The Castle Doctrine Forums

Avoiding right mouse button, as a general rule (one of my mice here doesn't have one).

But yeah, there's already a "sell half" function for dealing with selling N items with log_2( N ) mouse clicks.

So, when in "buy" mode, there's no reason that button shouldn't change into a "transfer half" mode button.  Obviously, that didn't make sense in v8, when you only had 8 spots in the backpack, but now it does!  Will do in v10.

Oh, man, has Castle Doctrine gone there?  Yes, it has gone there.

Hmm... the problem is, if you can drug them and then wake them up with a brick, you can control how close to them you are before they wake up, thus enabling you to club them after they wake up.

There's a general complaint (that I think is correct) that "protecting the family" isn't interesting right now.  Would be good to fix that.

So... the prediction is that several players will eventually have too-expensive-to-beat houses?

There is a tendency for a kind of "annealing" to take place, where one at a time, players cross some threshold into invulnerability and then stay there.  Those houses build up at the top of the list.

In this case, you might have a house that would cost $25K to rob a second time, which would build up money indefinitely (largestherb with a few fixes).

Obviously, no small-time crook would be able to afford the vault.  Would anyone?  Well, after the value passed $25K, some rich player would want to.  But wouldn't that be a player who also has a too-expensive-to-rob house?

I guess at that point, those folks would just rob from each other.  You know, why not?  I can afford $25K in ladders to get $50K, in turn bringing that player down to $0 and ruining the security.  Which means that the house is NOT too expensive too rob, and that player would be knocked down and have to start over as a low-level crook again.

There are questions about how this will work itself out.  Will players ever get to the point of amassing enough money to buy $90K worth of pits?  But I think it's pretty clear that NO house will be invulnerable forever.

I'm guessing that tiers may develop, which is fine and natural.  So far, though, I haven't seen anyone able to bootstrap themselves that high.

What about this crowbar-proof family dog?

Dog is always two tiles behind you (unless you saw through a wall too or do something else).

The bad combo is currently drugged meat to stop them plus crowbar to kill them.  I'm thinking that a drugged dog should simply not be killable (it should turn into an indestructible land mine).

I like the fact that crowbars do a bunch of different things---that's thematically accurate and mechanically rich.  It's okay that some tools do more than others, as long as every tool is useful in some situation, and every tool has some situation where it is useless.

As far as family stepping over *just* wires... I don't think that changes much, and I'm resisting doing that because it would be a pain (family  are currently represented as objects, so they can stand in the same spot as an animal, but there's only one object in each map spot, so they can't cross anything but empty floor---each tile in the map currently has at most one object and at most one mobile object).

Obviously, if they could step over other stuff (hit switches, open doors, etc.), there would be no automatic way to verify that a viable escape path existed.

Also, it's thematically nice to have to design part of your house in a different way to suit the whims of your family (they don't want wires all over the floors in their hallways).  It's a natural way of getting you to build a separate "living space" in your house that looks and feels and functions differently from the trap parts of your house.

And yes, there are obvious clues for robbers (follow the empty, trap-free hallways to look for the family), but this is a rich, creepy side-effect that I like.... like looking for the heart stickers on the door to find the daughter's room.... yikes!

The limit was the same as it is now, regarding pumping up a house:  $2000.  You could buy $2000 worth of guns before (4 guns) and dump those in a house by dying. 

Now you can buy $2000 worth of guns (2), or saws (20), or any tool.  The only thing that has changed is the variety of tools that you can dump in a house for $2000, not the ability to dump $2000 in a house before dying.

And, before, you could dump $2000 in a house over and over, and then rob that house, sell those tools, and buy 100 saws or whatever.  It was slightly less efficient before (because you'd have to resell guns, losing money, to get lots of saws), but the principle was the same.

(Granted, with the v8 budget of $6000, you didn't have room for $6000 worth of anything in your pack.)

You mean by dying repeatedly to dump tools in one house, maybe a totally broken one, and then robbing it?  I wonder how easy this is to actually pull off on a server with other active players....  you know, because the house is going to climb to the top of the list and be hit by someone else.  You're still "pressing your luck".... how high are you going to push the house up before hitting it?

Granted, this is totally possible right now (if you're the only one robbing at the moment).  I've pushed a house up to $9100 this way, all the way to the top of the list, and there it sits. 

It's okay to say, "Well, once we have more people, this won't be a problem," but I do want the game to scale all the way up and all the way down.

Limiting robbers to a starting tool set won't help (they'll just die over and over, dumping that starting tool set).  And I *DO* want tools building up from failed robberies in the hard houses.  If a house is actually still a challenge, even pure death-dumping isn't such a problem.

The more concerning problem is being able to pump up a "dead house" and then hit it for a big payoff (what I just did, and still, there it sits at the top of the list, many minutes later).

Maybe once a house has been tagged as "broken" (after it has been robbed twice in a row and is no longer earning money), it should stop accumulating tools that are dropped there?

Actually, there's no good reason for those houses to even be visible anymore at the bottom of the list.... they've got $0 in them, wife is dead, not earning money.... why show them at all?

Then the only choices for "tool dumping" would become houses that are still hard to rob.  Even the ones *near* the bottom of the list now are pretty scary looking.

Also, this would protect houses from repeated vandalism.

Yeah.... I guess you go down to your local security company to watch the tapes. 

The tool tip for the Tapes button will change to "Leave house and view your security tapes" to make the behavior clear.

Strange.... are you sure he came back multiple times BEFORE stealing your $5000, with damage to your house accumulating?

Damage should only be saved if:

1.  He reaches the vault

OR

2.  He kills at least one family member.

So, if he hasn't reached the vault yet, the only way to save his damage would be to kill a family member... maybe that's why he killed your son.

Sometimes people do this because they fall into your trap in a previous life and are seeking revenge.  I wonder about it, but I'm not sure that I should fix it.  If they are still alive, you could search for them by name and take some revenge of your own.

Good idea here about just standing on the mat not forcing you to drop your tools.

Otherwise, you're forced to scout with nothing, and returning to your house to load out can be a pain.

Though I just thought of something:  someone would just put their entire vault in their backpack while going out on initial, doormat scouting, right?  Bringing the value of their house down, etc., and protecting the stuff from being robbed.

I think that's the reason I had all tools dropped post-robbery, even if you don't step off the mat:  to force you to keep stuff in your vault most of the time, and only put stuff in your pack when you had a concrete plan to use it.

Pumping up a house with tools by dying over and over has always been there (since v1, in fact).

However, it's kindof a self-correcting problem, because the pumped-up house rises to the top of the list, becoming a target that everyone starts looking at.  So, you do the work pumping it up, and then someone else snatches it.

I mean, if you're the only one who knows how to solve it?  I guess that could be possible.

Regarding starting money vs. home building vs. tools, I DO like the fact that starting robbers have "nothing to lose" and might blow it all on tools, not protect their family, and test their luck.  That has always been part of this game, and it creates a steady stream of attempts on every house (the seething masses, beating down your door).  Of course, if they ever do score, they might regret coming home to a dead wife to live their rich life alone.

Anyway, there may still be a problem here ($2000 in tools too strong), but I think that can be fixed just by tweaking the price balance between tools and house tiles.  I'll start another thread about this in a bit.

What counts as vandalism?  Trashing someone's house when there's nothing left to take from the vault?

I don't think there's a way to automatically detect it otherwise (like if you trash a bunch of stuff AND reach the vault and take something).

Vandalism is certainly very expensive right now.... so... getting enough money to do it would require DAYS of work on the part of the perpetrator.

There was a lot of it right after the v9 transition, when the top houses fell and suddenly there were huge money and tool balls passing around (I just got 300 saws?  What am I going to do with these?).

In v8, tool purchases were forgotten if you left your house to watch tapes.

I fixed this in v9 in a super-cheap way:  once you buy some tools, the "Tapes" button disappears!  So, after you buy tools, you can't leave your house to watch tapes (without patching up your house and re-self-testing).

I didn't think that transferring stuff mattered, and yeah, in v9, transfers are forgotten.

Matrix, it sounds like you're trying to move tools into the backpack to protect them from robbers while you go out to watch tapes?  Obviously, you can do this if you actually fix and retest your house.  But you're trying to do it w/out retesting?  So that you can watch tapes, keep your tools safe, and fix up your house later?

I mean, my lazy fix for this would be to hide the Tapes button also if you transfered any tools.  But that doesn't really address what you're trying to do.  I'm not sure I *want* to allow you to transfer tools while leaving your house in a "needs to be edited" state, though!

Obviously a money shortage in v9.

There was a big money/tool ball going around on Friday, but then I stole it and proceeded to die stupidly in my own house while holding it.  Gasp!

Anyway, pickings are slim right now.

Working on a pretty simple fix for this.  Not wanting to go back to salaries being earned for totally abandoned houses (feels like grinding to rob those), though, so here's how it works:

Your house earns money if:

1)  Your wife is still alive 

OR

2)  You have some money left

OR

3)  One of the last two consecutive robberies was not successful.

So, if your wife is dead, and people are just milking you for money over and over, they will be successful twice in a row, meaning that your money will go to zero (because they were successful), and after that you will stop getting paid.

As usual, once you return home and retest your house, you'll start getting paid again.