The Castle Doctrine Forums

bey bey

Member

Registered: 2013-04-20

Posts: 386

Tapes for successful escapes?

Just one quick question. It seems to be that robberies where the robber escapes the house unscathed do not produce a tape.

I just was locked out of my house for a good 10 minutes and I would have really liked to know what he was doing all this time. I was a bit concerned he might be rummaging through my electronics. Or maybe he was just using my toilet. Either way, it didn't produce a tape and thus left me wondering.

Thoughts on that, or is it just a bug on my end?

---

In fact you can be batman.
(if he robbed houses and murdered families.) - Dalleck

ukuko

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 334

Re: Tapes for successful escapes?

Pretty sure this an intentional effort to not clog up your tapes list with robberies where people walk in, turn around and leave.

However... with the addition of blueprints, scouting is often a more calculated affair. It's easier to survive and learn from an unsuccessful robbery than it was in v5.

It might be handy to be able to see tapes for these robberies so you can gauge how close a robber is to cracking your house and adjust accordingly. Plus it's just fun to see people's thought processes.

Maybe this would benefit from a filter to show/hide non-fatal robberies on your tape list.

Last edited by ukuko (2013-06-04 09:50:10)

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Re: Tapes for successful escapes?

Yeah, there aren't tapes for everything.  Only if the robber dies (because those are fun to watch) or does something permanent (like steals something or kills family).

Tapes are the biggest data load on the server, because each user generates many, and they have to stick around for a while so that people  get a chance to see them.  A hard house can already accumulate many, many tapes.  The top house currently has 144 tapes.  Not only is that a data storage issue, it's also a pain for the owner to look through.

We could double all these problems by storing tapes for robberies where nothing significant happens (scouting trips).

Of course, it's also possible to build a house with a one-way gate at the entrance, so each scouting trip results in either success or death.

bey bey

Member

Registered: 2013-04-20

Posts: 386

Re: Tapes for successful escapes?

It might be handy to be able to see tapes for these robberies so you can gauge how close a robber is to cracking your house and adjust accordingly. Plus it's just fun to see people's thought processes.

Exactly. It's probably also because since blueprints are available, fewer people actually generate tapes since deep scouting beyond eventually deadly traps becomes unneccessary.

However, it's hard to argue with server load concerns, so point taken.

One might add a choice of keeping or throwing away tapes with a max no of tapes that can be stored. If you can only keep, say, 10 tapes, you'll store the funniest or most interesting considering the flaws of your design and just throw out random deaths etc. after viewing once. Especially if more players should come to play the game, this could significantly reduce server load if top houses accumulate 100+ tapes when unregulated.

---

In fact you can be batman.
(if he robbed houses and murdered families.) - Dalleck