The Castle Doctrine Forums

Well my boring invincible house finally got bulldozed by a boring invincible (and not too bright) tool spammer.
I'm gonna leave it up as a sort of community chest until I get the itch to play again, which feels like it will be quite a while.

I Hope you enjoy some of these.

One:
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And here's my house, give or take a couple of mistakes updating a slightly out of date draft with a lack of fucks given: http://castledraft.com/editor/rWj9eq

It was supposed to be (and was for a while) a good balance between security and entertainment,
but by adding those two powered pits making it so that you need precise timing to get a specific dog to get you through a commitment gate I really went too far.
You might think collecting enough art eventually attracts a better class of robber. You'd be wrong.

That's exactly the sort of derp I'm afraid of doing, which is why I'm waiting until I'm utterly bored with my house so that I'm not too paralyzed with fear to think straight when I go robbing.

Sorry it's not animated but this was an old one, still I think it's funny.

Am I the only one looking forward to when my house falls so that I can share more of this nonsense?

+1

I like to put a few layers of 'fun' near the welcome mat, starting solvable and then adding higher and higher improbability of (toolless) required guesses as one goes deeper.

Well I don't know what you're looking for in unusual combo lock designs but here are a couple of novelty ones: http://castledraft.com/editor/LffgsC
Linking a magic dance to a combo lock is more about adding a penalty for cutting the power...I tried putting powered pits throughout a magic dance but really they just show that that small part is a walk of faith.

That would have to cost an obscene amount of money to be reasonable, not to mention greatly undermine the biggest strength - the unique strength - of a powered pit.
http://castledraft.com/editor/G53fUB The most extreme case I can think of quickly would currently cost one at least $13400 to brute force if I'm not mistaken.

...and it still wouldn't do you any good against an island combo lock.

This one's a bit of a gamble but it is a starter after all, and I've had some big bounties drop in my lap immediately by using this at the front door:

http://castledraft.com/editor/kri9DG

Of course if it becomes common it's effectiveness won't last.

Pro tip:
You can break a combo lock in one visit by guessing one digit of it correctly as needing to be off and cutting into it to see the voltage triggered switches, unless something extra is being done so that you can't reach line of sight to them.

Here's why this tool wouldn't work:
Suppose you have a tool that lets you detect whether a bit of wired wall, or a wire, or a switch is linked to a voltage triggered switch or an inverted voltage triggered switch...

It would cost more space but one could link the output from THAT voltage triggered switch to another voltage triggered switch...or not, or do it randomly across half of the digits of the combo lock.
In other words, unless you can see that the combo lock is compact you'd have no way of knowing whether the tool is giving you good information.
So at best this tool would be merely inconvenient for people who want to build combo locks and know what they're doing.

This is why combo locks aren't literally hitler:
A combo lock simply has the lowest probability per space of being guessed correctly and allowing a robber to pass an obstacle without using tools.
Every possible defense in this game is based on the robber being unable to know what to do to get by without tools and the most efficient defenses can only maximize the cost and rarity of the tools required to brute force them while minimizing the probability of a robber guessing their way past it, preferably while costing the robber as many tools as possible to not die from an incorrect guess.
These hard defenses combined with commitment gates may make up almost the entirety of the defenses one can build. Off the top of my head the only other kind is anything designed to confuse a robber, such as a maze or a number of hallways intended to make you forget how many you've passed before you see dogs.

tl;dr of final paragraph: why the rage against combo locks but not "guess the correct commitment gate!" houses? Because the chance of getting it right (ignoring whether you've got instant feedback if it is right) is 1 in 2^[number of digits] as opposed to 1 in [number of commitment hallways]?

You're not really supposed to be able to get through a competent house without tools, unless that is/is part of the house owner's intent.

Addendum:

Oh...hmm...so reading that more carefully...if I understand this correctly...you'd want to see the entire circuit by plonking this thing on a button or something...

Wouldn't that make any circuit a robber can reach a liability?
Not to mention there'd still be ways to make that far more costly for a robber... cats can press buttons quite far away after all...

The dev loves this mechanic. Don't expect anything douchey or unfair about this game's design to change because that's the way he likes it.

It's overall a good game in spite of such things in my opinion. That said I don't think plot holes are a valid reason to change mechanics =d

But yes, if you ever commit to possibly not being able to reach the welcome mat or a rob-able vault you're risking everything.
It's very guide dang it but technically nothing in this game is explained so the empty vault mechanic is arguably not exceptional in that way.

Glenn Raymond Daniel just spent $11650 scouting and/or trying to rob my $2000 value house. I have no paintings.

If you have an awful lot of tools/money/income right now and this sort of thing offends you, enjoy that little piece of intel.