Reinforced Stone - Expensive Anti-Tunneling / Anti Seige

//EDIT: while the original thread was about an anti-tunnling block we have now redirected all "StronkBlok++" suggestions & discussions here. Hence the thread title mentioning Anti-Siege despite the OP not mentioning Siege at all. See here (https://forum.thd.vg/posts/364786/) for the merge point. ~FBB

There are two issues I've found, and they aren't that closely related.

• Tunneling kills kittens.
• Drills are useless.

Thus, I propose a new block type for some modder who may be willing to implement it: reinforced stone. Reinforced stone is like regular stone, except it costs 50 stone instead of 10 (just like a stone door), and it has some unique properties. For one, it cannot be mined normally. It must be mined with a drill. Well, okay, it can be mined normally, but it'll take 5x longer than mining a stone block. You could try and build a wall out of these, but it would be just as effective as building it out of stone doors. Reinforced stone is as explosive-resistant as stone, but can still be blown up by kegs and large amounts of bombs/bomb arrows.

You would need about 500 stone, if not more, to make a 1-block thick wall of reinforced stone, and that's not even considering that archers could climb it with ease or that knights could climb it with a tiny bomb jump. This makes it fairly useless above-ground, but underground, you can place some reinforced stone every other block. This makes it a pain for enemy builders to tunnel into your base, because they'll need to spend the resources required to get a drill, and they might not even make it to your base alive. If they do manage to get to your base with a drill, they'll be able to drill through the reinforced stone and begin destroying you from underneath, but it requires a large effort. They can also bring knights along with kegs, but that's just as dangerous as bringing a builder with a drill. (if not more so)

What all of this amounts to is that, with reinforced stone, we can stop tunnelers. If you make a large hole underneath your flag and place reinforced stone down to the bedrock, enemy builders will have to make a crazy effort to get past it, and you can make life even more difficult for them by making multiple layers, forcing them to bring multiple drills or at least wait for their drill to cool off before mining out another layer. On the surface, you would need unholy amounts of stone to make anything useful with reinforced stone, and it would still be susceptible to kegs.


I don't know if there are any sprites available for a block like this, but it would still be cool nonetheless and I think this would really help with the tunneling issue. If mappers so desired, they could make maps with reinforced stone built-in to discourage tunneling universally.

EDIT 1: As per Oink's suggestion, I changed it to now be nearly indestructible, but not fully indestructible without a drill.

 

I approve of this idea, it sounds like quite a good concept. It would make sense if drills could only eat through say 2 layers or so before overheating.

 

Sounds pretty cool, except it would make Amin so OP.

Afraid this is probably never going to be implemented though.

 

I think it would lead to more stalemates tbh, could you imagine an entire flag encased in layers? It doesn't bother me as long as builders can still entomb themselves. It'd also be nicer for frontline buildings.

 

It would be just as likely as common as a flag encased in stone doors. Most walls are breached with kegs regardless, so I don't think it makes much of a difference. If it was totally explosive-resistant and could only be broken by a drill and nothing else, that would be pretty boring. As it is, though, I think its main purpose is underground, where builders often tunnel around like moles. Its price and susceptibility to explosives makes it much less useful as a wall than regular stone.

On a map with an unholy amount of stone, then yeah, I could see where you're coming from. Some Black Death maps have enough stone to last up to an hour of non-stop mining; being able to make an unminable super wall would lead to a lot more stalemates, and would make playing on servers with those larger maps a bit more boring.

 

The only other thing you may not have considered is the fact that people can misplace blocks. This would be a huge pain in the ass if you had to get a drill to remove it every time. What if they were still destructable, but it took a way longer time without a drill

 

Yeah, if you put it that way, making them nearly indestructible without drills but not fully indestructible is probably better.

Now that I think about it, if they were fully indestructible, you could troll pretty hard by encasing the spawn in reinforced stone. I edited the main post.

 

Mixing platforms with the reinforced stone blocks would be very strong as if I'm not mistaken drills overheat fast when destroying them?

In a sense platforms have become the anti builder block as it takes more pickaxe swings to destroy one than a standard stone block, making mixed material structures effective.

https://forum.kag2d.com/threads/1120-material-strength.21084/

As @Potatobird mentions drills are very commonplace, which imo due to them not being useless. For rushing builders it's actually a deccent weapon if you catch an enemy off guard, and can burrow through a thick flag defense in seconds if you get close enough.

As for tunneling itself I dislike it as much as the next player, but it can bring conclusions to games and "can" be countered given builders respond to the threat in time. Promotion of maps that are straight up anti tunnel to flag base might be a better solution to provide variety.

 

Maybe a nerf to platforms is due... or a buff to drills.

 

Would be cool if this block was implemented as an unplaceable block and is put in the maps just like bedrock is in flat maps. I personally hate bedrock because it stops me building the way I want to, but if it's just a small penalty of 5x more to mine, then it's fine for an archer or knight shop or whatever. But then if I were a tunneling cunt, I would be really frustrated by these. Maybe make it so drills are useless against them instead of super effective since, as already stated, drills are at home when held by a rat.

Also, to buff drills, here are some ideas:

• Don't make them randomly disappear - it's stupid.
• Increase builder inventory to 5/6. Currently, with 4 slots, a rushing builder will need at least 500 wood, 250 stone and 50 gold for a tunnel. No room for a drill.
• Make it cheaper. Every time I die as a builder, I've lost my drill. I have to sit there and mine stone, spam wooden platforms all over the place, and then I'll get a drill. It currently costs 100 stone and 25 coins so after putting your cash and resources out for that, you don't have much extra resources to actually build/spam with. I think if it were 0 coins and 50-75 stone, it'd be fine.
• Be able to pick it up even when it is overheated - or make the overheating more obvious. There's been a lot of times where I've used the drill for one millisecond too long and then dropped it, and some knight cunt chases me off and steals it. Maybe make the damage 1 full heart but you can continue to carry it.
• Make it so drills can cool down whilst in your inventory. Seriously, this makes it so drills are only useful if you can store them somewhere for 30 seconds every 5 seconds of use - basically makes them only useful when tunneling.
• Make it so when tapping F, it will automatically select the drill similar to how tapping F will switch between bombs / arrows for knights and archers.

To be honest, though, the drill is a very good rushing tool. I generally always aim for a drill when playing builder, at least in pubs. I mainly use it to rek enemy builders, though.

 

I don't like this because it looks too much like a mechanism

 

One more thing: Making drills mine just as fast when in water would really help. They actually mine slower when they're in water, so you have to get in the water, get out, mine, and get back in the water again.

--- Double Post Merged, May 28, 2015, Original Post Date: May 28, 2015 ---

The blocks aren't any more explosive-resistant than stone, but I agree with your other points. To be honest, I haven't seen that many tunnelers actually using drills; most of them just go without one, which I guess is because it would either create light or be only slightly faster.

 

The dirt idea doesn't sound too bad and is a pretty good way of preventing tunneling without fucking over entombers. +1

 

You're a genius!

I would rather have drills have longer longevity in terms of not overheating after destroying 2 stone blocks; that would make drills useful everywhere; especially on the battlefield.

Also, in terms of balancing and alignment balancing, shouldn't drills work like a sawmill except for stone? In that case, should't drills should get back 75% - 100% of the resources from stone instead of just 50%?

Either one is fine with me; make drills more useful for wall breaching as builder or like a sawmill except for stone.

 

Well, it seems that the FUN mod already did this, through Steel. I believe it was there in the old version too, though I never played it.

Fortunately, many of the problems discussed in this thread didn't seem to take effect, though I did notice some other, unseen issues. Here are some of the problems I've noticed with reinforced stone/steel:

• It's a pain in the to remove it, and it takes forever to get a drill. The drill destroys it 2x faster, but considering how long it takes to go and get one, you're better off just mining it. This makes its high durability extremely annoying, both for the defender and for the attacker.
• It's too expensive. You're better off placing a bunch of stone in place of one block of steel.
• It's surprisingly pointless when situated anywhere away from the flag. I think this is just due to how much easier it is to destroy every other block in the game.
• If the enemy is alone, the high durability doesn't really stop them; it just slows them down.
• It doesn't give any gold. You can get a positive feedback loop of gold in FUN CTF, and steel is the wrong way to go about doing that when you can place 40 stone blocks in its place for 160 gold, as opposed to 200 stone for 1 steel block for 0 gold.

Some of these problems are difficult to fix, though I think they could be alleviated a little with some small changes.

• Reinforced stone (or steel) needs to be cheaper to place. Perhaps about 3 or 4 times more expensive than regular stone. Not 20 times more expensive, like in FUN CTF.
• It needs to be about 2x or 3x more durable than stone.
• It needs to give just as many coins as stone. Stone blocks cost 10 stone and give 4 gold, so if reinforced stone/steel costs 30 or 40 stone, it needs to give 12 or 16 gold. Maybe that could be bumped up to 16 or 20.
• It needs to be able to be placed on top of regular stone blocks, similar to how stone can replace wood but not vice versa.

This isn't an issue, but I did notice that steel is completely immune to explosions of all types. I think this is actually good; it's a pain to place, but it forces the enemy builders to intervene once the facade of your wall has been blasted down. It makes it necessary for knights and builders to work together on the front lines.

I think reinforced stone needs to have a purpose opposite to what I said it should have; that is, be weak to drills but also able to be mined without one. Breaking one block should overheat a drill to the max, forcing the builder trying to break through to break the reinforced stone with his pickax. That way, it actually serves its purpose and delays builders, but still makes drilling a viable option.

Definitely agree with the overheating issue. They're more of a gimmick for maps that have water, and even on maps with water, they work more slowly in water so you need to constantly hop in and out of the water to get anything done with them.

Drills get the same amount of resources, but they deal double damage to blocks. If you're destroying a block with an odd amount of health, you're actually getting back more resources than if you were destroying a block with an even amount of health. Maybe drills could still deal double damage, but could get 1.5x the resources; that, or they can randomly deal either 1 or 2 damage to blocks. The second option is more RNG based (might be what you want), while the first one is a bit more linear.

After toying with something similar to reinforced stone, I can safely say that it's a terrible idea to prevent it from being placed near the flag. That's where it's most useful, and you don't really need it anywhere else.

In FUN CTF, it looks like a slightly brighter tinted version of stone. I think that would work just fine.

I learned a bit more about drills, so I might as well bring it up. Drills "die" or "drown" in water for some reason, as do many other items. Considering they cool off in water, it's pretty dumb.

A price drop might be necessary, but only if they're not buffed in any other way. If we increase the heat capacity or cooling rate of drills, we can't increase the price; they'll just be spammed. Personally, I like high-cost-high-risk-high-reward things.

Now that I think about it, increasing the builder inventory isn't that necessary I feel. Even if you're carrying 500 wood, 250 stone, and 50 gold, you can still hold a drill in your hand. You need to hold it in your hand to use it, so I think it's pretty sensible. If drills didn't dissolve in water over time, you could leave one there and go do something else while it cools off.

You were spot on with this, though, contrary to what you suggested in another post, steel/reinforced stone doesn't actually cause that many stalemates. If an enemy builder entombs inside your wall, they're going to break through it anyway. That is, as long as steel/reinforced stone is still able to be mined without a drill, which is what you suggested.

 

You can't place blocks with your drill in your hand, and if you're playing an offensive builder, you need to be able to switch between resources, blocks and items fast, fiddling around with a drill isn't helpful.