They can still be shot by a gun while sleeping, but that's just a waste of good meat.
]]>Also, drugged dogs can no longer be clubbed, so drugged meat doesn't help as much in these situations.
In v9, people carry enough crowbars that they can pretty much feel safe against dogs. That won't be the case in v10... I think that dealing with dogs will require more tactical thinking.
Will dogs still be able to be woken with a brick? If so, then the meat-brick-crowbar combo will just become the norm....
]]>I'd like to avoid "forcing" anything, which tool packs would. I want to keep the game organic and dynamic and very "up to you" feeling. Here are these core mechanics, and the rest is a blank slate. An empty backpack for you to fill however you want. Spend the starting money on a house, OR spend it on tools for robbery, or your own mix of both---totally your choice.
Dynamic pricing has the problem that it's hard for players to reason about. It's one more thing to explain, too. And prices jumping around is confusing to new players. I'd like to keep it so that "a saw costs X, always," and set X at whatever value is appropriate. If 20 saws is too many for a fresh-start player to get a hold of, then the price should be fixed so that the number of saws acquired is NOT too many.
In my in-progress v10, I've change it so that animals remain still while a tool is used. This changes the game in some interesting ways. Most importantly, a dog that is 2 tiles away can't be brought one tile closer simply by cutting a wall. But also using a crowbar to open a door no longer makes the dog behind the door instantly jump into crowbar-reach. So, opening a door produces a dog that is super-dangerous (two tiles away). Also, drugged dogs can no longer be clubbed, so drugged meat doesn't help as much in these situations.
In v9, people carry enough crowbars that they can pretty much feel safe against dogs. That won't be the case in v10... I think that dealing with dogs will require more tactical thinking.
]]>Huh, just thinking however that resale value would be a problem if the entry price would be low enough to make scouting with 2-3 basic tools a viable option again without breaking the bank. Tool-starter-packs & building vouchers still sound like a solid idea to me.
tldr follows:
Well, as I said, it took me time to figure out that this is the way it may work out in some players' minds. I didn't think that, but especially if you are thinking in single robberies one at a time, it makes sense to use up all tools inflicting random destruction. It's one of the psychological possibilities created by the ruleset.
Even though this would imply that house owners who make their houses one-time-robbable are to blame for making robbers use up their tools, I wouldn't trust the people as much as to have my whole house open to n beatings in a row with only the kindness of the robbers in the way... There has been lots of random destruction lately.
Well, after all, most houses have become one-time-robbable now, so we'll see how that works out.
]]>Only now did I realise that the current mechanics directly encourage random destruction: Since you'll leave your tools to the robber after leaving, it's in your best interest of sorts to use all tools destroying the house before walking onto the safe. This can't be right...
As long as you make the house safe to rob again (with no tools or less tools) you can come back and retrieve the tools that you left behind. I think this mechanic is more problematic than the lose-your-backpack mechanic. Both mechanics are interesting by itself, however they synergize in such a way so that they enable some playstyles that might not be desirable (personally I don't mind, I tried both playstlyes and I enjoyed both).
So players who vandalize might not know that they can retrieve their tools if they want, or, they simply want to destroy things. What I am saying here is that changing any of these mechanics won't prevent vandalism.
The other idea about tool cost progressively increasing can actually address this problem, but it would require a nice implementation where normal gameplay (scouting -> striking) is not penalized too much.
]]>but how to prevent people just putting that escape hatch/window right next to the family, or indeed walling it off to keep the robber in..
ooooh it's tricky! the castle doctrine v10, let sleeping dogs lie. scary tunnels!
]]>Hmm... the problem is, if you can drug them and then wake them up with a brick, you can control how close to them you are before they wake up, thus enabling you to club them after they wake up.
There's a general complaint (that I think is correct) that "protecting the family" isn't interesting right now. Would be good to fix that.
]]>like looking for the heart stickers on the door to find the daughter's room.... yikes!
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What about this crowbar-proof family dog? ...
i have been sleeping dogs and waking them up after i've walked past them as a quite effective way of pushing some tricky buttons when i didn't have a brick. it definitely makes sense that clubbing a sleeping dog is too easy, but being unable to wake them up would feel like a shame. hmm
As far as family stepping over *just* wires... ...
i never thought of it like that. this makes a lot of sense and i graciously withdraw from the 'my family are such a bunch of prissy whiners, can't even step over a wire' party.
]]>Dog is always two tiles behind you (unless you saw through a wall too or do something else).
The bad combo is currently drugged meat to stop them plus crowbar to kill them. I'm thinking that a drugged dog should simply not be killable (it should turn into an indestructible land mine).
I like the fact that crowbars do a bunch of different things---that's thematically accurate and mechanically rich. It's okay that some tools do more than others, as long as every tool is useful in some situation, and every tool has some situation where it is useless.
As far as family stepping over *just* wires... I don't think that changes much, and I'm resisting doing that because it would be a pain (family are currently represented as objects, so they can stand in the same spot as an animal, but there's only one object in each map spot, so they can't cross anything but empty floor---each tile in the map currently has at most one object and at most one mobile object).
Obviously, if they could step over other stuff (hit switches, open doors, etc.), there would be no automatic way to verify that a viable escape path existed.
Also, it's thematically nice to have to design part of your house in a different way to suit the whims of your family (they don't want wires all over the floors in their hallways). It's a natural way of getting you to build a separate "living space" in your house that looks and feels and functions differently from the trap parts of your house.
And yes, there are obvious clues for robbers (follow the empty, trap-free hallways to look for the family), but this is a rich, creepy side-effect that I like.... like looking for the heart stickers on the door to find the daughter's room.... yikes!
]]>I agree with bey bey that the crowbar is pretty overpowered. It just has too many uses over the other items, the vast majority of which only have one use. The only exception there is are guns, but they cost half of the starting money.
]]>colorfusion: yes, crowbar is way overpowered! (suggestion: crowbar opens doors etc. - 100$; baseball bat: kills animals and family - 200$)
]]>Guns on the other hand seem a bit too pricey. If you want to stop a dog then normally drugged meat does the job well enough and if you really need to step past them then a crowbar kills them.
A non linear pricing of tools could work well. If you want to just scout around with a crowbar and some water then it could be cheaper than it is now, but to completely smash right through to someones vault it should cost a lot more. It feels a bit strange to me that completely brute forcing to someones vault only costs a few times more than a normal looking around.
This could be added thematically as a "transport cost" which is perhaps made clear when you enter a house in some way. You could probably just walk to a house with some drugged meat and a voltage detector, but you'd need some kind of truck if you wanted to bring 30 explosives.
Edit: I don't mean you physically have to buy cars or anything, just a message telling you how much you'll pay for transport.
]]>During a busy period there are numerous ~2k houses popping up with unprotected family and vault. A robber can grab one or two of these and easily take out one of the top houses with brute force.
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