The Castle Doctrine Forums

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Abusing chill timeouts?

The way the game currently works is this:

--If you die in a house, you have an hour-long chill before you can come back into that house.

--If you bring tools into a house and then die later, somewhere else, you have an hour-long chill before you can come back into that house (with the hour starting at when you entered the house with tools

--If you reach a vault in a house without carrying tools, and then die later, somewhere else, you have an hour-long chill before you can come back into that house (with the hour starting at the time you reached the vault).

--If you reach the vault in a house or kill family members, and the owner of that house dies and respawns, you can't see their new house for an hour.

The chills are there to prevent pounding on one house over and over across multiple suicide lives, and also to prevent tool dumping and build-up from one account to another (buy $2000 worth of stuff, die in your other house, repeat----or buy $2000 worth of tools, die in some house, and then rush back to that house in the next life to claim them).

The force-ignore when an owner respawns is there to prevent one account from respawning over and over to feed starter money to the other account (respawn, rob self for $2000, repeat).

Okay, that's the background.  Now a few things to consider:

If you use your second account to "camp" in a house that has a chills or one of these force-ignores, you can prevent other players from accessing it until the timer wears off, and then go in to claim the value yourself.

Example:  dump tools into account B using account A.  Then camp in house B using account B.  Wait an hour.  Then leave house B, and return with account A to claim the tools.

In the case of the force-ignore after an owner respawns, it's even worse, because after respawn, the house is unedited, and therefore is eternally off the house list.  So, you don't even have to camp.  Just don't touch the new house, and wait an hour before editing it and putting it on the list, then nab it with your other account.

Yes, this still takes an hour.  But it's still $2000 in free money every hour if you pull it off, with no effort other than watching the clock.

So.... I'm thinking that these timers should probably only "tick" when a given house is visible to other players on the house list.  The ticking should stop when ANYONE is in the house (owner or robber).  This would prevent this kind of camping.

For chills, this would totally prevent "safe" tool dumping through camping.  The house would have to be visible to other players for a full hour before you could come in to get the tools.  They'd probably be taken.

For force-ignores, this would mean that you'd need to keep fixing up the house and editing it to keep it on the list for a full hour.  With a "starter" throw-away house, it would be robbed by someone else right away and stop ticking.

Essentially, this would remove all utility from "throw away" houses that aren't really playing the game.

The one side-effect of this is that chill times will stop being predictable (because they will now depend on actions of other players and the house owner).  Maybe that's a good thing, though.

colorfusion

Member

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 537

Re: Abusing chill timeouts?

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, wouldn't the camping account have to keep moving back and forth for an hour to avoid the 5 minute timeout? Seems like a lot of work for just $2000.

The solution you've come up with does seem like a good one though, and would prevent the possibility of anything like it happening without many consequences for legitimate gameplay.

Last edited by colorfusion (2014-01-13 15:29:49)

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Re: Abusing chill timeouts?

At least one player has already been using a keyboard bot to camp in a house all night.

The potential for abuse here is obviously endless.

This is also motivating me to put a max timer on robberies.  Otherwise, you could grief another player by entering their house and turning on a keyboard bot.... you could block their house forever this way.

ZenRose

Member

Registered: 2013-11-07

Posts: 45

Re: Abusing chill timeouts?

I would be very interested to see how this plays out if/when implemented.  I like the creative solution to the set of problems, especially as it should have almost no visible impact on most cases of the chills that most 'honest' players will encounter.