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jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Changing costs to a curve

So far, the cost curves have been linear, which means equal returns:  spend more on tiles, and they are that much more expensive to bypass with tools.

I just changed these costs to a square-root based curve, which means diminishing returns.  Yes, concrete walls cost more to bypass than metal ones, but the extra bypass cost diminishes as you go up and up.

This makes the lower-level stuff more viable.

colorfusion

Member

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 537

Re: Changing costs to a curve

I like the change so far. Makes it viable to survive with a starter house with wooden walls, and means when you get enough money you can start to harden walls and improve traps, but makes it relatively a lot harder to get a completely foolproof house with pits/concrete everywhere.

Last edited by colorfusion (2013-08-29 09:52:17)

joshwithguitar

Member

Registered: 2013-07-28

Posts: 538

Re: Changing costs to a curve

I like the idea as well, it addresses a lot of the concerns with starting houses.

My one concern now is that rows of electric floors overpowered and this in turn makes combination locks extremely powerful.

I can imagine that with this setup we will see houses very similar to those from V15, but with comination lock/row of electric floors replacing magic dance/row of trapdoors.

Here is an example: http://castledraft.com/editor/jqn81j

My suggestion is to decrease the price of water without decreasing the price of wire cutters. I liked that in V15 there was a big price difference between water and wire cutters. It meant that you had to be clever when using electric floors, such as making them switch on as soon as you step on them, ensuring that the player had to pay $100 to get past it rather than just $2. There was something really interesting about that dynamic. Also it just makes a lot of sense that water is cheap.

I also liked it that bricks were cheap, it meant a lot of clever things could be done for only a few dollars and meant windows had to be used carefully because they were so easy to break. I guess $150 is cheap in current tool pricing, now that a saw is $400, but I still think they could be cheaper (especially as cats remain only $20).

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Re: Changing costs to a curve

Yeah, it looks like people are already doing this...

When I raised the price of bypassing an electric floor, I forgot about the fact that it behaves differently from the other bottlenecks in that it passes power.  That makes it way overpowered.  So, its bypass cost (when on) should be way lower to compensate for this.

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Re: Changing costs to a curve

Water is now $100.

Bricks are already under-curve at $150 (just 10x the cost of a window).  I'm going to leave them there for now.

joshwithguitar

Member

Registered: 2013-07-28

Posts: 538

Re: Changing costs to a curve

Great! These prices seem much better. It did make my current house significantly less secure though . I have updated my defence though and feel pretty good about it for now.
I'm enjoying the feel of some of the "maze over unpowered electric floor" houses that are popping up. Inside them wire-cutters are much more important than water, so the difference is price feels good. The idea that around any corner there could be a pet ready to power all of them and fry you makes them fun, it will interesting to see where this goes.