Starting bounties reduced

jasonrohrer · 2013-11-18 17:11:36

You used to start each new life with $500 on your head.

Josh pointed out that this made money too easy to come by (from suicide runners). I've reduced it down to $100.

The bounty still goes up by $500 for each vault reached and $1000 for each family member killed. Thus, entrapping a seasoned robber will bring you a lot more bounty than entrapping a suicide runner with nothing to lose.

Axious · 2013-11-18 21:50:25

A starting bounty of $100 seems a bit low. The suicide runners get a free look at your house, and some can make it quite far. $500 was probably too much though, I could see $250 being reasonable.

Gimpy_Weasel · 2013-11-19 08:06:28

I actually think $100 starting bounty is a really good change thematically and gameplay-wise. If you have never committed a murder or successfully robbed another person, you shouldn't have hardly any bounty on your head. This should reduce the cash-flow going to people with multiple accounts that just constantly suicide into their own houses to build their cash piles, and make it necessary for starting people to have to make some risks by attempting a couple of robberies. Before, if you could make a decent little trap with your starter cash, you could just sit back and wait for 4 suiciders to completely recoup your startup costs. Now if you want to upgrade/expand your home defenses you also have to participate in some successful robberies to supplement your income. Remember: YOU ARE A DESPERATE MAN IN DESPERATE TIMES! Anything that increases incentives to take risks/rob houses is both good thematically and for the game itself rather than just having 20 houses that just turtle and never take a peak outside.

Love the game, and glad I came back after a few months off to see how its been progressing. Keep up the awesome work Jason!

jasonrohrer · 2013-11-19 13:24:27

Suicide runners are really "throw-away" lives... I don't want to value them too much. You should REALLY be rewarded for building a house that is tricky enough to kill someone who has something to lose.... someone who is trying not to die.

Chills do bring a cost to suicide running, but right now, the cost isn't very high (one hour). That cost may go up in the future by increasing the chill time, which would make every robbery count more.

Still, even if the chill timer is 24 hours (extreme), there are times when you'd feel like risking a bunch of suicide runs in all available houses, just to blow a bunch of throw-away lives and try your luck. This risk-free-mode is not ideal, in my view, but I can't conceive of a way to prevent it.

Axious · 2013-11-21 14:14:34

After this change was made, I noticed the game speed has slowed down about 10 times. Which may or may not be a good thing depending on how you think the game should be. Having a slower game allows more people to play without having to babysit their houses so much. They can leave for a day or more and not worry that they will have $80k built up. But on the other hand, with the $500 starting bounty, seeing the houses change so fast was crazy and there was high cash flow, which was a bit more thrilling, and there was always money to attempt a robbing spree on other houses. But $500 was probably too much.

So in conclusion, the speed and cash flow of the game can be finely tuned by changing the starting bounty parameter.

iceman · 2013-11-21 17:24:22

I definitely like how you don't have to babysit your house as much now - as nice as it was to have several people kindly suicide in your house for thousands of dollars, more often than not someone ends up robbing you before you can put it to good use.

There definitely seems to be more houses now, which could be because there are less people robbing (they don't want to rob if they don't have certain tools, and they can only afford those tools by getting suicide kills). However, this might give actually give an incentive to big houses to start robbing - if they're not getting as much money from suicide robbers, they're going to have to resort to other methods to get money, either by improving the trickiness of their home to get valuable kills, or to start robbing other houses.

colorfusion · 2013-11-23 11:57:37

Lowering bounties seems to have slowed the pace down quite a lot. I personally prefered to come back and see that I earned a lot of money but my house was solved or brute forced, rather than seeing I earned $200 over the day with no interesting tapes to watch.

New life suicide runners are usually pretty risky to your house in my experience. They will almost always come in with $2000 worth of tools, will not back out of your house until they die or reach the vault, and are not necessarily any worse or better at the game than people with houses. It takes a long time now to save up for a single tool, making suicide runners even more dangerous than homeowners.

joshwithguitar · 2013-11-23 17:34:20

Currently it seems that the primary source of house income is through starter account tools as a robber dying in your house with just one saw left on its own will give you twice their bounty in value. My house to now has had a bounty income of $500 and tool income of over $3000. So a good strategy is to build a house that kills people by surprise before they get to use all of their tools or traps them in such a way that what they are holding can't be used to escape. I guess this is more interesting than a commit gate leading to a combo lock to start. This kind of setup doesn't really encourage bringing tools along.

When it comes to the effectiveness of suicide runs I'll admit they are quite powerful. Yesterday after a few runs I was able to get to the vault of every single house except the top three combo houses, most without tools by the end. What this means is that having some form of combo system that can withstand $2000 scouting is essential for a top level house. Lewis had a clever setup which meant that even with only 4 buttons it was still highly unlikely anyone would get it by chance so his house was basically starter proof.

I think $200 starting bounties should be given a try. It should speed things up a little without making surviving the night impossible for new houses and still encouraging houses not to just feed off no tool suicide runs. Perhaps with this the sale value of tools should be decreased to 1/4 meaning that you can't just rely on tool dumps to build your house and to encourage houses to actually use the tools.

Update: Despite what I said above, bounties now make up the vast majority of my current house's income. RIP Mr Noel.

Last edited by joshwithguitar (2013-11-23 23:01:31)

jasonrohrer · 2013-11-26 10:49:10

Interesting issue!

Looking at the stats, I definitely see a huge drop in all activity as soon as starting bounties were reduced by 5x. People started building less, robbing less, and so on.

I'll try upping it to 200 and see what happens.

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2013-11-18 17:11:36

Starting bounties reduced

#2 2013-11-18 21:50:25

Re: Starting bounties reduced

#3 2013-11-19 08:06:28

Re: Starting bounties reduced

#4 2013-11-19 13:24:27

Re: Starting bounties reduced

#5 2013-11-21 14:14:34

Re: Starting bounties reduced

#6 2013-11-21 17:24:22

Re: Starting bounties reduced

#7 2013-11-23 11:57:37

Re: Starting bounties reduced

#8 2013-11-23 17:34:20

Re: Starting bounties reduced

#9 2013-11-26 10:49:10

Re: Starting bounties reduced

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