The Castle Doctrine Forums

Yeah, I remember that house!! Probably the best to play for a while since one could do lots of exploring with a few bricks, drugged meat etc. without dying and since there was no "obvious" way to the safe.

Since Castlefortify messed it up, I copied it to http://castledraft.com/editor/tOsT8L .

And funnily enough, stuff like this seems to be the safest thing to do right now!! I have seen trapdoor houses fall while my maze type house survived. It might even be that natural selection will end the reign of the trapdoor corridor because it's no longer the safest option. (I wouldn't wonder...)

Idk, I've started new houses a few times in the last weeks. It's good to start with a heist, but not necessary. If you start off with something compact and smart, like a chase etc. and expand that, the current game climate favours this. It has to be expanded rather quickly, but it's doable.

Also, by the way, my house doesn't entirely rely on magic dances. As I had a few houses that did, I'm fairly confident at saying that. At least a magic dance would mean more than one or two steps. What my house has is I think one hidden switch, but even the effects of that one are visible from the doorstep. It's neither magic nor a dance if its only one step instead of a combination of moves AND if it and it's effects are visible.

Then again, the way people attack my house is odd. I don't see many clever attacks (many things are blatantly obvious), and no "recon". I designed that thing to be many tidbits where a lot can happen and all the walls are thin (sadly, I couldn't do it as well as I wanted because there are so many attacks currently so some shortcuts towards security where necessary. But either way, my house is by far the easiest at the moment I'd say.)

Seems to be gone for a while now, so I guess not. But then again, I think there's a few people who go around destroying those kinds of exploit houses. 

The whole "broken house" thing has to be thought through imho. Something that feels like a bug is that it's possible to by paintings in a broken house. It's just too ludicrously easy to make a one-time-rob house of epic proportions and then hoard all the paintings one by one. (See the Johnson house in its current state! Broken but buying paintings...)

But that's so twothousandandlate

(But yup, cache did it.)

Not really the place for this, but a Jacob Joseph Jackson died in my house - I feel bad for that.

Yeah, I think I share the concerns about implication and effectiveness and results of any power-source restriction. Indications could be done by something like "hover over the power source and there is a hovering frame around the area of effect" which is also briefly indicated after building the power source or so.

In the end, I'm not certain about this. It's an option to try and limit bit-locks and magic-dances while keeping the sweet aspects of the game going. (I like limited animal movements behind walls - it forces you to make choices and it's levelling things. A respawned player might figure out an easy dance for free, while any half-wealthy player would just have to spend cash on every trapdoor or floor in the vicinity just because of the risks involved. Those effects are interesting I think.)

I can imagine brilliant things coming out of very clear restrictions and I can imagine it being a dead-end like blueprints. It would have to be tried out to see if it's a good thing or not.

Aw shucks, now I wish I hadn't died due to stupidity in my 40k house just now. 4k starting cash wasn't all that bad. Still, yeah, there is an imbalance. Upping tool prices seems sensible gameplay-wise, but how one would justify that a little wire-cutter is 100$ - the same amount it takes to excavate a man-deep pit in your house - that is a little odd.

It looks like the first few ladders / crowbars / ... should be rather expensive (to counter starting cash abuse), while the 20th or 30th ladder could be quite a bit less expensive to discourage monoculture houses.

Once again, a building-voucher-vs-tool-cash system seems like the solution most fit to the problem. But then again, it's fun to destroy whatever is within reach with starting cash when between houses and the fear of those attacks is a nice thing when building stuff. (AM I SURE MY HOUSE IS 2K-PROOF??)

Maybe the game could simply give you a voucher for building materials in addition to normal starting cash: Here's another 4k from the city to get you started on building supplies. Or from the local chihuahua dancing charity. 2k starting cash can be used as always, there's only some more cash to go into building (or not). Some more cash to work with would mean one doesn't have to log in every half hour at least in the first phases of the house to get things off the ground.

Yeah, I kind of think we need a solution that's really quite simple. Something similar to line of sight for dogs. Obviously it won't be as intuitive, but something where there is simply a radius for any given power source to affect. Probably they should even be incapable of interacting so that one can't still do across-the-map bit-locks by chain-linking them like so (left side!): http://castlefortify.com/c/8906414

It might just have to be done with a very tight constraint. Like there are nine sockets onto which one can buy a power source that can exclusively power those 9x9 squares. Any interaction would have to be done by animals - which carry the restraint of having to be "glimpsed". That set of constraints might produce a variety of houses. We might see quite a few "puzzle box" type starter houses, or huge cubes of multiple interaction, but limited wall thickness etc. would mean stuff had to remain easy to cut to - any trapdoor corridor would be fairly unsafe since the cutting to would be a cheap option (any power source could be reached for 2400 max, since they would usually be hidden it can even be cheaper: http://castlefortify.com/c/8906414 (right side)

If Oulipo has taught us one thing than that sometimes harsh constraints produce great things.

Sweet justice! I was getting really annoyed about that painting hoarder...

Please please please don't make it this... This looks so bad I couldn't bring myself to play it...

tl;dr: Well, yes and no. It had elements of animals that continue moving beyond line of sight, for example. The big difference was that it was in smaller spaces. So one could either cut through or cleverly use tools to survive (brick window, drug dog, etc.). The problem with bit-locks isn't that different from the magic dance across the map that has been dealt with somewhat. It's not that bad if you can get to it quickly, and this cutting aesthetic is quite sweet: Saw through a few walls, figure it out, return and solve it. This forces builders to go for more complex and interesting designs that rely on some kind of "pathfinding" combined with locks and animals, that aren't classical mazes but something more interesting.

IDK, there also used to be a house with three corridors of dogs that would be released if a very simple dance wasn't performed properly, and where you had to get a chihuahua to walk to the safe. That kind of thinking outside the box is what the limitations should push: since there is not one overly strong strategy, the best system is to do something unexpected.

I honestly assume that somehow cutting down on the range of electronics and or power could then mean that the resulting high security houses would at least have to be interesting since the classic trapdoor tunnel would hardly be secure anymore.

/ tl;dr: I think the sister problem of the animals across the map is electricity across the map. One could try solving it via fixed "outlets" in the walls or the floor that only work in a small area, or one could try limiting electric conductivity. The thing is that the basic principle isn't broken, it's only overpowered, like the animals used to be in respect to movement.

I'm a humanities grad student and not that deep into anything mathematical or programming related etc., but the level of "depth" of the game is great as is, especially since the non-technical people like me can work with psychology and get quite far too.