The Castle Doctrine Forums

Ah, that's good to hear. I usually just clear my front entrance, then draw a line of panic buttons around the area i want to play in. That way no stray dogs get me. For sight traps, I have to clear a lot though. After I'm done, I just exit with out vault test instead of hitting Undo.

I like this idea a lot, better than my 3 minute window. Just a simple, would you like to return home at the next available time checkbox, that supercedes any other visitor. This would allow people to get back into their homes even if a bunch of accounts are trying to rob him/her.

You should email this to Jason.

My biggest critique is for you to play around in self test more. I saw you finally did that when trying out the a dog dance, but you tested it with the dog one position off (i.e. it had to take a step towards you first as you went off to the right). Sometimes that one position matters =). Although since you're streaming, building it out will expose your house, so I'm not sure.

My suggestion is only changing the addition that robbing a vault or murdering gives. Jason can play with the initial starting bounty ($100) to increase or decrease the economy flow. I know it used to be $200 and even $50.

I'll try to plug in some numbers so my proposal is easier to understand:

quick summary refer to the original post for full details.
Bounty Addition (B): the number added to a thief's bounty upon murder/theft.
Time Interval (TI): set amount of time to increase the Bounty Addition (B)
Bounty Increase (BI):  This is the total value of the house plus the value we assign to paintings (X) multiplied by some percentage (Y).
the formula: BI = ((X * number of paintings) + house listing value) * Y

Lets say we set the value of paintings, X at $5000 each.
And we want the percentage, Y = 1%
And we want a Time Interval, TI every 6 hours.

A house with 2 paintings and $10000 is made fresh (unlikely but lets just keep it simple for now) and will pay $0 to someone how robs or murders in it.

Every 6 hours, if there has been no theft or robbery, the added bounty for murdering or robbing this house will be ((2 * 5000) + 10000) * .01 = $200.

Which means if the value of the house or painting don't change, then after a full day, the bounty addition the house would add is $800. If they do change, then it would add more or less. Obviously the longer a house has been around without a murder or theft, it would be bigger.

Note: if the value does change, the increments would as well. Meaning if a house drops in value (spent on tools) then its addition does as well.

Of course, Jason can change TI, X, Y to be however he wants. I also proposed Z after my discussion with iceman. Z = percentage of tool value brought in minus 2000.

The discussion should focus on this idea

Your suggestion is working towards fixing the problem transferring huge bounties. Transferring wouldn't be a problem if bounties aren't easily created.

Jason started with a suggestion from a thread you started where it was mentioned that having it based off of house value would be better. He's trying to expand on this idea. Please try reading his suggestion and other people's suggestions and offering thoughts and ideas related to the goal of the thread.

If you read my proposal above, broken houses won't provide additional bounties.

I like the idea of surviving more tooled attempts being recorded. You can always get more complicated, and I believe I provided a solution that is in the simplest form. I'd prefer it to be more complicated but more complications means more values to tweak when balancing. Please go over what I wrote and let me know what you think.

I actually like having broken houses around. Legacy of retired players. Easier money for those who care to map it out. A house you can set a surprise trap for everyone looking for money in that house. It's another aspect that I think is interesting.

I actually think turtle houses require as much skill to break. The dangerous houses trade off brute force cost for the possibility to kill. Which means it's cheaper to break. And I wouldn't call them uninspired, I've seen very interesting turtle houses. Although, I think the true skill measurement is getting to vaults that no one has gotten to (regardless of kills).

Robber skill is based on house difficulty. A difficult house is a house that has something that is worth being stolen and has had its defenses tested. Houses that don't attract attention (low value or painting less) have less testing of its defenses. It's when you've got a high house value or a high painting count that people want to get in and actually prove the houses difficulty. The difficulty of a house is only apparent after time.

Below is the formula trying to match my thoughts above.

Bounty Addition (B) is unique for each house.
B starts at $0.
B is awarded (added to the thief's bounty) upon theft or murder.
B is reset to $0 upon theft or murder.
B only increases when a house is in an Undamaged State (US).
US = 1 (true) after a self test.
US = 0 (false) after a theft or murder.
B Increases (BI) every Time Interval (TI) while in an Undamaged State (US).
For every TI, if US == 1 then B = B + BI
BI = ((X * number of paintings) + house listing value) * Y
X is the perceived value of a painting. Could be constant or based on how many are available in the auction house (more valuable when less paintings available).
Y should be a percentage of the total value that we want to add to the bounty
B should have a max limit (BX) (anything unbounded is dangerous).

TLDR: The longer a house holds valuable stuff without a murder or theft, the higher the bounty it will award to the the criminal who would commit murder or theft in this house. (Edits allowed)

Jason, you can plug in numbers to fit the bounty economy however you want.
This should address the goal in measuring "skill" or "house difficulty" while mitigating abuse since it is based on time. It also isn't based on edits or non edits since a well defended house can be one that is edited often to stop thieves. The fact that it only increases after a self test and before a robbery or theft means broken houses won't add bounty. Low value houses have to be around for a really really long time for them to add significant amounts to a bounty.

Additional thoughts.
1. Bounties on robbers should have a max limit as well.
2. It would be nice to have a 3 minute window where you are not on the listing after each visit. Any number of accounts can't lock you out for more than (20 mins) if you sat by and tried to get back in. Right now, you have to get lucky if two people are battling to get in your house. This may punish scouting and returning with tools during the 5 min start window but shouldn't be too bad. Welkin spoke of his frustration of not being able to enter his own house (he also had frustration on not being able to trace his attacker).

That was my second visit, and surprised I got lucky in the end. I didn't want to check the last or the second to last for sure, your earlier choices alluded to those not being correct. So I jumped in, and bam there was the vault.

On my first visit you put the correct path on what I thought would be the correct path because it was the hardest to guess, then you did that on the second one too, but i had to check the northern path because it would give me a sense of spacing. The next visit, I had to rule out another jump path to another set of choices which is why I checked the end and middle first. Although, I calculated the number of extra trips to make after that one, and it would only take 2 more trips. 1st trip to rule out the top by drugging dog and just checking. 2nd trip to check the bottom half.

It was a neat design and if you want to hear my thoughts on improvements, let me know.

Ok, back on topic:

I usually get $100, but occasionally I see $1100 or $600. These are usually chain robbers. The bigger numbers are always cautious high budget thieves and you can usually tell because they visit with a lot of tools. If you've got a set of paintings and can kill of those ones, you'll notice higher numbers. Paintings attract a different crowd.

Nice pictures . Although the later font gets hard to read.

Now I understand what you were referring to.

Wait, you've been to my house? It's definitely not a top house. I hover around 4-10k, spending on upgrades. Mine is actually pretty ruthless now. I used to have a wooden porch but because Okeefe's stash came with 16 paintings, Weaver was doing a little more poking than I would have liked. I needed a stronger front.

In my 2k life however, I don't need ladders, I just need the no tool solution. Sometimes it's easy, other times hard. The trapdoors don't scare me away as much as the powered doors though. Damn crowbar is out of my free money budget.

In my post huge heist life, I don't rob high level houses until my house is done and harvesting tools for me. I'm still working on upgrades. I still poke around the lower levels to see if there's any cost efficient targets. Have to catch those houses that made a bunch of money overnight and haven't upgraded.

Not really disconnect. Could be cops. They are referring to the 1 step suicide tapes.
You'll get a 1 step suicide tape when the robber:
1. loses connection
2. dies from cops
3. actually suicides on the mat.

The good thing is you get all the tools from the robber who died.
The bad thing is you don't get to see how far he got.

Edit: to sum up. I think disconnect scouting refers to intentionally dying from cops to cover up your tape.