PC Deep fall traps and Gun Turrets

Mainsil

Mainsil

Refugee
I recently discovered an apparently well know problem with gun turrets used in deep drop traps. A brief internet search revealed several threads and conversations about turrets and two theories as to why they were bugging out but nothing definitive.

Theory 1: Falling from a long drop causes the zombies to travel so fast they evade collision with the gun’s targeting cone.

Theory2: Bedrock impinging on gun’s targeting cone (even if bedrock is not directly visible) interferes with targeting calculations. I was skeptical of this theory since the guns have no problems targeting zombies spawned in front of them in debug mode.

Since I wasn’t able to find a definitive answer, I started a creative game and decided to test the two theories.

To test the bedrock theory I set up a small space at bedrock and set guns at various heights and angles, and spawned in zombies. The guns worked fine even when pointed directly at bedrock.

To test the fast drop theory, I built a tower and tested dropping irradiated wights into a kill pit with three shotgun turrets. When dropped from 10 blocks up, the turrets acted as expected. When dropped from 50, they usually ignored the wights completely (they were alive and running around). For one of the bugged out cases, I tried turning off the power and turning it back on. After doing this a couple of times it worked, but that could be coincidence.

For the final test, I tried putting a vertical wedge tip at 20 blocks up and dropping the wights from 50. Despite the fact that the zombies stopped and stood on wedge tip instead of sliding off as I hoped, the gun turrets were very inconsistent and slow with shooting the zombies once they hit the ground. Note - They shoot almost instantly on zombies spawned in front of them.

So, I’m out of ideas here. Is there a work-around to get turrets to work consistently with deep falls?

 
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I could be wrong, but as far as I know, falling does no damage. If that is the case, what is the benefit of building your fall trap further down than your turrets can reliably target?

 
Falling definitely does damage to the zombies. The low-end zombies all just fall to their deaths in my moat. Any of the "big-guy" zombies will usually survive the fall, but be pretty beat up. Irradiated and ferals....they're not going to care so much.

-Morloc

 
I could be wrong, but as far as I know, falling does no damage. If that is the case, what is the benefit of building your fall trap further down than your turrets can reliably target?
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Fall traps do quite a bit of damage and will kill the weaker zombies outright if high enough. I built it to reduce ammo consumption on horde nights (game was becoming 7 days to gather ammo), since a lot of the zombies don't survive the fall and many that do are severely weakened.

 
At what height does it start? I don't really see any damage at say 10 blocks, which kills the player, so if it doesn't break the legs of zombies that makes zero sense to me.

 
At what height does it start? I don't really see any damage at say 10 blocks, which kills the player, so if it doesn't break the legs of zombies that makes zero sense to me.
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I haven't tested it specifically but several Youtubers have, including Vedui at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKXx5kTA0Ro, it turns out to that really weak 100HP zombies will die at about 20 blocks, others need more height and some won't die no matter how high they are.

Also, I changed the configuration of my guns in test by lowering them from 6 blocks above the kill floor to 4 blocks above and they now seem to be firing more consistently. Guess I'll have to try it in my actual play-through and see what happens on horde night.

 
That is interesting. I guess I made the incorrect assumption that if it isn't killing them or at least breaking their legs at triple the height it does me it must not be working. A mistake at 15 blocks up = death. I think it was alpha 9 where the fall damage was the most realistic. More realistic fall damage and gore blocks back would be great in my opinion.

 
I kind of like the changes with each version, it keeps things fresh. I guess the trick is to make the fall trap as deep as possible to maximize fall damage, but not so deep as to cause the turrets to malfunction. I just wish I knew the cause so I could calibrate it with something other than trial and error.

Update: In my test (creative mode) game I had some luck with the guns firing more consistently with a 50 block fall once I lowered them to 4 blocks above killing floor. I lowered the guns in my play through to the same height but they still would not fire during the day 77 blood moon. The difference could be due to fall height (70 or so in my play through), frame rate (lag caused by horde vs 1 or 2 zombies), or something else. Dart traps/electric fence/tripwire is an OK substitute but they make for a cluttered killing floor. I would really like to get a work-around for turrets.

 
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