Family Protection Guide and Suggestion

Cylence · 2014-02-21 14:11:21

Summary

I like the human aspect of deciding to protect your family or not.
I want to protect them and I share my knowledge with those who share the same sentiment.
Hopefully it will help you keep your family safe. Please contribute any other ideas if you have any.

I would like more options and incentives to protect them. This would require a game change. My suggestions is below.

Note 1: if anyone would like to save the image files from the castle draft links and post them here, it would be much appreciated.
Note 2: Also, I may not check in to reply often.

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Knowledge

First, lets go over what I think I know:

Protector Pros:
Wife holds half the money, which will allow you to rebuild more easily she doesn't die during a robbery.
Deaths lock in damage, even if vault is safe. (you can use damaged walls/dead family/dead pets to your advantage)
You can use kids to have wife not to stop running to the exit twice.

Protector Cons:
Need a free/doggy path to escape.
Killed kids draw the wife (cash cow).
Deaths lock in damage, even if vault is safe. (allows robbers to save progress and come back with more tools for vault)

Protection Levels:
* Level 1. Shotgun
For family protectors, ALL SHOULD HAVE ONE (or more).
Use kids to stop mom exiting to make robbers weary of doors.
Deters Robbers who can't/won't buy a Gun (and bricks for doors).
If I'm not just buying tools with the first $2k, I will build a $1k house (and leave 1$k to entice robbers/allow me to get tools after scouting other houses)
Here is an example of a shotgun for your family as your kill mechanism till you gather money:
http://castledraft.com/editor/yUeFUQ
If the robber successfully avoids your family, hopefully they get tired of the maze and leave.
This is only effective for the lower class, and is a liability once you attract gun toting robbers.

* Level 2. Pit-bulls
Your ONLY option that prevents robbers from walking through "clear paths" to your family.
Must be spaced correctly to require the robber to buy Guns (instead of clubs).
To do this you must understand dead pet mechanics and/or robber line of sight/vision.
Options displayed below with both cheap and more expensive layouts. Although, really it's the dogs that drive the cost.
http://castledraft.com/editor/v2QgVe
Note that as a robber, you can brick cats within range before they commit cat-icide and make that first pit bull clubbable.
Also, don't forget you can use panic buttons to fence pets in. However, the robber can club a pet while standing on the button.

* Level 3. Obscurity (Hiding the shortest path)
Using decoy shotguns and multiple pit bull paths to hide the location of your family.
Scouting clear paths from the door is easy if its not filled with pit bulls, so it's only really possible for people who can afford multiple dogs/shotguns and requires a lot of space. Figuring out shotgun placements will require good understanding of the direction in which the robber is coming from and how it affects the vision.
This is the highest possible defense layer.
http://castledraft.com/editor/Kr6L2U

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Change

Now for the suggestions on changing family mechanisms:

* Change 1. Family Pathing
Current behavior:
There is a single path for the family to exit. It's the shortest calculated path.
Suggested behavior:
Introduce a $0 tile that blocks family movement and is invisible to the robber.

Details:
This tile will be visible in building view, but not in robbery view.
It does not block pet movement, only Family movement.

Thematic reasoning:
You tell your family the safest way (even if it isn't the shortest) to get out before you leave them.

Real World Effect:
As a builder you can try to figure out how best to position an escape plan for your family when they are discovered.
There is still only one escape route. However, the robber can't figure out what it is as easily as before.
This will allow family defenses to use Obscurity without pit-bulls, making it easier for the lower class houses to prevent family deaths.
As a robber, you will need to take into account all various non family blocking movement.

* Change 2. Children advantages
Current behavior:
Mom is useful since if you protect her, she hides half your cash. Children don't hold anything.
Suggested behavior:
Before leaving you can opt to leave your children up to 10% spending allowance each

Details:
Before leaving your house, you can select the percentage (0-10%) (0 default) for each child.
The wife's 50% cash should be determined after allowance is subtracted.
example: $10k cash. Max allowance given. $2k ($1k per child), $4k to mom, $4k to vault.
When you return home:
vault safe, both kids alive, mom alive, the half the allowance will be gone: result - $9k
vault safe, both kids alive, mom dead, allowance is saved: result - $6k
vault safe, any kids dead, mom alive, allowance is gone from that kid, saved from alive one: result - $8k (both), $9k (one)
vault broken, kids alive, mom alive, allowance is saved: $6k
vault broken, kids alive, mom dead, allowance is saved: $2k
vault broken, kids dead, mom dead, allowance is gone: $0k
As a robber, allowance can be stolen from the kids upon death, just like the mom.

Thematic Reasoning:
Before you take off for a long time, you may want to leave your kids spending money. If your vault gets robbed, the kids will keep the money as they know there are hard times ahead when a robber took all the valuables. If your vault is safe, the kids will have spent some of the money on the frivolities of life.

Real World Effect:
Creates advantages to keeping kids alive and incentives for robbers to kill kids (besides saving damage).
Think of it as robbery insurance when leaving your house for a long time.
If you can protect them, then they will allow you to rebuild.
Although, half the money you leave them will be spent if no one steals it.
Bounties on robbers may rise since kids are a slightly larger targets.
May encourage keeping all family members spread out.

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Conclusion

I am enjoying the game immensely, but would like more family mechanics, both as a protector and a robber. More creative ways to protect and more skill needed to hunt families should be beneficial to the community.

MMaster · 2014-02-21 14:29:21

Really nice post! Like an advertisement!

iceman · 2014-02-21 14:37:55

Like MMaster said, great formatting

I really like the ideas as well, especially the invisible family blocker! Anything that lets homeowners use more creativity when defending a wife sounds good to me. The only issue is the fact that it's information the robber can't get, but it's hard to think of ways to abuse it. You could catch a robber off guard by having a wife with a shotgun go down the hallway he's in instead one that seems like an open path to the door, but I think that'd just be something you'll have to learn to consider as a robber.

protox13 · 2014-02-21 14:38:00

Dedicating a third of your house to protect your family is likely to increase the risk a robber can more easily or cheaply find his way to your vault, but that's the trade off...

colorfusion · 2014-02-21 15:16:57

I like the idea of being able to choose where the family goes, although I think it would need to be named something that makes sense thematically in the game rather than "family blocker".

Perhaps even having it work in the opposite way, placing escape route points and having the family go to all of them in order of the shortest path which is the next closest from where they are standing.

MMaster · 2014-02-21 15:22:21

colorfusion wrote:

I like the idea of being able to choose where the family goes, although I think it would need to be named something that makes sense thematically in the game rather than "family blocker".
Perhaps even having it work in the opposite way, placing escape route points and having the family go to all of them in order of the shortest path which is the next closest from where they are standing.

I like this one. It would still be tradeoff to use such defense, because you need multiple free paths in order to fool the robber which is gonna take space where you could have other, more deadly, traps. That's a good thing as it won't be overpowered, but you can make some nice new trap designs with it.

EDIT: Or even better - kids are too young so you had to draw them path out of the house, but your wife still has her own will so you can't control her. That would bring something special to the kids (they can press buttons on the path).

Last edited by MMaster (2014-02-21 15:27:13)

Cylence · 2014-02-21 15:46:48

colorfusion wrote:

I like the idea of being able to choose where the family goes, although I think it would need to be named something that makes sense thematically in the game rather than "family blocker".
Perhaps even having it work in the opposite way, placing escape route points and having the family go to all of them in order of the shortest path which is the next closest from where they are standing.

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't even think about naming it since I was more concerned with the mechanics and opportunities it provided. How about: "Warning Light" - warns your family of danger and they stay away.

I would name your suggestion "Escape Waypoint." I like it, but your idea has more complications like number order and doubling back and forth. The Warning Light will allow a sort of way pointing but you have to take into account what the shortest path to the exit is. It won't allow your family to loop.

Technically, the warning light should be easier to implement since all it really boils down to is an invisible electric floor in an always off state with no conductivity.

DarkKat48 · 2014-03-01 16:10:30

I would like to see something like a panic room added for the family to hide in. Perhaps another use of the panic button other than opening other traps. More family friendly traps in general would be good to make more use of the panic button to protect the family besides walls of pitbulls being the only method. At least it would lead to other tools besides guns and meat to be needed to get to ones family.

Vegeta9001 · 2014-03-01 19:24:39

What I normally do to protect my wife in a high $ house like over 100-150k is I put my Wife in a corner of my house after a LONG hallway protected by over 15 stack of concrete walls and over 40 Pit Bulls in the path than lead to her...

I begin with at least 1-2 dogs and wood walls for my starting house then when I get at 10k I have 5-7 dogs at 20k I have around 12 dogs and so on...

Between 5-10k I make my wall into steel and then concrete and sometime I simply go right away to Concrete.

When I get to 30-40 dogs no one EVER got pass this even people with over 30-60k worth of tools.

I never saw someone come with 40 guns or few guns and 40 Club.

Last edited by Vegeta9001 (2014-03-02 10:34:22)

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-02-21 14:11:21