21 hours ago, Unamelable said:I'm focusing on automated defence since I personally play solo. Of course you can create an example where it would be easier to do damage yourself. But that would be irrelevant since you have 4 sides and you focus on one of them.
About the switch to traps - it will only work during blood moon. But you also need to realize that the game has events where we can be attacked by a pack of dogs, zombie migration, or just a couple of annoying screamers. Therefore, we need to think about passive and active defence. Of course you can create a special defence where the zombies won't do damage to the blocks, and will just fall down. But this is more of an exploit than a good defence. And we don't take this method into account.
Ideally you can try to make a standing defence that will be protected by turrets, blades and a fence. But the principle will be a little different. And it will technically cost less to renovate since you will have to renovate pillars and the main floor. On this plan you can see that cross-defense has been done on both sides. The triggers are the same motion sensors. The energy efficiency has been reduced to 73W. And most likely two gens will be enough to power all the circuits.
This defence is vulnerable to collapse as it stands on pillars. And the least of the problems is the look of the structure, because it looks really ridiculous. I found a block that prevents the player from falling down. And allows you to shoot through it. Only it's gonna make the building look even uglier. But hey, we want the defence to be effective, right? It's starting to look like an exploit, though.
Notes on these two images...
If you want to build on stilts/pillars, you can certainly do so. There are ways to increase strength of such a build that are good to consider if you choose this route, though. A single 1x1 pillar is weak. Even when you have multiple spaced around the base like this, they're going to be broken quickly and your base will collapse. If you want smaller pillars, use 4 corner poles and rotate them so they appear to be a single pole. This gives a 2x2 of support without looking much different. Or if you want to use cube blocks for a pillar, you can add a plate to each side of the pillar, making it 3x3 (with corners missing) without it looking really any different from one stack of cubes. These will greatly increase the strength of your base and reduce the chance of it collapsing. HOWEVER, if you do not make a path where the zombies can reach you, they will go after your pillars and will eventually bring you down unless you're able to kill them quickly enough to prevent it. And that's usually not going to work well. So it's best to always have a path to you.
If you want to have flooring you can shoot through and see through, just use the railing shape. They work very well.