Zombie block damage on poles

[Hollowprime]

It has come to my attention that zombies deal 6 times more damage to poles than to other blocks.

 

Is this true? Does it apply to all poles? Do zombies deal more damage on certain blocks compared to other blocks? Where can I review the full info of such an important detail that is hidden from the player base?

[Hollowprime]

So I've tested this with wooden/cobble/brick poles and it's true! I've also tried this with CENTERED poles and I was surprised they get no extra damage.

 

In short poles are made out of paper while centered poles are actual blocks.

[180Shauny]

I reckon this is because everyone uses poles to help exploit zombie AI with fall traps and such. They're hoping when the zombies go into rage mode they'll take a pole out quickly and break the pathing the player has set up.

This is in addition to their civil engineering degrees and encyclopedic knowledge of block hit points to help them find weak points.

[meganoth]

Fataal said a day ago: "Zombies do x6 damage when stuck and they decide to attack what is blocking them. Those are generally block colliders that only collide on the edges, which are not seen by pathing."

 

Now the interesting question is: Did people who wanted to test this strangeness take measures to make zombies get stuck, so as to make sure the zombies have to hit the poles ? Then that would explain it.

Or did they not and zombies get stuck much more often than anyone (especially the developers) think?

[theFlu]

I'll extrapolate a bit:

"Not seen by pathing" = all the things zombies can't path properly. Poles included.

"Stuck" = "trying to walk/run, but not changing position" as in, trying to walk through a pole.

 

That would mean when the AI tries to walk through any pole, it'll consider itself stuck.

 

Doesn't explain why the half block trick would work then, but maybe that's a bug in the opposite direction, say the altitude changes via some "animation + rounding" issues on the Z-axis or whatever... and it doesn't realize being stuck.

[dcsobral]

Fataal said a day ago: "Zombies do x6 damage when stuck and they decide to attack what is blocking them. Those are generally block colliders that only collide on the edges, which are not seen by pathing."

 

Now the interesting question is: Did people who wanted to test this strangeness take measures to make zombies get stuck, so as to make sure the zombies have to hit the poles ? Then that would explain it.

Or did they not and zombies get stuck much more often than anyone (especially the developers) think?

 

That reminds me of an exploit posted long ago, where a player would make "walls" out of poles in the ground. The player walks over them just fine, but the zombies would try to path around them instead. I wonder if the pole issue is related to the fix to that. As in, zombies don't see poles anymore, so they walk over them, but do 6x more damage as well.