The Castle Doctrine Forums

It does that if you do nothing for 5 minutes, even in edit mode, I think if you're editing a brand new starter house, it doesn't time out, but if your starter house is built from funds you stole, then it will time out after 5 minutes idle in edit mode.

Got me a couple of times too.

I guess my problem is in the nature of the traps that I make, everything is convoluted and hinges on precise activation timing of moving pets and family, often you need to charge into certain death, but something from 28 moves ago kicks in at the last second to toggle things for one turn. Mistime anything, or take one step wrong in the middle of a wide open area, and you don't get a second chance, but it's not usually a mis-step that kills me, it's when the power spills over from a different trap, or that pitbull which normally gets fried when you run the gauntlet didn't because I used lights, and now he's blocking my backup exit. The thing that kills me most, I think, is getting locked outside of my half built level with a chihuahua for company, there's no testing alternative for powered doors, since indicator lights let pets pass through.

Well, I managed to spend 110k without killing myself just now by making the dumbest house ever.

The entry is pretty good at getting 1.6 to 6k bounties with a suckerpunch shotgun, but there's no future in a design like that, so no, I don't have a plan for all that money. Someone is just going to shoot her now. Wish this happened a couple of days ago when I had the free time to do a proper house!

Just not for more than 5 minutes.
I've been killed by timeout in self test a couple of times as well.

I had a new house with maybe 5-6k from bounties, and a nice little confidence trick at the entrance, cautious exploration would allow the wife time to get into position behind a seemingly safe door, but opening the door straight away showed you another door you could just reach, but you would be sandwiched between 2 dogs with no chance of exit. At first, nobody took the suicide door, but right behind it was a simple 4 way pick-a-door, and the vault was behind one of those, about 8 steps from the entrance. So, for anyone without tools the wrong door is death. Anyway eventually someone got it, but I guess since the wife shoots everyone in my house, they didn't get away with much, so I continued expanding that house. The next day, I had 4 tapes in a row of people all with no tools, all taking the suicide door and all picking the same door which just happened to be where the vault was the day before. So it can't have been one guy, or even guys in real time communication, my guess is people posting maps on a forum. Not that I'm complaining!

Seeing a lot of $10 houses, I'm guessing it's from the hourly pay? My bounty must be HUGE now!

As for client mods, something I mentioned in another thread, I would really like to see a limit on stack size for tools, but with multiple stacks of the same tool allowed. I'm guessing 8 or 10 would be the limit per stack, so if the limit were 10, you could still go in with 80 saws, but that would be your whole inventory.

woo everything is half price!

My opinion here is that most of the complaints I keep reading could be avoided by the addition of a test mode.

Not the self test run for validation, it is absolutely right that the validation run should be potentially lethal, but there should also be a mode where you can test the lethality of your traps, or practice your self test run, or experiment with fringe conditions and movement order without having to restart from scratch for each lesson learned.

Indicators and chihuahuas don't cut it, and a "replace all" shortcut is not really an option for anyone who uses chihuahuas or indicators in their designs.

In 99% of my test runs (ie: while the house is still a work in progress) I have no intention of touching the safe and validating. The house design itself gets all out of shape because I have to constantly build, remove and rebuild shortcuts back to the entrance from each area under development. And i still have no idea, there is simply no way to test... if I place the shotgun just *here* and the corner *here* will my wife surprise the robber, or the other way around?

When learning, with so many of the conditions, especially with interactions between of pets, or order of operation of electronics, the only way to test is to die and start over from scratch.

I'm really only posting this in the hope that maybe a modder would like to pick up the idea, but my suggestion is a test mode, like a self test, but you cannot validate your house this way, and you can go into it with the intention of seeing your lethal traps in action. Maybe have the whole screen in green and black monochrome, to show that it is a "simulation."

Also, for "test mode" it would be handy to be able to take $2000 worth of simulated tools. Imagine the improvements you'd see in house designs!

I have only played a few days, so this may be a bit naive, and it's probably already been brought up... it just seems to me that solving the problem of unbeatable 9 thick walls by infinitely stackable item slots was massive overkill.

So, if brute forcing is the problem now, why not just set a reasonable limit on stack size and allow carrying multiple stacks of the same item type?

More experienced players would have a better idea, but I'd guess about 5 or 10 items per stack would be enough to make people think hard about their item choices. If there were a stack size limit you could also reduce the cost of items ( I hear they used to be cheaper ) to give new players more of a chance.