The Castle Doctrine Forums

Yeah, I've had issues with alt tabbing a couple times as well. It caused a crash once for me too. Usually it work all right though.

No, because after I cracked his house, I went in with a new character with no tools at all and did his house. So I left without any damage. All his traps were still intact...

...of course I did come back and murder his wife and kids later, so my hands are hardly clean...

But if your house is still broken, i.e. you haven't logged into that account for a week or so, then how did you know that you had $68000?

But then a homeowner can simply leave his house online and never bother logging back in. Since nothing will ever change for robbers, his house will remain in a fully secure state forever. I don't see any way to implement any kind of curb on how damage to houses is saved in order to prevent broken houses. So long as there is a way for certain kinds of damage to be saved, people will be able to figure out how that damage renders their house broken.

Note: Lots of edits of this post, sorry about that. A bunch of posts that I had missed popped up.

Yes, that was the house. I counted the number of pits and it looks like I exaggerated the number of ladders the guy used. I remember there being more, but actually it was closer to 20k in ladders based on the Castle Fortify. That's still a lot though.

That may have also been me. I've used this tunneling trick on a few people now.

I agree with this too. I like the idea of a short waiting period before a house goes up on the list.

On an unrelated note, if you rob someone's vault but their wife still has money, is their house still removed from the list? I just robbed someone and went back to get the wife using the proceeds from the robbery, but their house was gone?

I have definitely borne witness to the aftermath of one of these. I've been focusing on the robbery aspect of this game for the past day or so now, and have been scouting a bunch of houses lately. There was a player whose last name started with G (I'm terrible with remembering names) and I realized that his wife could likely be reached without too much cost due to the way he had placed his pit bulls. He had put them in niches in the wall and was using windows to improve their sight. This seemed like a great idea at first, but then I realized it meant I could drug them, tunnel around them with explosives (which was now cheap because of the window and empty spots in the niches), lure the next dog to the drugged dog, drug and repeat.

I decided to earn the funds to try this by cracking Mr. Smith (you're right I think, colorfusion, that having a non-trivial but not too hard house probably wards off total destruction by tools). I think I got something like $7000 from Mr. Smith after figuring his house out, which I used to buy meat and explosives and some other stuff I figured I might need or got in Mr. Smith's vault (can't leave it at home as I have no house) and returned to the original guy's house (Mr. G).

When I got there, I was shocked to find that someone had laddered over his entire place... I mean... a lot of ladders. It had to have been at least in the 50k or more range. They had robbed his vault, which was empty. I continued with my plan to try and get to his wife, which I did successfully (and then bombed some holes in a wall somewhere to use up remaining explosives - sorry Mr. G ). Anyway, I don't remember how much money he had had in his vault before being ladder-destroyed, but I doubt it was anywhere near enough to be worthwhile. Further, I don't remember seeing any formerly rich person be demoted on the list (after spending all that money on ladders). So I was sure wondering where this mystery ladderer had come from - seemingly appearing with a huuuge amount of ladders out of nowhere.

Over the past month or so, I have also noticed several incidents in which a really rich house has suddenly shot up to the top of the list. Each time I'd wonder how on Earth they managed to accumulate so much money so quickly. However, I didn't pay attention to the names (like I said, I'm terrible with remembering names) so I don't know if it was the same person or different people. There are also legit ways to quickly acquire a bunch of money.

I think this sounds like a great idea!

I have to agree that it is not desirable for the primary source of income to be offlining. I constantly find myself wanting to play this game, but being forced to sit and wait while I earn money; 90% of the game now takes place... outside the game. It feels like it has almost turned into a game about waiting lately. There is only one game ever invented (that I know of) that should be this way... and this game pretty much invented the "waiting" genre (and is pretty much the only game in the genre). That game is, of course, Progress Quest (and it's a truly awesome game - Wiki Article).

Anyway, my hope is that it gets better with more players, so hopefully this problem will go away if enough people join in.

I don't think this would be a good idea because then anyone could effortlessly rob any house. All you need to do is lay siege, retreat, commit suicide, restart, rinse and repeat. In fact, there have already been updates in previous versions to limit how many times damage to a house can be saved because of this sort of thing. Allowing damage to be saved without killing a family member or reaching a non-empty vault renders all houses impossible to protect.

Yes! That has happened to me so many times. I think I need to be more careful about remembering which house I intended to go into.

I really wish we lived in a world where people would listen to other people's ideas and genuinely consider them on an intellectually honest level.

Instead we live in a world where some people become so consumed with personal disdain for those with ideas with which they disagree that they lash out in irrational ways at those people, blackballing and discriminating freely against them. Often they are not even aware of what they're doing, being blinded by hate and/or arrogance.

largesherb, you have been alive for an eternity now. I can't think of anyone I've seen since starting who has managed to survive so long. kudos.

I agree with this. I've never understood the elaborate but poorly defended houses. What's the point? I'd rather put the initial $2000 towards something that will be rock solid once complete, but defenseless in the meantime than something that takes a few hundred dollars and a little bit of thought to crack. However, the latter type of house is a great source of income for the rest of us!

Oh man, I remember seeing some really good ones way back... Sadly I don't have any screen shots though. What a great idea for a blog post; best of luck to you in finding some!

It's what colorfusion said; the house was robbed and saved in this "broken" state. The vault isn't busted because that only happens after having been robbed twice. A little while after the first robbery, the house had earned more money and the vault was again non-empty. Once robbed a second time (by someone using drugged meat for example) the vault will appear busted and will stop earning money.

When it comes to family protection, there is really only one option: dogs. Pits and other traps work great for vault protection, but since you need a clear path for your family, they can't be used to protect them. One can concoct clever designs using them anyhow, but dollar for dollar these designs are always inferior to a simple pack of dogs. Each well placed dog costs an intruder $1000 to pass. Nothing else achieves that amount of protection per dollar.

I think family protection is entirely feasible with the new animal movement rules in place. However, I do agree that there is a very limited degree of creativity afforded to the family protection aspect of this game as opposed to the vault protection aspect. It is possible to come up with creative family protection strategies, but they will not be effective.

Haha, this is a funny and also interesting idea, though it doesn't really seem to fit with the "feel" of the game to me.

Yeah, it could be two different people helping each other and/or working together. There is really no way to protect your house against that.