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Author Topic: Mob Farm Conundrum (warning: math!)  (Read 4819 times)

Offline Zerop

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Mob Farm Conundrum (warning: math!)
« Opened on May 17, 2020, 02:38:13 PM »
So I built a creeper farm with the hoppers collecting the kill at y=62. The farm is in the air with a 33 block drop and 10 spawning platforms above that, putting the roof at y = 125.

So the well-understood mechanics of Minecraft put a spawning sphere around the player at 128 blocks (euclidean - meaning the Pythagorean theorem will work when calculating a distance between two points). Inside of 24 blocks, nothing spawns - so there is a chance to spawn a mob from 24 to 128 blocks from the player.

Despawning begins to occur at 32 blocks. A greater percentage chance the further away from the player the mob is until finally at 128 blocks despawning is 100%.

So given all that information, Y=190 is 128 blocks from Y=62 (the hopper/kill area). If I stand there or any higher, the creeper will despawn before it is killed. Alternatively if I stand close to the farm, I'm bringing the ground more and more into that spawning sphere of 128 blocks (and any holes/caves that may exists underground) so the chance of mob spawns outside of the farm increase, reducing efficiency.

So I put a AFK platform at Y = 187, which puts me just inside the 128 limit in order to minimize any ground spawning and virtually eliminate any UNDERground spawning.

But when I stand on this platform, the farm won't work. In THEORY it should, but it doesn't. All the tutorials also put AFK platforms just inside that 128 limit as well. What am I missing here?

Other notes:
  • The PS field has mob spawning allowed
  • I know server mob cap is a thing but I think given the theory above, it should at least work slightly better if I reduce the chance of outside-the-farm spawning in my loaded chunks.
  • The farm works, I'm just trying to get it to work a bit better.

Offline Goimir

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Re: Mob Farm Conundrum (warning: math!)
« Reply #1 on July 03, 2020, 10:15:11 AM »
If you stand above the farm high enough to cause spawns, the base is too far from you and mobs will despawn.  Forna gunpowder farm, you need to stand within 32 blocks of the base.

33 blocks is a really long drop.  22 blocks will leave mobs with half a heart, and 23 blocks will kill them, unless you get a mob wearing feather fall boots.  So if we move the platform of their demise up 10 blocks, that will help some.

Now, as far as where you can stand, you want to be within 32 blocks of the platform.  And you want to be at least 24 blocks away from the spawning area.  2 blocks below the platform will accomplish both of these.