The Castle Doctrine Forums

That's why you have to use even MORE advanced electronics to make it so the floor turns itself off again.

Of course the player base has dropped, simply put this game isn't for everyone. (That is easy to see from the mixed critical response) But the droves who have left were the low hanging fruit. You can see just by looking at this forum that those of us who have remained have scaled the worst of the cliff which is this games learning curve and are perhaps even starting to enjoying themselves. I imagine the population will begin to plateau, as the players who remain will tend to be the ones that are into it more.

Regarding the the electronics system I know personally that I would probably stop playing if advanced electronics were eradicated. Advanced electronics add a lot of the depth to higher level play, without it things are more likely to grow stale. That is a REAL danger for the longevity of the game.

I'm totally biased though, because I LOVE TCD's electronics. 8D

I think that will do it nicely Jason. It is an elegant and effective solution.

And everything returned to normal in the neighbourhood, until...

Ok, lets start from the beginning.
Does Jason NEED to stop wireless communication? Obviously some of the more glitchy aspects thereof would need fixing. Power sources should propagate power all of the time regardless of other aspects of the houses electronics for instance. but once those 'bugs' are removed (and that can easily be done by purging the first few cycles) is what remains so unpalatable?

I suppose two separate arguments could be made against wireless communication in TCD:

1. That it is game breaking. OP!
I'm not too concerned about this. If it is too effective you can increase the amount of purged cycles, that in turn will increase the size of the transmitter and receiver. You can continue increasing the amount of purged cycles until the benefits of home wi-fi are balanced by its cumbersomeness.

2. That it is just plain clumsy, arbitrary, anti-intuitive.
This one is more difficult and I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this. I think the fact that the cycle limit is arbitrary should not concern us too much though. Physics are arbitrary. Many of the aspects we use in house design: view shifts, pet movement, paradoxes resolving to off etc. are all arbitrary. This can be difficult for new players, but to a certain extent the game is meant to be difficult for new players. In many regards it is these anti-intuitive aspects of the game that give it depth. If everything worked just like we thought it did then we would be certain about the risks we are taking. I'm much more interested in the risk of the unknown, the emergent dynamic I am as of yet unaware of. If we simply cull every unexpected dynamic as it is discovered the game will lose quite a lot. 

But yes I can also see the other side. A bunch of separate circuits each invisibly acting on the other over a distance to form some 'critical mass' at which electronics in the area act subtly differently so that invisible and occult conjunction can be detected by a receiver. It's all a bit weird. Weird in a sci-fi kind of way not a murder-each-others-children-home-defence-MMO kind of way. Weird in a way that perhaps is just too weird. It isn't a game about an alien electrician after all.

Perhaps though the solution is quite simple. Don't bother with wiping out the dynamic completely, just make it almost entirely impractical to implement by making the number of purged cycles relatively high. It is a very simple solution that would stop this dynamic from wrecking the game by making its implementation prohibitively space consuming while also giving us electronics nerds something fun to play with in our spare time. Perhaps it would even be possible to make a few one-trick-pony houses that use it, but never in such a way that it would become a dominant strategy. This would discount the need for a massive revamp of the electronics system. And if it didn't work as a measure you could always do something more drastic.

The game is running great as it is Jason, I'm not sure it is timely or necessary to have too much of a paradigm shift on electronics.
You don't want to kill the worm with a can of worms.

Yep, it would be pretty much the only way. With a paradox connected to a long binary counter you can make cycle lengths into the billions.

Send your email to mine and I'll tell all.

Just reproduced your results redxaxder. It has got me confused as well. I can't imagine this has a limit of more than 13 cycles. Are we missing something?

Edit: Ok, that makes sense. Got it now.

This is from the FAQ:
Q. Why is the game so punishing? It is so frustrating when I lose the house I spent hours on because I didn't know I could die in X way. At least let me save my houses so that I can build them instantly when I re-spawn.
A. Jason has answered this question a number of times in the forums, here is a recent quote:

You would have to be careful having separate fuel prices for each tool slot. All this would do is encourage monoculture houses that force the use of one particular tool in abundance. Dull houses in that vein could become prohibitively expensive to rob while house designs that encourage the robber to bring a variety of tools (in less bulk) would be punished. If a fuel system is implemented I think a system like JWG's (which surcharges based on total cost) is more sensible.

If you want less people dying in your house overnight then do precisely that, make less people die in it overnight. Make your traps less deadly. If you don't want people to die, don't kill them. Pad the walls, muzzle the dogs, reduce the depth of your pits, do whatever is necessary to stop all these fools dying. Think turtle, think bitlock, think boring!

It's a bit late now, but the increase in police response has made it impossible to rob any of the major houses, they require more than 5 min. That means that the top houses are pretty much locked in place.

So, yes, the dog will fall futilely into the pit in this set up. Cabnormal is correct though, a window will fix things right up. Just make sure the window isn't in brick throwing range, otherwise a clever player will throw a brick and the dog will run through the broken window to his doom!

It seems you may have a misapprehension about how self testing works. Although it is true that if a robber either kills your wife and/or kids or robs your vault the damage he causes to your house, including the killing of dogs, will be made permanent, this is not the case for self tests. You can test out your dogs behaviour with no risk of killing him or losing money, even if he falls in the pit in one of these self tests. There is the very real chance of him killing you though!

Happy house building!