The Castle Doctrine Forums

The problem with many of these ideas; is they are home-owner centric.

Lockouts; are no good for the career criminals.  I am a bit of both; but the big robberies are what I remember most, most of which would have been completely impossible without either regularly visiting a house; or res rushing.

Maps; again I still don't like them. 
Just give us tools that can disable any and all active or inactive trap pieces.
Reduce the "follow" distance of dogs to 7 or less.  This ensures that the logic behind a magic dance is accessible to a tool user.

That leaves the straight up bit-locks, and solid houses.  And I haven't said it (deleted it after drafting this once) but, sounds from offscreen could help here.  Though I do keep thinking about how you could just obfuscate the sound being made.

The only thing I can think of; is similar to a wiring plan.  Perhaps make "powered up" wires (and other logic) glow, and also glow through the Fog of war. 
Coupled with some extra camera control (being able to move the camera either direction - obviously keeping the player in sight) you should be able to "see" pretty much every corner of a bit-lock house map. 

Having said that I can actually think of a design that would survive inspection even under those circumstances. (buttons for the bitlock fill the house north-south; all wires extend 24 blocks to the right).

Final solution I could come up with; was your family respawns every 24 hours.  You must always have your family (dead or alive), You can move them (when dead), they must always have an "escape" path.  No  house can survive 8 block paths being cut through it every day.

I robbed a house very similar to that design that had 5 paintings.

I believe it may have been this house;  The design was good but not foolproof.
I also died about 15 times testing.

There was an inverted voltage thing that I could see through the diagonal walls (you can actually see slightly further than you often think - for instance a single thickness wall allows you to see 2 squares beyond it; not just 1 like most think.
It was difficult and time consuming, but I didn't cheat.  (just to confirm it was your house; there was a powered door south of the entrance right? - I ran around to look at the design after breaking through - does that sound right?).

I have done a few robberies now where time + enough tools can break you into a house.  In fact; the house I had robbed before this had 70k and 1 painting; which took me zero deaths; as I could leave after investigating;  It did cost my 7k and about 30 attempts over 45 minutes to map the wires and infer what I couldn't see.

This design is ok; but when it comes down to it it is a timer, and the fact that there was a voltage inverter just within sight told me it was either a secret dance or a toggle.  I believe on step 20 or so moving back and forth from the 4th square would have the voltage inverter start flipping back and forth; it was this that told me it wasn't a dance and was a single button, and that I had to stand at the last square to await my exit.  I died several times after learning that; trying to time my exit just right.  But when it came down to it it was only a small window of time to brute force.

Agreed; maps aren't the solution.

A device that showed you every block along a single line (maybe just electrical based blocks? maybe just *active* electrical blocks? - maybe in a quater-screen cone-shape?) might be useful and would help with some of the designs.

The "Cone shaped" electrical scanner would allow you investigate the logic.