The Castle Doctrine Forums

DANIEL STEVEN SMITH

And you thought this wasn't a puzzle game!

This is actually the exact house I contrasted in my post above about Nash. It's been a long time coming. I had tried the same strategy a few days ago, but I must have miscounted. I had just enough money left over to scope out the electronics, which involved 30 switches in series and 3 pitbulls. Luckily it was no more complicated than that.

I know this is ridiculous, but the most useful tool in this game: your fingers. They represent 10 switches in series pretty nicely.

...DERP! I didn't even see the youtube video by largestherb above. I swear I solved this by myself. I assume the logic had to have changed since that video... there was at least $10k in there after all.

ಠ_ಠ

They are surveying your house and sometimes being very careful about it. Sometimes people will dance back and forth waiting for dogs to come out. Sometimes they will backtrack repeatedly.

Also, it could be multiple people (or the same person) coming in repeatedly and you just aren't hitting "return to house" in the very short time in between.

It doesn't do a lot of good when the electronics are hidden.

In the case that I do find the electronics, it's often rendered useless by lights/doors/trapdoors that give you the same information.

Right, that's what I meant by the floors operating independently. No multi-floor electronics.

How would this be different than just another house? Well, the stairs would make it more interesting. The homeowner solution could involve climbing to a second floor, going going down a long hallway, then climbing back down, going through a maze, climbing back up, rinse and repeat a few times... long story short, each floor could have multiple entrances. The floors could have interdependent labyrinths, but no connected electronics. It'd also be kind of cool if higher level trapdoors/pits didn't kill you, but simply transported you down one floor.

Yea, this would add a little bit of complexity, but that's the idea. It's the next logical step of protection once you've maxed out your house. It's the AMERICAN DREAM.

With the current prices, the optimal house seems to be a magic floor dance driving a ridiculously long trapdoor path and 90% of the house being pits. Well, I've already seen that. A few times. What's next?

Ah, I died too. I thought it was my fault because I sometimes quit while robbing a house (meaning to leave) and couldn't remember if I did that.

Two Jason Rohrer's.

Jason Rohrer and Jason Rhorer.

But seriously, I think both puzzle and tactical play could be preserved in the same game.

While we're discussing not very important ideas, I'd say v9 has made me want hotkeys for the backpack. When I want to cut through a dozen walls, it'd be a lot nicer to use hotkeys for the tools.

Well, V9 makes murdering families a lot easier. At least until they are protected by thick concrete.

Doesn't make it any easier for me to stop making dumb mistakes though.

Ah yes, the problem with a comparison to the meta in MTG is that cards are constantly being released and the standard being changed. That's the business model.

For some reason, I don't see new tools and tiles popping up every few weeks in TCD.

I thought infinite tools would make it so there aren't really any "impossible" houses anymore. I guess we'll see with v9.

Agreed. NPCs would work for so many other games, but I think this is an exception. Victimization and affecting other human beings is really important here.

Whoa, this has potential. The metagame where "these days people use lots of dogs" is hard to achieve when a) you can see everything people actually have in a blueprint for free or b) you can do a lot of free/cheap scouting or c) you can keep attacking the same house as many times as you want.

Matrix's random house idea seems to accomplish it though. The thing I would want to avoid is any tricks that let you still target particular houses; for that reason, I don't like a free "move on" button. If you want to move on/leave, you should probably lose your backpack contents. Otherwise, you just keep clicking through until you get to the house you want. It might be good to limit the random selection to houses with values greater than the 1x or 2x the total backpack value (purchase, not sell value). That accomplishes two things: the robber is guaranteed a positive ROI if they succeed and any robbers who pack minimally (e.g. nothing or 1 drugged meat) will have to deal with a lot of low value houses.

In a way, it reminds me of poker in addition to Magic, which used to have a gambling aspect itself. You have a hand, which might be sufficient or it might be worthless. At each point, you have to decide if you want to keep pushing it, go deeper, and risk more or if you want to cut your losses and leave.

I'm still somewhat attached to the idea of buyable blueprints. Maybe even more granular: an architectural blueprint with walls, a wiring diagram, a heatmap, etc. Being in the middle of a randomly assigned robbery and deciding on the fly that buying a wiring diagram might help you get to a safe (or even just escape) sounds pretty intense.