PC Hang walkways from ceiling

[ungkor]

I saw a video of a team that dug a 4x4 tunnel straight down to bedrock, and then excavated a large cave.   Hanging from the ceiling of the cave was a platform that they could walk around on, and shoot zombies that dropped down into it.  

I decided to try it, but it keeps falling apart.  

Do blocks coming down from a ceiling have a different weight bearing mechanic?

 

[theFlu]

Different? No, not technically.

Practically, you're going to have harder time trying to figure out what is actually supporting; only the blocks with support from bedrock will behave well.

A practical tip, dig some support blocks into the walls, make them steel and make the first one hanging also steel; rest can be stone (concrete) for lesser load.

N....

N....

SSxxx

N....

N....

BBBBB

 

 

N = natural stone

S = steel

x = structure blocks, steel, concrete, whatnot

. = air

B = bedrock

(What's up with these line spaces... they thicc)

 

[Boidster]

From your bottom picture, it looks like only the (natural rock) block in green has any support. It doesn't look like anything is holding up the steel or concrete blocks next to it (red arrow). There is no "stickyness" to ceiling blocks - it all just adds weight to the nearest bedrock-supported block, as theFlu said.

 

[ungkor]

Thank you.  I ended up embedding the horizontal sections of my "floating" platform in the walls, and it held up fine.

Unfortunately, my next horde night on day 154, zero zombies dropped down the tunnel.   I waited on my platform until morning, and there were no signs of zombie action.   I flew around the area and saw no signs of digging. 

I'm kinda confused at the moment.  It is like I completely cancelled a deep game horde night.   Odd.

 

[Dethar]

Thank you.  I ended up embedding the horizontal sections of my "floating" platform in the walls, and it held up fine.

Unfortunately, my next horde night on day 154, zero zombies dropped down the tunnel.   I waited on my platform until morning, and there were no signs of zombie action.   I flew around the area and saw no signs of digging. 

I'm kinda confused at the moment.  It is like I completely cancelled a deep game horde night.   Odd.

If they can't see you they won't drop down.

 

[Boidster]

But they oughta dig. They gots GPS on horde night. Ungkor you didn't happen to use the settime console command to give yourself extra time to rebuild, did you? I've noticed that that will confuse the 'next horde night' counter if you use it after you are actually on the horde day.

 

[ungkor]

But they oughta dig. They gots GPS on horde night. Ungkor you didn't happen to use the settime console command to give yourself extra time to rebuild, did you? I've noticed that that will confuse the 'next horde night' counter if you use it after you are actually on the horde day.

Nope.  I handled earlier horde nights in my other bases while I continued to work on the underground one.   It is near a lake.   I wonder if they were digging underwater.  

   I can't find the video of the team that created this design, but maybe they had someone up top as bait so the zombies would drop down.   I'm not sure how I could get them to see me if I'm on the platforms below.    I suppose I could widen the drop tunnel so I could stand on the edge of the platforms and perhaps the zombies could look down and see me.  

Or just spend a really long time completely opening the entire pit up to the surface, and then putting covers over the walkways with angled roofs that the zombies would slide off.  

 

[FileMachete]

@ungkor, that seems weird. The console &/or logs might show if the horde was spawned.

Something like this from the logs in C:\Steam\SteamApps\common\7 Days To Die\7DaysToDie_Data ;

2020-05-09T05:16:21 439.247 INF BloodMoon starting for day 56
2020-05-09T05:16:21 439.251 INF Party with 1 player(s) has a computed game stage of 229
2020-05-09T05:16:21 439.251 INF Party members:
2020-05-09T05:16:21 439.251 INF Player id 171 gameStage: 229
2020-05-09T05:16:21 439.284 INF BloodMoonParty: SpawnZombie grp 0 feralHordeStageGS210 (count 0, numToSpawn 309, maxAlive 70), cnt 1 zombieMarleneFeral, at player 171, day/time 56 22:00
2020-05-09T05:16:22 440.256 INF BloodMoonParty: SpawnZombie grp 0 feralHordeStageGS210 (count 1, numToSpawn 309, maxAlive 70), cnt 2 zombieSkateboarder, at player 171, day/time 56 22:00

 

[ungkor]

About 20 zombies did eventually show up on day 155, 3:23am.   I have no idea where they were hiding.   I looked down mine shafts, underwater, etc.   I'll stumble across where they were digging someday I guess.

In the meantime, I put 1/8 blocks in a spiral staircase down the drop tunnel.   That might encourage them to try to go down the tunnel and fall. 

 

[redneckraccoon]

I wonder if your pit is too deep for the reason they aren't falling in. At a certain point I think the AI would start thinking the fastest route is to just dig at an angle to you from where they spawn. I'm assuming your pit's shaft is 30+ blocks deep? I try to keep my pit shafts under 10, but the whole pit itself could be 20+.  I have been trying to create a pure above ground base of late due to I got sick of zombies just randomly start digging 

 

[Ti2xGr]

From what I've experienced, If there is a group of zombies digging down/over, more won't spawn in until the first group either despawns or is killed. You probably just had some randomly digging to get down to you and it took almost the whole night for them to reach you. 

 

[ungkor]

I wonder if your pit is too deep for the reason they aren't falling in. At a certain point I think the AI would start thinking the fastest route is to just dig at an angle to you from where they spawn. I'm assuming your pit's shaft is 30+ blocks deep? I try to keep my pit shafts under 10, but the whole pit itself could be 20+.  I have been trying to create a pure above ground base of late due to I got sick of zombies just randomly start digging 

Well, I did see an alpha 18 video of a pit dug down to bedrock that was certainly over 30 blocks deep.  The zombies reliably fell down the shaft to bedrock.   I'm playing alpha 17, so maybe something is different?

Night 170'ish (whatever the blood moon is around that date) I did get some zombies falling down the shaft after I put those 1/8 blocks in a spiral down from the top.   For the next blood moon, I created a staircase all the way from ground level, to one block above the vertical shaft.   I did get a split of zombies falling down the shaft, and coming down the stairs and falling down the shaft.

However, I found that once they hit bedrock, they were running all over, and digging tunnels into the walls.   I couldn't kill them fast enough, and eventually they were dropping down, and running into the tunnels they dug, and eventually worked their way back up, and dropped down on my walkways... it was... interesting.  Not efficient at all.

I'm going to go back to my killing corridor design.  Its boring, but it works really well. 

 

[Grolbu]

I had a base like this in one playthrough, even with hordes cranked right up to 64 they were so easy it was actually kind of boring  The walkways were hung from steel beams that went 2 blocks into the rock at each end and there was a walkway a couple of blocks wide around the top of the pit that was (I think) 9 blocks above the floor - I dug through the xml to find the blast radius of a demolisher and put the walkway two blocks higher than that. There were a couple of smg turrets pointing down into the pit, if I was on my own for a horde I'd turn those on but if I had friends in my game for the turkey shoot someone would stand on the walkway as bait and we'd just run around the ledge raining lead, mollys and grenades down into the pit.

I found that zombies started by trying to get on the same coordinates as me up on the surface and worried about getting to my level after that. So I made the bottom of the shaft 4x4 where it opened into the pit, and had a walkway that let me stand 2 blocks away from it- that's 'the bait' to get them in. The top of the shaft was 7x7 and used several layers of wedge tips and bases to narrow it down to 4x4, so the point on the surface above my walkway was in the funnel and once the zombies got there they were mine - with the SMGs running and me tossing down mollys and grenades even with 64 zombie hordes I was killing them as fast as they could spawn and even by day 70 the horde ran out of zombies just after midnight.