Lightning rod protection

[keda]

If I've understood the current mechanics correctly, the lightning rod doesn't fully protect any surrounding area except in combination with other lightning rods or blocks although it can significantly reduce the chance of a building to be hit, it doesn't on it's own eliminate the possibility within it's supposed area of protection.

This is because it checks for surrounding blocks within a radius of 16 blocks higher, and switches to that location if found and attempts the same thing again, and then for a lightning rod within 32 blocks, and so if the lightning rod is just outside that last attempt, it could strike the building it is on top of, if the building is taller than anything else in that last area it checks.

To fully protect an area, you would have to place them out in a grid of lightning rods up to 64 blocks apart or 32 with a pillar of blocks with no part of a building outside the grid.

If the lightning rod or any pillar of block is suppose to protect a surrounding area fully by itself, I would suggest not stopping at 2 attempts but keep going recursively until no higher block or lightning rod can be found within the area valid for each respectively. Of course this would mean the lightning could climb up a very long distance, such as a very large pyramid, but every block except the top block of that pyramid should be protected shouldn't it?

[gaga654]

Lightning rods definitely do (and always have) fully protect everything in a certain radius around them, since the game only checks for a lightning rod after choosing the final location to strike. A single cobble pillar is still not sufficient, this has been noted on github https://github.com/BTW-Community/BTW-Public/issues/373 so the devs are aware and thinking about how to fix it. Until then, without lightning rods you just have to use the old method of putting several pillars on top of and around the building. Or play on relaxed mode where lightning doesn't start fire :)

[keda]

Lightning rods definitely do (and always have) fully protect everything in a certain radius around them, since the game only checks for a lightning rod after choosing the final location to strike. A single cobble pillar is still not sufficient, this has been noted on github https://github.com/BTW-Community/BTW-Public/issues/373 so the devs are aware and thinking about how to fix it. Until then, without lightning rods you just have to use the old method of putting several pillars on top of and around the building. Or play on relaxed mode where lightning doesn't start fire :)

Having a second look, you are right; it definitively does provide full protection, although this is only because it only checks for lightning rods in the last pass ignoring other blocks, so it can't just jump to a higher non-lightning rod block right next to a lightning rod that lies just outside the area it's checking.

Regardless if ordinary pillars of blocks are supposed to also give full protection in a smaller area, then it would have to be done recursively (or iteratively) always checking for potentially higher blocks or abort the lightning altogether or restart from a new random location, so those are some other suggestions I came up with.