How Do You Stop Your Animals from Dying by Lightning?

[Jessie Poulton]

Three times...

Three times, I've had my chickens get murdered by lightning...while they're inside a building that I made for them. I put a lightning rod nearby in hopes that it would direct the bolt somewhere else, but it's clearly not close enough to prevent my work from being destroyed. 

My first attempt to stop this was the building I made, then when that didn't work, the lightning rod and dirt just below the fire clay shingle roof in hopes that this bug is just caused by lightning penetrating anything but dirt. I got hit in my own home too, which prompted the dirt attempt. As seen below...lighting just doesn't care. This is kind of turning me away from animal husbandry, since the area I'm in has a lot of rain, and I don't wanna move locations.

There's little information about the lightning rods sadly, so I don't even know if having them on the ground makes it less effective.

 

I'm on 1.7.10, with the following mods:
 

A Culinary Artillery
Carry On
Expanded Foods
Lichen
Primitive Survival
Medieval Expansion
ProspectorInfo. 

Although, I experienced this before I downloaded ProspectorInfo, and even though I'm unsure if any of the other mods could affect weather, I highly doubt they do.

If anyone knows a solution to this, it would be greatly appreciated. These were third gen chickens, so all that work is heckin' gone and it's demotivating. And with Winter banging on my doorstep (currently passed the midway point of September on the 30 days a month setting), I'm afraid that I won't be getting eggs without having to wrangle wild chickens every time a bad lightning storm hits.
 

[Rhyagelle]

I don't know it would work on the ground, because if they are near the blast, they will probably still die. I always put a rod high up near them, or anything I don't want struck. Just make a fancy tower going up and then put the rod on top.  

[Ogi Teh yeti]

Personally no idea how to help you with this as I've never even had lightning strike anything near me, so I'm amazed it happened like 3 times to you.

That said I agree that most likely the lightning rod is meant to be up high but I wouldn't know, sorry.

[dakko]

Lightning rods in real life are meant to be up high (so that they are the highest point on top of a roof, for instance). They don't prevent a lightning strike, but they do provide a pathway for the electrical charge to go into the ground so that it does not cause harm.

I imagine the lightning rods in VS work much the same but in a simplified form (it doesn't require a full metal pathway into the ground).

...so put the lightning rod up higher than the area you'd like to protect.

Edited March 25, 2023 by dakko

[Thorfinn]

Kill 'em before the storm starts.

[Jessie Poulton]

5 hours ago, Rhyagelle said:

I don't know it would work on the ground, because if they are near the blast, they will probably still die. I always put a rod high up near them, or anything I don't want struck. Just make a fancy tower going up and then put the rod on top.  

4 hours ago, Ogi Teh yeti said:

Personally no idea how to help you with this as I've never even had lightning strike anything near me, so I'm amazed it happened like 3 times to you.

That said I agree that most likely the lightning rod is meant to be up high but I wouldn't know, sorry.

4 hours ago, dakko said:

Lightning rods in real life are meant to be up high (so that they are the highest point on top of a roof, for instance). They don't prevent a lightning strike, but they do provide a pathway for the electrical charge to go into the ground so that it does not cause harm.

I imagine the lightning rods in VS work much the same but in a simplified form (it doesn't require a full metal pathway into the ground).

...so put the lightning rod up higher than the area you'd like to protect.

I figured as much. Before I logged off last night, I made a dirt tower and put the rod on the top of it. Whether or not it works better is to be determined, but I sure hope it does. 
 

To address some statements made here, I’d like to say, for Rhyagelle, the rod is definitely more than 8 blocks away from the pen. I heard lightning does an 8 block AOE, which makes sense. As stated above, I built a dirt tower, instead of a fancy one, just in case it doesn’t work. 
 

For Ogi Teh Yeti. Yeah, it has definitely decreased my morale quite a bit. The second time I wrangled a chicken and rooster, I had 3rd gen eggs in the hen boxes, so I was happy to see them hatch. Then I came back to them all dead, restarting my progress. It REALLY sucked. Once I get on today, I’m gonna have to wrangle another pair. I think I’m gonna move my dirt tower on top of the pen, though. 
 

For Dakko, although I probably should have done this in the first place, considering I knew about how these rods work in real life, a lack of wiki info lead me to believe that I might not need to have it high up. And to this point, we still don’t know, since it’s still an assumption. I’m crossing my fingers it does works. 
 

I think, after this has been figured out, a wiki page should definitely be something that needs to be created. There’s probably people going through the same thing, and not knowing what is going on. 
 

That being said, the wiki is actually really astounding. I’m really glad it has a lot of information on things I need help with. I really appreciate the work that has been put into it. It just needs more work on pages that haven’t been worked on yet. 
 

Since this hasn’t been resolved just yet, and it’s only been assumptions of a fix, if anyone else who comes across this thread is able to confirm the information, or has new information to announce, please add your input. It’ll help out greatly. 
 

Thank you. 

[Thorfinn]

So far, I've been good with a lightning rod on the top of a nearby tree. Ladder to get to the top, and that's it. No idea if there just have not been strikes lately, or that works, or what. I have never had the kind of poor luck you had. Then again...

I generally try to site myself in places where there's at least two blocks of dirt, then dig a 2-deep pit to catch livestock. Eventually, when I get enough pigs, sheep and chickens, I'll build a 2-high fence all the way around it to keep bears out, split the critters into their respective pens (no idea whether that's necessary or not, but it does make milking easier), and that's it. The critters are all 2 below mapgen level, if that matters, plus I have lightning rods on the midpoints of the 4 sides of the enclosure. 

My guess is that 15 is the magic number. Stuff within 7 tiles of any block counts for quite a bit in the game, like easily discovered things like bees, so based on nothing at all other than it has not failed yet, I'm thinking a tower 7 away from each edge of the pit, no more than 14 from each other, is enough to cover things. 

[Ogi Teh yeti]

If you are fine with using commands, there is the /debug setgen command if I'm remembering it correctly, which lets you change the generation of the animal you are looking at so you could go into creative, spawn a new breeding set, setgen them to 3 or so. 

If you type /help debug setgen it should tell you how to do it if you want to, just so you can sort of get back on your feet in a sense. Just a thought.

[Rhyagelle]

If you're certain that lightning strikes could not have hit the chickens/animals, then maybe something else happened to them, or perhaps even a bug. But I think that if the lightning hit the roof of dirt, the chickens would have been hit. I've been hit in dirt huts while I wait out storms before. Not a lot, but enough to know they aren't fool proof. I'm not sure if that's intended, though. 

[Jessie Poulton]

21 hours ago, Ogi Teh yeti said:

If you are fine with using commands, there is the /debug setgen command if I'm remembering it correctly, which lets you change the generation of the animal you are looking at so you could go into creative, spawn a new breeding set, setgen them to 3 or so. 

If you type /help debug setgen it should tell you how to do it if you want to, just so you can sort of get back on your feet in a sense. Just a thought.

The only command I was really okay with using was the command to be able to use the other prospecting option. I do appreciate this knowledge, though, and if I get bored or something, I’ll use the command. 

 

22 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

So far, I've been good with a lightning rod on the top of a nearby tree. Ladder to get to the top, and that's it. No idea if there just have not been strikes lately, or that works, or what. I have never had the kind of poor luck you had. Then again...

I generally try to site myself in places where there's at least two blocks of dirt, then dig a 2-deep pit to catch livestock. Eventually, when I get enough pigs, sheep and chickens, I'll build a 2-high fence all the way around it to keep bears out, split the critters into their respective pens (no idea whether that's necessary or not, but it does make milking easier), and that's it. The critters are all 2 below mapgen level, if that matters, plus I have lightning rods on the midpoints of the 4 sides of the enclosure. 

My guess is that 15 is the magic number. Stuff within 7 tiles of any block counts for quite a bit in the game, like easily discovered things like bees, so based on nothing at all other than it has not failed yet, I'm thinking a tower 7 away from each edge of the pit, no more than 14 from each other, is enough to cover things. 

I was contemplating doing the technique of making a hole, and I might do it in the future. I have a pen that’s connected to the henhouse, which I have been using (as of yesterday) to capture the chickens more easily. I just break a piece of the fence, run them into the pen, then place the fence and get them into the hole that connects to the inside. I’ll definitely keep the hole idea in mind, though, if I get tired of doing the pen trick or do a new playthrough.

 

15 hours ago, Rhyagelle said:

If you're certain that lightning strikes could not have hit the chickens/animals, then maybe something else happened to them, or perhaps even a bug. But I think that if the lightning hit the roof of dirt, the chickens would have been hit. I've been hit in dirt huts while I wait out storms before. Not a lot, but enough to know they aren't fool proof. I'm not sure if that's intended, though. 

I definitely have confidence in the fact that lightning killed them. The only animal that has appeared near that henhouse which would be able to kill the chickens were foxes, but I’m so active around my base, I usually end up chasing them off. The appearance of the fox is rare too, since I chase them off far away. And they usually die after a storm that hits the base. So, yeah, it’s has to be the lightning. XD 

I do believe that the assumption of it not being intended is correct, by the way. There might be an oversight in the coding for lightning, where it doesn’t check to see if there’s something obstructing the AOE. I haven’t attempted to look at the coding, but I have a feeling the coding just outputs an AOE, and doesn’t execute a search function for an obstruction, followed by denying that area beyond the obstruction to being affected. Do a little bit of “if” and “else” action in the coding. Obviously, there’s more to it than that, like if it hits a one or two block high wall, and there’s no roof on either side, it shouldn’t stop the surrounding empty blocks from being hit. Either way, it’s a good assumption that this problem is caused by an oversight in the coding. 

[Ivan Stamenov]

TLDR... As far as I remember, the lightning strike has an 8 block AOE radius. When placing the lightning rod, be sure that there is nothing flammable/killable within 9 blocks around it.