The Castle Doctrine Forums

That's what I am thinking as well. But not sure if a perma-permadeath server is the right place for the contest then Unless this is gonna last for a prolonged period of time so that new players can learn the game as well.

15k cap for your design or in general? Because in general the cap is still the same as before, the only difference is that now the house owner has to spend more money if he wants to achieve the cap.

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.

Yeah the right mouse button was just an example. Personally I like to avoid the right mouse button as well. Holding a modifier key (shift should be cross platform) could work as well.

I knew I shouldn't have put the CCTV monitoring system in the garage

I still don't see how this would force (or promote) housebuilding for those players who choose to play robbers only. I could still ditch the voucher money and go rob right away, or not?

Are we sure that this is working as you intended for (abandoned) houses?

Due to #3 simply entering (past the mat I guess) and exiting a house starts generating the money again.

I mean that's nice since we will never run out of money, but I'm not sure that you wanted it exactly that way.

Exactly!

Are you sure that vandalism through robbed money is not a problem? I am playing the game non stop now and yeah there is no vandalism at the moment, but I wouldn't just leave that loophole in there.

Yeah but let's talk about the core problem and not the v9 state. The v9 state is obviously unplayable at the moment.

...or dismantled is the important part here. And that's what we want -- tools that can be used to dismantle things so that we can break into a house/vault. In v5 tools in optimal houses were just obsolete, while in v8 they had practical use only after you understood the idea behind the trap, and even this could be argued upon, because a real optimal house just makes any tool useless, i.e. it allows no real shortcuts by using tools.

I agree with most those statements but at the same time I think that the second type of bruteforce that the unlimited backpack provides is the "playable" kind of bruteforce. Technically it's also a different kind of bruteforce, since you are not searching the problem space (i.e. the puzzle solution space), but instead you are just searching the real house space (which is much more limited), with the ability to mix both, if you think that you can save time or money by doing so. Also searching the house space requires only basic game knowledge (what tools do to different house tiles), while searching the solution space requires advanced (sometimes even complete) game knowledge. And, since logic gates are part of the game, it means that knowledge from other fields is practically required in order to understand the whole puzzle.

This is the part I don't agree with. So how exactly do we define the "optimal" house? When talking about that we would have to agree on what are we trying to optimize.
- Minimizing house cost while maximizing total tool cost to reach the vault while not knowing anything about the house?
- Minimizing house cost while maximizing tool cost to reach the vault when knowing the vault location in advance?
- Minimizing house cost while maximizing tool cost to secure the house escape route?
- Minimizing house cost while maximizing tool cost to access all relevant house defense logic areas?
etc.

And even if we agree on one of those (it's already non trivial to pick the best one, but it should be possible since game mechanics and costs are known), it's not a trivial thing to build an optimal house, because you would need to do it in stages. You would have to make sub-optimal houses until you accumulate enough money to change the house into an optimal one. And by definition those sub-optimal houses are the ones that are worth being robbed. And if you manage to reach that optimal house state you could still be robbed by someone who made a net loss out of it, but it doesn't matter because he probably robbed some other houses to get that extra money.

All these optimizations were trivial in v5-v8; you just ruled tools out with Electric grids and 9+ walls. Of course in v8 you still had to build an obfuscated system behind that, but no one had to even think about the optimal house problem, since it was right there in front of us right from the start. I am pretty sure that it won't be that easy with unlimited tools and probably that's part of the reason why people think it won't work. We (me included) don't know what's the best house design to aim for. While that's exciting for some, it makes others think they don't have control and maybe even scares them.

But technically unlimited backpack doesn't reward houses that are effectively unsolvable. Because with enough tools any design can fall.

So the optimal house is a house that is an elaborate trap that is too hard to figure out (hidden logic) and at the same time too expensive to break through (to get to the logic or vault). But if you place enough money into the vault then it's not too expensive anymore and instead it becomes "worth the risk".

In an ideal world this game would be about house owners changing and expanding their house over time to raise that "worth it" threshold while still keeping enough money in the vault to remain a good target (after all you get more money if people fail and leave some tools behind). At the same time robbers would be able to pick targets they think they can handle, sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding. An owner who lost his money would then just go rob others to fill his vault again.

But in the real world (well the virtual TCD world ) this might be impossible to achieve without certain limitations and "forced" mechanics. It might be also impossible to achieve without a change to the reward system, I agree, that's a possibility.

Yes, the whole thread is about suggestions for changes. All are server/client related, none of them are at user-level.

What I was trying to say there is that the issues with v9 are due to a broken state. Not all necessary changes were put in place before it was released to the public, but there is nothing bad about that. In fact it helps people learn what's really broken.

That right, but it's mostly due to an unstable transition from one system to another, rather than a wrong direction.

The solution you suggest would help yes, since it's a form of a progression system, but I am not sure that Jason wants to have an artificial progression system in his game. We'll see what he has to say