2 (or more) rooms
• in case of bug or error in one room, can You still not crash Your whole empire with it
• is Your code ready for some edge-cases that might come with new room

Claim new Room concepts

• Refilling builders by harvesting sources in claimed room
• Spawning big builders that carry lot of energy to new room
• Spawning small builders that swarm neighbor rooms sources for energy
• Sending big hauler creeps to provide energy to build
• Protecting Spawn construction site with Rampart or Walls
• Creating path with PathFinder.search and storing it for creeps to use to save on CPU

After claiming new Room

In theory You should already have code that can support this room on its own but You can still help it develop by

• Send big hauler creeps with energy (and recycle them for more energy)
• Send big upgrade / mining / building creeps and renew them, to provide room with creeps that would not be available to it by default
• ensure its protection with Combat Creeps sent from more developed rooms