Removing an Infestation with Turtles

I am attempting to create an underground network of caves as my base. I have multiple Mining Turtles ('Miners') carving out rooms, but this is where I hit my snag.

Bats.

Pesky little rodents are too hard to kill by hand, so I want to send a Melee Turtle ('Death Machine') to clear them out. Problem is, I've never used a 'Death Machine', so I have no idea what to do. I also have no idea how to write a program, as I typically use "Tunnel __" or "Excavate __".

Can anyone help me write an "Exterminate" program please?

Bats move too fast and unpredicatably for turtles to chase down, let alone kill. Either way it would be A LOT faster to just kill them by hand.

If the room is large enough, one option may be to write a turtle program to place torches so that no portion of the volume is dark enough to let them spawn. I think it would then be a simple matter of walking far enough away, since I think bats despawn when far enough from all players.

Apart from the above innovation…Good idea btw Lyqyd. The only way I've found for a turtle to detect if there is a mob ahead of it to kill involves testing for a false return from the turtle.detect functions and turtle.move functions. With that in mind the turtle would have to check each and every block until you told it you didn't find and mobs left for it to kill. The fuel alone would run your operation into the ground. Unless I'm totally off-base here lol.

The only solution to even consider here would be using a sensore turtle(openP or OCS mod). Which could detect mobs within a set range, i forgot what their respective ranges are however. But it's still a silly endeavour, and quite frankly a complete waste of time.

you could just program it to go around the entire room and kill it. but just letting them despawn is better and less stressful.

Thanks everyone.