Talk:Laws/Watch Dog

Watch Dog Questions and (sometimes) Answers

This is a good place to have a dialog about what Watch Dogs can do and what they cannot do. As the Legal Petition has no real good place for Use Cases, this page can expand on how, where and whys of Watch Dogs.

Please add your questions or comments (hopefully useful ones).

What are Watch Dogs and what do they really guard?

First, think of the Dog as full sized CP that is yet unbuilt. Think of it as a square or rectanglular area that is the size of a maximum building + 10 coordinates on each side.

If you put the Dog down in the open landscape you will claim an area that is the maximum sized CP you can build with a bit of comfort zone around it.

If you have a single existing compound (more complex use cases to follow) and put your Dog down inside your CP it will guard your CP plus a comfort zone.

The Dog guard areas are flexible because not all CPs are squares or rectangles. Some CPs have unique shapes. So the Dog will guard whatever the shape is of the compound plus the comfort zone.

Another way of thinking about Dogs is that they are effectively an Invisible Building that is bigger and overlapping your own.

How do I know what is being guarded?

All Dogs have a "show me the guard area" as an option. This is essentially a Walls Up option.

When you do a "Walls Up" on any dog you can see what is included or excluded from the boundry.

I only have a small CP now but I want to make it bigger later

If you place your Dog outside your CP's curb boundry, you are effectively placing it the landscape. Using the Walls Up option you can see the future expansion area that is being protected by that Dog.

Because the Dog is moveable you can place it to protect the area in the direction you want to expand.

• e.g. If you want to expand to the right of your CP, place the Dog on the right outside curb.

I want to guard my camel pens can it do that?

If you place your Dog in the open area, it will guard the Max Builing Area + 10 Coords. If you use the Walls Up option you will be able to position your Dog so that the "Guard Area" covers your camel pens.

But it doesn't have to guard just a camel pen, it can guard any area, like a clay bed or a marble quarry spot or a future Arts Building site or even your front lawn.

So whats this No Overlapping Areas Bit?

It does sound rather extreme but the original concept is in alignment with the Basic Building Codes of Egypt: no overlapping graphical footprints allowed.

Having overlapping items is considered an exploit but in fact it is done all the time on Landscape Objects, like woodplanes, vineyards, greenhouses and bonfires.

Items inside buildings are strictly enforced; you cannot build 2 hackling rakes on top of each other or 2 chests on top of each. You can place them side by side but not on top.

That Dogs are already a second building larger than your current one, and sitting on top of it, is already an overlap and having multiple Dogs doing that might be more of an issue for Teppy.

And Dogs guarding landscape objects may actually be overlapping more than one item to start with. Multiple camel pens, greenhouses etc. Preventing more than one Dog guarding the same space is, again, this is more of an issue for Teppy.

So Is there a way I get Overlapping Areas Protected?

Yes!

Using the Walls Up option on the Dog you can see what is sticking out or overlapping. If you have more than one Dog you can place and position your other Dog in a way to cover up the exposed area or you can move the two Dogs apart so they do not overlap.

• e.g. You want to protect 2 buildings and placing 2 Dogs near each other cause overlap. Use the Walls Up option on the dogs to move them apart so their territories don't overlap.

• e.g. One Dog doesn't cover a big enough area like a large clay bed. Place one Dog and use the Walls Up option to see what portion is unprotected. Place a second Dog and positon it so that this area is protected but not overlapping the first Dog's boundries.

What about having my own Dogs with Overlapping Areas?

note: Teppy indicated that this was an area of confusion but if he allows this, that's a bit of extra flexibility.

There really isn't any reason against an Owner having his Dogs placed with overlapping areas other than the "no overlapping graphic footprint rules".

If these are suspended for 1 Dog they could be suspended for all. It's really a Teppy call about how many Dogs he wants to allow to have overlaps.

Cosmetically it would be nice to have 2 or 3 Dogs with animated patrols moving around your CP.

If this were allowed it might be a tad bit easier to manoeuver the placement of Dogs to guard an oddly shapped area or camp.

Extreme Overlap Concern

If Owners can have their Dogs overlap consider the situation with Guild Donated Dogs.

If a Guild gets 10 Dogs donated and sets them all down next to each other, thats 10 overlapping items in the same place. This might cause some problem with the existing system.

Players with multiple alts get access to extra Dogs but the No Overlap Rule and Only Their Owner's Items rule would prevent them from having more overlapping Dogs than anyone else. They would just be able to guard more areas.

Well I have more areas than I have Dogs

You get one Dog per cornerstone. If you have a spouse, alts, mules you can have more Dogs.

Dogs are supposed to be limited. Like cornerstones that can move around, you have to decide how to use these limited resources.

That is until someone figures out how to have puppies.

Well why not just add this to Cornerstones?

Cornerstones are only available after a building is finished. Cornerstones are only useful for buildings and not other landscape items like Marble Quarry spots or Flax Fields.

Dogs are pre-building placeholders. They also guard future building areas. Dogs are moveable in the landscape.

What about those bonfire patches or empty building shells everywhere?

Dogs won't do away with those. If you want to mark 100 clay beds, you will have to do it the "old fashioned way" and place bonfires or empty buildings on the area.

Dogs are meant to protect your camp area and a few selected other areas.

So if I have 10 alts I can have extra Dogs?

Yes, you can. You get 1 dog per cornerstone and if you have 3 cornerstones you have 3 Dogs. 10 alts with 3 cornerstones means 30 Dogs. BONANZA!

Well, maybe not quite. There is no ezmoding here.

Because Watch Dogs may only guard compounds or objects belonging to the dog's owner, those other Dogs are owned by the Alts and not you.

You can give them to a Guild to gain access to more dogs but again Dogs may only guard objects belonging to the dog's owner and that would be the Guild.

OK I'll get all the Alt's Dogs and Give them to the Guild then

Dogs given to a guild are a One Way Donation. Once you give a Dog away you cannot get it back. Not even if you disband the guild.

And like cornerstones, Dogs die when the Cornerstone dies. So if the alt goes dormant and the CS expires, so does the Dog and any area under guard loses that protection.

What about Khefre's Lockers and Trade Chests?

There are someplaces a Dog just cannot be used. The Dog cannot be used to protect anything that doesn't belong to the Owner. If your spouse builds a Locker in a building then you cannot put your Dog down in that CP or anywhere its protection area would overlap the locker.

If you build a Trade chest and give it to another player, again the Dog cannot be used in that area either.

Unless Teppy makes some "exceptions" to implementation then the Dog cannot be used in these circumstances. It would be up to the Devs on how to implement a "violation" situation, perhaps a warning or have your Dog go to sleep or even return to orginal owner.

So what actually do we get with Watch Dogs?

• You get protection from encroachment on an existing building
• You get an ability prevent encroachment on exterior buildings
• You get an ability to claim future use areas
• You get an ability to move this protection from one building to another
• You get an ability to move this protection from one location to another

Depending on Teppy's implementation

• You get a nice cosmetic item

Are there necessary exceptions to implement?

I've been thinking about Dogs and it seems that to be implemented without causing a lot of issues, some exceptions might be necessary. A previous topic mentioned trade chests and khefre's lockers, but also an exception should be made so that either dogs cannot guard the area around phoenix stadiums, or phoenix statues are except from dogs. It would be too easy for a few individuals to lock down phoenix stadiums otherwise. Can other people think of exceptions that should be put under consideration?

--GHawkins

Response: Are there necessary exceptions to implement?

I think there would definitely be exceptions: like not being able to drop a Dog in Beetle Garden.

We already have some excpetions built in that can be used to monitor "wild Dogs".

• You cannot build too close to a road
• You cannot build too close to a CS

I do not know the mechanic behind those rules but the "no owner rule" might be useful here. You cannot drop a Dog on someone else's items. So in "theory" Phoenix Statiums and Beetle Gardens are not owned by a player. The dog's owner would be prevented from dropping a dog there.

Teppy has indicated that there would be changes to the implementation. Exactly which and how he did not indicate. But it would be "safe" to presume that there would be a limit to where a Dog can wander.

Zhukuram 15:00, 28 August 2012 (EST)

Spread out compound shapes

Another issue, how will watchdog areas work with compounds of unusual shape, particularly disjoint compounds. I can build a single compound which has a number of small, separate walled in areas. If guard dogs protect a radius of 10 coordinates from all walls of a certain compound, a very spread out disjoint compound could claim a very large area. That may be working as intended, but it should be considered when you mention things like "Maximum compound size" for outdoor dogs. Do you mean those outdoor dogs will guard a 7x7 area plus 10 squares in all directions around that, effectively being a 27x27 coordinate area?

--GHawkins

Response 1: Spread out compound shapes

My understanding is that there is a "max size" of (iicr) 49 sectors to any CP. The layout blueprint editor handles the physcial dimensions and appearence of the building. There maybe another game mechanic to allow bigger buildings. If that is the case then the dog's "max size" would have to adjust upwards.

The max size of a dogs area would be the physcical shape of the 49 sectors + 10 coords along the outtermost perimiter of the building.

Even buildings with "appearance gaps" still conform to the blueprint editors restriction.

e.g. A building with "gaps" for columns.
e.g. Buildings that are not rectangles or squares.
e.g. 2 buildings abutted to each other with gaps for columns making one large "visual" building would have to have the dogs placed carefully if the buildings had different owners.

Teppy already mentioned some "changes" due to constraints of the server.

Zhukuram 14:54, 28 August 2012 (EST)

Response: Spread out compound shapes

Land seizure compound

To illustrate my concern is compounds designed like the one on the right designed to claim large swaths of land with dogs as I understand the proposed implementation to be. The whole building in the picture on the right is a single compound, and it spreads from 2492N-2568N. When I try to extend it much further I get warnings about compound size, but already it's clearly more than 49 coords long in terms of how much area would be covered by a watchdog since all the gaps between compound sectors are less than 20 coords.

I've only used 11 sectors in the image shown so I'm not exactly sure what's causing the "compound is too large" error, but there appears to be substantial variability in how much area can be claimed by a compound with watchdog depending on how the compound is shaped. Concerns about how much land someone should be able to claim with a compound aside, the area claimed by an outdoor watchdog should be strictly defined. A 27x27 coord square area for example unless we have some way to define a specific area to be guarded by an outdoor watchdog.

--GHawkins

Response 2: Spread out compound shapes

What an interesting compound! I do not know what is the "underlying mechanic" of the Building Blueprint Editor. But there are a few observations I can make.

1. If the Dog were placed inside the compound it would protect <the shape> and 10 coords on a side. So this CP would have a long narrow rectangluar shape protected. I'm pretty sure if that when you open the Blueprint editor you would see the shape. While you might call this a "land grab" it might also just be a unique designed building. There should not be any restrction on "odd shaped buildings". So this would be consistent with the intent of the Dog.
2. If the Dog were placed outside the compound then the "max building size" would not protect this shape. When I open the blueprint editor I get a square or normal rectangular shape, not a long narrow one as a default.
3. The true definition of "max buiding size and shape" is the one that Teppy has programmed. I do not know of the exact limitation or full restrictions of this variable. The only thing I know it that the variable is enforced.
4. Dogs are not intented to prevent "land grabs". They are meant to protect a limited area around your own CP and perhaps a few resources. Under current uses, "land grab" buildings are just shells with no objects in them, constructed to cover the entire resource area. Dogs will not prevent this.

Zhukuram 13:06, 29 August 2012 (EST)