The Castle Doctrine Forums

You can even brute force this house for less than that using a couple bricks to lure the dogs into the pits first: http://castledraft.com/editor/mzh5uc

This way it only costs $2104 to make it to the vault. Of course, it costs only $1500 if you break through the concrete wall at the top, but that could always be filled in with more layers (albeit at a considerable extra expense).

For some reason I found this hilarious. I imagine the Mr. Rogers performing some wacky magic dance with his arms flailing all about in order to burglarize one of his neighbors.

Now that is an interesting idea. Along the same line, I have often thought it would be nice to have wire as a tool, so that you could place down wire yourself. If you can cut wire, it makes sense that you should be able to bring your own wire and hook up a connection. It would certainly force people to think carefully about where they place live tiles as those could be used as a power source when connected to other tiles in the house. Depending on how the wire was priced, it could be rather expensive to use since you'd need to place one down every square between the two spots you were connecting.

I have to agree with those casting doubt on these new proposals... These changes would drastically shrink the space of possible houses, and those that remain appear to be utterly defenseless.

During the conversation before the new animal movement rules were introduced, the consensus was that magic dance houses would not be eliminated, but would become more susceptible to cracking since one only needed to get through a single screen's worth of wall to get into the guts of each dance mechanism. In my experience, this is exactly what happened. Most of the houses are solvable piece of piece right now, but it takes some effort. Isn't that what we want?

It seems like the proposed rules are trying to encourage more maze-like houses and less combo houses. A while back I did spend a couple weeks experimenting with several "pure" maze houses that relied on only the basics. I put a lot of work into them all, and the problem was that every single one was robbed almost immediately. None of the robbers needed to bother with the complex tricks I built into the mazes because they could simply blast through a couple concrete walls and skip everything hard. Dogs were useless because of how cheap drugged meat is. Mazes just don't work. The reason everyone uses magic dances or combo locks is because they're the only (known) designs that actually work consistently.

I'm ultimately OK with whatever changes are made because we'll all be in the same boat, but in my view it's better to have a handful of houses that nobody can rob than to make it so that everyone has a house that can be robbed by anyone with a ladder or two.

Edit:

Blip, I must confess that I don't understand your first example house at all: http://castledraft.com/editor/U5SZLK

Is this possible as it is? And what is the purpose of the second power source (the one on the inside)? It's connected to an off switch, but nothing else (unless windows conduct electricity now)?

This is where voltmeters may actually be useful if you could use them on more than just wires. It would be nice if they could be used from a distance too (I realize this is not exactly realistic).

I also think making salary a function of home value is an interesting idea, but you would definitely need to cap it with an upper bound. Otherwise, one person at the very top can build an uber-expensive house, vastly out-earn everyone else, accumulate an insane amount of money, and effortlessly tunnel through every other rich person's house without putting a dent in his/her pot of cash.

AGO, you raise fair points, but I think the issue here is that nobody really knows how to solve the problems you are pointing out. You haven't really suggested anything yourself that hasn't already been tried.

My own opinion on this matter is that this game simply requires a greater degree of commitment and thoughtfulness than the average Joe gamer is willing to put up with. It ends up attracting and keeping the sort of people who are good at building and figuring out tricky houses, while discouraging everyone else. I have definitely noticed that those of us who have really gotten into the game and post here regularly are a highly self selected niche - by no means a fair sampling. Most of the people here seem to have backgrounds in computer science, engineering, physics or are pursuing graduate degrees of some sort. I have a PhD in physics myself, and I remember seeing another person post here that he is working on a PhD in physics. When you're playing a game with complex wiring and interactions and you're having to compete with someone who is, e.g. an electrical engineer in real life, it's not that surprising that it's going to be tough.

Perhaps a possible solution to this would be to establish several different servers occupied by players at different skill levels. If there was a "beginner's" server, then newcomers would have a less harsh place to learn the basics and develop strategies.

I for one am a huge fan of reducing clicking time from linear to log base two. I rather like the "sell half" and "move half" buttons!

Wow, very nice!

I still think it'd be more interesting if it connected one part of the house to another, acting as a transporter instead of just an exit. Unfair traps using it could be prevented by requiring one square of empty floor next to each stair tile, so that one could always turn around and go back (no one way death traps).

Agreed.

Ouch... I've become accustomed to the all too familiar feeling of ...aaand everything's gone... in an instant. Just like that.

Ok, I see now.