Flying to a trader compound at night

Hi everyone. First post here. Apologies if this has been posted and answered ad nauseum, but I can't find it. If I build a gyrocopter and fly it to a trader compound at night, can I land in the compound?
 
The answer above is correct. For more information:

Prior to 3.0, you could not enter a trader compound at night and would get teleported out if you tried. In 3.0, there is a sandbox setting that lets you set the trader hours. If you set them to be open at night, you can land in them at night. If you do not, you cannot.
 
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My apologies for apparently restarting a troll war. I was genuinely curious about my first question.

In case you missed it, you can probably land the gyro during the nighttime but you will be ejected outside once you land. If the trader is closed you can´t cheese your way in.

I am playing with traders always open now that we that choice, never liked the fact that they close at night.
 
I get it, but I also get that closing them at night is legitimate. If they're open at all times, then you always have a designated safe zone that is essentially immune to zombies.

Another unrelated question about "forcefields." I sort of understand how they work. Through some arcane means, digging a trench too deep for them to jump out of, and too wide for them to jump across (aside from spiders) somehow makes them willing to path all the way around them. So would they still work if I dug them 3 blocks wide instead of 2? Or 4 blocks? I'm asking because I've noticed that zombies have started doing serious damage to one of my forcefields on blood moon nights.
 
So would they still work if I dug them 3 blocks wide instead of 2? Or 4 blocks?
Yes. There's no real difference between 2- and 4- wide trenches. At least if you're not standing right on the edge yourself, zombies can do a "leap to player" if they can reach the player with about a 4-5 meter horizontal jump. Going wider than 5 might make one a little safer, but that's overkill.
 
So, is there a way to prevent them from attacking the forcefield and just pathing around it to the bridge I've set up?
Well, there's many a potential issue. Too many to debug as off-topic in a random thread. But couple easy to check:
- Are you sure your intended path is viable? The zeds are able to walk to you without breaking terrain?
- Is your moat too large? Zeds will "route" about 40 blocks away from you, if any point of the path goes beyond that, they'll stop.
- etc
 
1. Yes. Considering the vast majority of them do, indeed, path directly to me along the bridge.
2. The "moat" is a pit about 3 blocks wide, 13 blocks deep, and 12 blocks long. The bunker I'm in is a 5x5 with a steel viewport, concrete rear (there's a forcefield there as well, but it's never once been attacked), and two dirt walls that extend about 2 blocks past where the viewport connects to the front "wall" of the pit. Each of the dirt walls has a forcefield 2 blocks wide over a pit 4 blocks deep.
 
13 deep sounds.. deep. Is the bunker at/near the bottom of that, or above the forcefield level?

The behavior changes patch to patch, the way they're willing to dig/travel up/down is one of those variables. They might be trying to dig to get to the bottom of the pit and get to you from there ... ?

For bases, pics are a lot more descriptive than text; to create an unambiguous description is a ton of work and words, and then you'll have hope I read it correctly. ;) If you grab a few screenshots during your next session, we might see what's going on.
 
Oh sure, and the help is much appreciated.

Rear view of the bunker and right side forcefield
1783610787313.jpeg
Left side forcefield (the one that keeps getting hit
1783610858310.jpeg

View of the bunker from the bottom of the pit
1783610907885.jpeg

The bridge over the pit that the zombies path across
1783610947821.jpeg

Inside the bunker
1783610969637.jpeg
 
Nice minimalistic use of terrain as walls, there :)

Hmm.. that looks pretty sound. What I'm thinking is,
1) they're either getting clogged on that bridge somehow
2) new spawns in a horde can't find a path to you quick enough, and end up doing it "randomly" on the way.
or
3) if you have a path out of the drop pit, some might end up in "destroy area" mode.

For 3), I doubt it; seems they'd have blocks at the bottom to destroy, they shouldn't choose the force field as a prio.

Both 2 and 1 might be caused by what you're wielding there, the stun baton. Live zeds can be used as pathing (zeds can walk on zeds), but they'll also block the route they're standing on. If you have zapped stand-still zeds on the pole, blocking the path to you, the rest might think there's no path.

For a minimal test of that.. yikes. I would suggest widening the pole path, double or triple it. But you're pretty set with your dimensions there. You might be able to dig a little drop space on the right (blue in attached image), and add another pole (green). That might not solve the entire issue, but it might alleviate it a lot.

It'll be lopsided, but it might give you an answer.

1783610969637-suggestion.jpeg
 
Nice minimalistic use of terrain as walls, there :)

Hmm.. that looks pretty sound. What I'm thinking is,
1) they're either getting clogged on that bridge somehow
2) new spawns in a horde can't find a path to you quick enough, and end up doing it "randomly" on the way.
or
3) if you have a path out of the drop pit, some might end up in "destroy area" mode.

For 3), I doubt it; seems they'd have blocks at the bottom to destroy, they shouldn't choose the force field as a prio.

Both 2 and 1 might be caused by what you're wielding there, the stun baton. Live zeds can be used as pathing (zeds can walk on zeds), but they'll also block the route they're standing on. If you have zapped stand-still zeds on the pole, blocking the path to you, the rest might think there's no path.

For a minimal test of that.. yikes. I would suggest widening the pole path, double or triple it. But you're pretty set with your dimensions there. You might be able to dig a little drop space on the right (blue in attached image), and add another pole (green). That might not solve the entire issue, but it might alleviate it a lot.

It'll be lopsided, but it might give you an answer.

View attachment 39898
Thanks. It's one of CautiousPancake's designs, actually, and it has worked really well so far. I really enjoyed the video and liked the simplistic design, as well as the fact that it's a scalable base. I essentially built it to the letter, except his design used a concrete wall where I used a forcefield. Concrete would be attacked and have to be repaired regularly, my idea was to re-direct using the same forcefield concept in the rear to move the zombies around to the front.
In terms of getting clogged, my baton has a repulsor mod and I've built the Intellect tree up significantly so that every other hit is a charged hit (this is aside from a book that gives every regular attack a 25% chance to fully charge the baton). So every other hit launches them and the zombie directly behind them. There isn't a whole lot else I can do about that. If I widen the bridge, the zombies will be able to jump to it from the sides and will definitely clog the path up.
In terms of them not finding a path to me, that's definitely possible. The ramps back up to ground level are very long so I might be in a situation where they can't get to the far side as easily. Maybe if I built a dirt bridge over the ramps.
 
If I widen the bridge, the zombies will be able to jump to it from the sides
That's why I suggested widening the drop pit - it looks like you can afford to dig one more block on the right. Just about 3-4 deep for testing. It might "connect" with the force field moat, but that shouldn't matter much. Zeds shouldn't have any business dropping down there intentionally. Maybe open an exit from under that force field to make sure.

The distance for paths is probably all right, unless you have a 20m hidden tunnel as a part of it for some reason ... but larger hordes might not have the time to complete the lengthy calculations for every zed, so that might be an issue. Simpler is often better anyway :)
 
Simpler is often better anyway :)
Hence why I liked this design, yeah. In terms of widening the pit by digging out the part you circled, the zombies only seem to attack the forcefield on the *other* side, the left side. The right side forcefield rarely takes any damage at all, and that's usually incidental from Mutateds.
 
In terms of widening the pit by digging out the part you circled, the zombies only seem to attack the forcefield on the *other* side, the left side.
Yeh, I understood that; I'm assuming that's mainly random. They've just mostly spawned on that side. Or there's a structural asymmetry you haven't shown.

The widening of the path is to give the zeds "twice" as many options to get to you, and thus not end up stuck with no path. It doesn't matter where they dig if the reason is "no path". The reason I picked that side for the test is simply: you have those concrete blocks on the other side, that might be a pain to remove .. ofc, if you're willing to collapse them, that side would work just as well ;)
 
So, I'm in the middle of a blood moon and paused the game. I had dug out the part you mentioned and even smashed the concrete ramps on the other side. I also put dirt blocks over the trenches that lead up from the pit, to give a much clearer path back to the bridge. I'm still hearing hits on the left (and only the left) side forcefield. Weird.
 
Morning after, this was how the left side looked

1783646148719.jpeg

1783646171335.jpeg

Also, I'm still hearing spider squeals. No idea how many or where they are. I logged out, hoping it's just an audio bug. If it's not and the game penalizes me for leaving during an attack, whatever. It is what it is. This is what I have to fix.
 
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