Originally posted by Doc_Holliday:
Originally posted by Crater Creator: You could put a 2-block-high wall around the perimeter of your base, up at surface level. I know that stretches the definition of “underground base,” but I think it would discourage the zombies from digging by interrupting their flow, which is
1) Get directly on top of you
2) Dig down
Also, be aware that zombie pathing doesn’t consider if a door is open or not.
So it's pretty much which was is either the least difficult or the quickest. I know that sounds the same, but one way may be easier, but takes the longest time while another is shorter, but is more difficult. For example, pathing around down the ramp and into the horde room of my base would be the quickest, but will the zombies just start digging if they believe it's a shorter distance to dig right above me?
So, it’s based on the A* pathfinding algorithm. The game is setting a path weight for every voxel of space, based on what’s there: dirt, air, concrete at 30% damage, whatever. Then each zombie looks up what the shortest-weight path to their destination (you) is.
I would assume air must have some weight, since it takes some time to travel across air even though it’s much faster than traveling ‘through’ dirt. That means that there’s some threshold where it’s too many air blocks to traverse, so the zombie gives up on your ramp and digs down to you instead. But without knowing the numbers, I don’t know what that threshold would be.
The surface wall idea would be to add path weight to the route of getting over you and digging down. If they have to go through some blocks to get over on top of you, instead of just walking over flat ground, then hopefully that would be enough to prefer your ramp.
You could do what I do sometimes, and test your design in a debug/creative mode world so building resources are free.
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