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#1 2013-07-25 03:01:35

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Unexpected Psychology

Logging into TCD in the morning is a dreadful thing. It's not about if, it's about how bad you have been burgled. (At least for me in the getting-started-phase.)

This time, however, it wasn't all bad since my wife carried the name of an ex-girlfriend I'm not all that fond of anymore. Not so bad I'd leave her corpse lying around, but still...

I guess I owe a thank you to Mr Ottinger, the painting-hoarder, for suddenly making me a lot more fond of my house.


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

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#2 2013-07-25 03:18:25

colorfusion
Member
Registered: 2013-04-02
Posts: 537

Re: Unexpected Psychology

I've noticed the same thing with "It's not about if, it's about how bad you have been burgled".

Although my house is stronger than most, if I leave it for a few days it is going to get burgled.  If someone solves my puzzle (even through scouting first) then my house is designed to be easy to reset - Just toggle back some buttons and move some pets, $0 of cost. However to brute force through my house will leave it devastated, with me needing to repair a load of pits before it's anywhere near defendable again.

So after I have a bunch of money it's actually beneficial for me to start weakening my traps and puzzles, hoping to make solving it the easier option as compared to laddering through it all. Letting the money get stolen without my house being wrecked.

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#3 2013-07-25 03:56:06

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Re: Unexpected Psychology

Smart thought, but then again, somebody who solves the puzzle will probably still burn his tools on all walls and animals in sight.

For me, it seems that the problem is that it's not possible to make your house withstand the sort of attacks that come over night as you accumulate 7-10k. You can only make your house so safe in the current economy by playing and that's just not enough to survive the attacks aimed at your newly gained riches. Probably the best defence is indeed to make it one-time-robbable, hide the wife properly and then sit it out for a day or two until you have 10-20k at your disposal. But then again, that's not really playing.

I used to blow lots of cash on paintings at earlier stages (up to 50k or more) just because my house was worth way more than the cash and a robbery with tools was the only really devastating possibility.


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

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#4 2013-07-25 04:32:28

dalleck
Member
Registered: 2013-04-13
Posts: 250

Re: Unexpected Psychology

I have found that keeping ones wife alive is the most important early strategy.  Then after that, it is still nice to have a friendly face alive to enjoy your pit bulls with.

I pity those wealthy folks sitting around with nothing but a house full of traps and dead family to keep them company. :~(


The rich aren't safe. Nobody is safe. -jere                   ...but the smell wafts out from the pit, obviously. - Jason Rohrer

And the more dickish they are, the more I feel like beating a house to destruction after finally figuring it out. -bey bey

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#5 2013-07-25 04:47:05

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Re: Unexpected Psychology

Huhm, for me it's the opposite: you can get a house going with the wife alive, yes, might even be a bit quicker, but after the first night, you're more likely to have lost all. That's because your wife has earned too much money to stay below the radar (and because your house needs to expand more for the wife to be somewhat safe, which means more widespread, thinner walls that nobody will cut through for 2k, but for 8k they will). Probably the mistake is starting in the evening. Build something in the morning and return every two hours or so to invest the cash into thicker walls etc. and one might survive the night.

I hear you concerning the dead family, it's a bummer, I hoped to keep mine alive "permanently" this time, but that might be a pipe dream.


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

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#6 2013-07-25 05:09:02

Noshire
Member
Registered: 2013-07-23
Posts: 13

Re: Unexpected Psychology

The main problem at the moment is that staying "below the radar" is nigh impossible, considering that the house list averages at 1.5 pages at the moment. Heck, I've even been scouting (and, at times, robbing) 40$ houses just because there wasn't a viable alternative.

Last edited by Noshire (2013-07-25 06:56:16)

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#7 2013-07-25 05:25:38

largestherb
Member
From: england
Registered: 2013-05-27
Posts: 381

Re: Unexpected Psychology

i always login expecting complete and total devastation. it is always a bit of a shock when my house is just as i left it.

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#8 2013-07-25 07:16:59

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Re: Unexpected Psychology

It's kind of due to the state of things imho, with three times the players, salaries could be halved or cut even more, so the process of rising to the top would be more balanced in pace. Then again, there were loads of new players torn to shreds by the experienced vultures circling the neighbourhood.


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

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#9 2013-07-25 07:39:22

dalleck
Member
Registered: 2013-04-13
Posts: 250

Re: Unexpected Psychology

bey bey wrote:

Then again, there were loads of new players torn to shreds by the experienced vultures circling the neighbourhood.

*raises hand*


The rich aren't safe. Nobody is safe. -jere                   ...but the smell wafts out from the pit, obviously. - Jason Rohrer

And the more dickish they are, the more I feel like beating a house to destruction after finally figuring it out. -bey bey

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#10 2013-07-25 07:46:34

Noshire
Member
Registered: 2013-07-23
Posts: 13

Re: Unexpected Psychology

Yeah, I had over 30 break-ins this night. one of them killed my wife, one killed my 2 children, and one took the money and devastated the house. And I managed to kill myself during the self-test because I did replace a broken wired wall with a normal wall >.<

Fresh Start!

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#11 2013-07-25 08:03:00

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Re: Unexpected Psychology

I also did it. It's always sweet once you step into a house and figure out a design and its weaknesses by recognising that your first steps looked similar... Often times is that somebody thinks he has forced at least a one-in-three choice upon you but the dog that's meant to be chasing you can be drugged and you can check out all the doors.

(The least it takes for those choices is something like this http://castlefortify.com/c/12fad77 if I'm not mistaken).


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

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#12 2013-07-25 08:16:37

dalleck
Member
Registered: 2013-04-13
Posts: 250

Re: Unexpected Psychology

bey bey wrote:

(The least it takes for those choices is something like this http://castlefortify.com/c/12fad77 if I'm not mistaken).

Yep, by creating the chase condition you are gonna turn away a whole bunch of tourists.


The rich aren't safe. Nobody is safe. -jere                   ...but the smell wafts out from the pit, obviously. - Jason Rohrer

And the more dickish they are, the more I feel like beating a house to destruction after finally figuring it out. -bey bey

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#13 2013-07-25 12:39:11

nathan
Member
From: A ditch somewhere
Registered: 2013-06-15
Posts: 61

Re: Unexpected Psychology

dalleck wrote:
bey bey wrote:

(The least it takes for those choices is something like this http://castlefortify.com/c/12fad77 if I'm not mistaken).

Yep, by creating the chase condition you are gonna turn away a whole bunch of tourists.

The problem is, if you pick the wrong door, you'll at the most need the robber to pay $200 to get to the vault. In my opinion, it's better to spend all your money making a house that's half-defended before robbing to complete your more expensive design than a fully-developed house that won't keep anyone out after a couple hours.


"I just robbed Mr. Rogers." -Ludicrosity "The wood is my desk, and I'm knocking it with my head." -Blip
"I'd rather pack 25 meats than 1 crowbar if you know what I mean..." -Jabloko
"This is one of the most disturbed things I have seen in quite a while. I blame global warming." -bey bey
"that seems like more resources than I'm willing to put into having my kids killed." -cbenny

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#14 2013-07-25 16:19:32

Blip
Member
Registered: 2013-05-07
Posts: 505

Re: Unexpected Psychology

bey bey wrote:

Logging into TCD in the morning is a dreadful thing. It's not about if, it's about how bad you have been burgled.

I agree. Here's my biggest problem with TCD as it stands now: brute-force profit. This is my term for when a house gains enough money that simply cutting through all the walls, or tooling through all the traps, results in a net profit for the robber. When a house costs $10,000 or more to brute-force, that's not a worry, but, to the poorer players, whose class I joined recently hmm, it makes building a house difficult if you can't log on every hour or two to use up the money you earned. With a house like the example bey bey showed, that could mean a brute-force profit margin of $1820 at its least efficient. At its most, only $200! That means that any player can log in and net a profit off your house 90 minutes after logging out with 0$ with a wife, or 260 minutes (4 hours 20 minutes) with no wife, even while brute-forcing in the least efficient manner.

This point has been driven home to me by what happened to two of my houses, about a week apart. One contained a well-built trap, which I began with the starting money and added more to as I earned, via salary or robbery. The other contained a worse trap, but one that was positioned such that my only option was to fortify it. House #1 was somehow spared on the first night, with nobody reaching my vault, but somebody getting to my wife; House #2 had a similar fate. However, I used my money in House #1 to built a foolproof trap: easy to die in, impossible to escape from without breaking the trap that activated the pits leading to the vault - 6 of them, preventing anybody from getting at my money. In House #2, I spent my money from that night exclusively on fortifications - 21 pits, winding around concrete. I managed to get some good steals as well, and added a small magic dance to those many pits, requiring the robber to turn back a certain number of steps or the pits would kill them.

Both of these houses stood up for a couple days, but House #1 had the shorter run. Despite having a superior trap, it had a lower brute-force profit margin; somebody simply laddered over my pits once I had over $3600 in salary, from 9 hours away from the game, or from tools from kills. House #2 stood strong for longer as it had a whopping $12,600 brute-force profit margin. The robber who finally took me down did so through a series of scouting missions, dying once or twice, and eventually finding out enough to get though a clean run of my house. This is what, ideally, all robberies should be - using intelligence to get through the traps, and not just brute-forcing over a profit margin, because, frankly, its more fun for both players. I was impressed by the guy who robbed me, and I bet he felt good too. Anybody would agree that it's more fun to have a robbery where you either figure out somebody's house, or find a crack in their defenses where you can break through with only one or two tools and your wits. As a homeowner, it's more interesting to see these tapes than those of somebody with 20 ladders.

In summary:

Actually solving a house is more fun than brute forcing it, for both the robber and the homeowner, but many houses are simply getting cracked because of their brute-force profit margin. Frankly, it's no fun to find your house simply laddered over or cut through, but that's what seems to be happening, and we need to find a solution to make robbing about overcoming traps on the fly, using only your wit and as few tools as you can, not about just loading up on ladders and walking to somebody's vault.


Current life: Not dead, but I have no clue who I am
The Life and Times of Christopher Alvin Harris
Record: 149 Paintings!

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#15 2013-07-25 17:40:52

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Re: Unexpected Psychology

nathan wrote:
dalleck wrote:
bey bey wrote:

(The least it takes for those choices is something like this http://castlefortify.com/c/12fad77 if I'm not mistaken).

Yep, by creating the chase condition you are gonna turn away a whole bunch of tourists.

The problem is, if you pick the wrong door, you'll at the most need the robber to pay $200 to get to the vault. In my opinion, it's better to spend all your money making a house that's half-defended before robbing to complete your more expensive design than a fully-developed house that won't keep anyone out after a couple hours.

Well, this was meant to show how one can implement a scary-offy-beginner thing that forces you to make a choice. (As opposed to some attempts at that I have seen lately by new players, that's where the help was meant to go.) The walls are thin, but they are something and will protect probably up to the first 1000$ accumulating in the vault. Expanding that, only one of the paths would lead to the next stage etc. The first cash would have to be put into concrete walls where needed, then follows the "next stage" behind one of the doors. Something like that is a viable way of getting started in the current economy. Especially since where it's 200$ in THEORY, it often doesn't necessarily mean that somebody will just assume it works like that and do it. I know that much from my tapes. It only has to SEEM thick more often than not, especially with a dog scaring off people.

I built a 20k (currently) house on an expansion principle.


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

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#16 2013-07-25 18:39:26

largestherb
Member
From: england
Registered: 2013-05-27
Posts: 381

Re: Unexpected Psychology

Blip wrote:

...

In summary:

Actually solving a house is more fun than brute forcing it, for both the robber and the homeowner, but many houses are simply getting cracked because of their brute-force profit margin. Frankly, it's no fun to find your house simply laddered over or cut through, but that's what seems to be happening, and we need to find a solution to make robbing about overcoming traps on the fly, using only your wit and as few tools as you can, not about just loading up on ladders and walking to somebody's vault.

i spend all my wages on new paintings / dumping tools in a random house (uh, except that they just turn into thin air now!) to keep my house in a state that brute forcing it is not a profitable thing to do - it is something done only out of malice.

i'd still love to see someone successfully solving the first trap in my house! i would probably give them a prize. although the prize might just be a black pixel in .bmp form.

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#17 2013-07-25 18:43:38

Ludicrosity
Member
From: US
Registered: 2013-06-22
Posts: 144

Re: Unexpected Psychology

bey bey wrote:

Build something in the morning and return every two hours or so to invest the cash into thicker walls etc. and one might survive the night.

This has been my strategy for the last couple of weeks, and it has seemed to work well. One problem I've experienced however, is the occasional intruder who comes not for the money, but for the kill. I've had people spend ~10k tearing down walls and gunning down dogs to kill my wife for a few thousand dollars. Then I just have to restart again.

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#18 2013-07-25 18:45:28

Ludicrosity
Member
From: US
Registered: 2013-06-22
Posts: 144

Re: Unexpected Psychology

largestherb wrote:

i spend all my wages on new paintings / dumping tools in a random house (uh, except that they just turn into thin air now!) to keep my house in a state that brute forcing it is not a profitable thing to do - it is something done only out of malice.

i'd still love to see someone successfully solving the first trap in my house! i would probably give them a prize. although the prize might just be a black pixel in .bmp form.

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.

nathan wrote:

The problem is, if you pick the wrong door, you'll at the most need the robber to pay $200 to get to the vault. In my opinion, it's better to spend all your money making a house that's half-defended before robbing to complete your more expensive design than a fully-developed house that won't keep anyone out after a couple hours.

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!

Last edited by Ludicrosity (2013-07-25 18:53:13)

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#19 2013-07-25 18:55:04

largestherb
Member
From: england
Registered: 2013-05-27
Posts: 381

Re: Unexpected Psychology

well, my house was out of commission for a week or so after someone broke it and i couldn't be bothered to fix it.. hmm, now i think about it, brewington has had three different house designs! one broken by the pet changes (line of sight, http://i.imgur.com/KxfLUAV.png) and one that was just.. not very secure at all (because the cat gauntlet .. sucked and i was too lazy to do it properly! http://i.imgur.com/g3ctRPa.png)

i think mr daniel steven smith is the longest living chap so far. (i think) he has been around since blueprints disappeared. which is a very long time ago! and the house is relatively the same.
cannot count how many times i broke that house, just for it to come back a few hours later, with an extra wall here or there to try and keep me out again! good lord, how many pit bulls did i murder in there, i wonder!

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#20 2013-07-26 02:59:07

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Re: Unexpected Psychology

Well, it's a bit about how one wants to play the game.

At a certain point, I might go for a ludicrously safe house again, but somehow I'd only really feel this is worthwhile with a chance of keeping my family alive. Then, you need some rudimentary security and lots of the "dance, bitch!" options aren't there, unless you're jaded enough to put your spouse and your children right at the doorstep in a horrible neighbourhood... hmm


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

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#21 2013-07-26 04:09:16

dalleck
Member
Registered: 2013-04-13
Posts: 250

Re: Unexpected Psychology

bey bey wrote:

Well, it's a bit about how one wants to play the game.

At a certain point, I might go for a ludicrously safe house again, but somehow I'd only really feel this is worthwhile with a chance of keeping my family alive. Then, you need some rudimentary security and lots of the "dance, bitch!" options aren't there, unless you're jaded enough to put your spouse and your children right at the doorstep in a horrible neighbourhood... hmm

I have a completely unique 'dance bitch' design which I have been using for 3 iterations now.  I will post it one of these days.  Keeps my family alive, but not the money-earning dad-robber unfortunately.


The rich aren't safe. Nobody is safe. -jere                   ...but the smell wafts out from the pit, obviously. - Jason Rohrer

And the more dickish they are, the more I feel like beating a house to destruction after finally figuring it out. -bey bey

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#22 2013-07-26 11:47:59

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Re: Unexpected Psychology

dalleck wrote:
bey bey wrote:

Well, it's a bit about how one wants to play the game.

At a certain point, I might go for a ludicrously safe house again, but somehow I'd only really feel this is worthwhile with a chance of keeping my family alive. Then, you need some rudimentary security and lots of the "dance, bitch!" options aren't there, unless you're jaded enough to put your spouse and your children right at the doorstep in a horrible neighbourhood... hmm

I have a completely unique 'dance bitch' design which I have been using for 3 iterations now.  I will post it one of these days.  Keeps my family alive, but not the money-earning dad-robber unfortunately.

HAHA, that's a problem of course... wink

I'll be interested in that (I also have something in mind and it would be interesting if your solution is similar to mine or not.) As I'll be away for the weekend and my house should be gone by the time I get back to a Computer on Sunday, I might get to implement it. wink It might be nice to build something that can reach 30-50k again without being broken by the rich kids, but we'll see if that's possible with a living wife.


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

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#23 2013-07-27 18:03:36

bey bey
Member
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 386

Re: Unexpected Psychology

Hah! My house is still there and my amusing little deathtrap is raking in the victims (I stole the idea from the guy suggesting the "unexpectedly shutting doors" - kudos). Knowing the character of my deceased wife she'd be very pleased with all the dead men accumulating from my rage... I hope it didn't kill the Dalleck, though.


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

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