Bows for turtles + tracking - don't hurt me

So firstly, let's get the basic idea out of the way (this part has probably been suggested a hundred times before);
Turtles should be able to have bows and fire arrows, that's pretty simple.

just selecting a slot with arrows in it and doing turtle.attack() will fire an arrow.
However, the more complex part comes in the tracking, the arrows should be crafted by using 1 arrow + 1 wireless modem (or more arrows) and getting like 16 tracking arrows.

These tracking arrows can then be fired and will transmit their final location, or nil if they don't have a final location after a certain amount of time, to the turtle which fired it. The turtle then gets a new event (like "tracker_pos") which has the paramters:
event, {x,y,z}, arrow_id
on attack when firing an arrow should have a second return, true/false depending on whether it fired and the id of the tracking arrow if relevant.

This could help add basic vision to turtles at a significant cost, but it could mean that they could fire arrows on delay until something like a tree has spawned and interrupts it, it then goes and sucks up the arrow(s) and chops down the tree.

Is this a good or bad idea?

Yay for being able to use objects like a dispenser does, lolwut for tracking arrows. I…suppose…that could be….

I have no idea what to make of it. If a projectile does hit a mob it will be destroyed, normally.

That's the point; If it hits a mob it will be destroyed, or ignored if it isn't, and will work like a normal arrow.
And are you suggesting that you carry around a dispenser with your turtle, make the turtle place the dispenser, but an arrow in it, send a red stone pulse then destroy and pick up the dispenser? There is so much wrong with that.

The tracker is to enhance turtle movement, instead of walking x times forwards to find there's something in the way it fire's an arrow and waits for it's return.
It's not to let it follow mobs around…

There's nothing wrong with placing a dispenser and using it…except that it's better to have the dispenser triggered by something that can detect a mob. The idea of having the turtle shoot arrows that then send a rednet message back to the turtle is just…very different from the usual arrow suggestion.

You sound surprised that there's a vague amount of originality in this suggestion; the usage of the bow was only suggested as there doesn't seem to be another way you could use tracker arrows.

The idea is quite fun but…
1.I prefer Turtle with Bow to be able to .aim( a, b );
2.Giving id to individual arrow is bad imho;
3.Arrow cannot know it's coordinates, so only mindless ping possible. This means you have only distance and should calculate coords yourself.

I think that I would like turtles to be crafted using a dispenser and be capable of most of the things dispensers are capable of with some additional tricks (I've always been in favor of this, really). Which is to say, I would like the act of throwing a projectile when attempting to place it to be default behavior for all turtles.

I suppose that the idea of a tracking device projectile is, to me, somewhat separate. It is an idea with somewhat more limited appeal, but definitely seems like a way to get some reasonable use out of a dispenser/shooting functionality for turtles. But it probably should only give a ping, yielding only distance info.

I think the idea of a tracking arrow just doesn't "fit minecraft, imo I think turtles should have a vision function, and you could control the bows angle and firepower with simple coding, for example, you could have a program that opens the turtle vision, and there could be four positions going up down and left right for the turtle. Say you want the position of the bow to be at pos 2 for left,right, and pos 4 at up,down, you would code in if (param for up arrow) is detected, set position +1 up,down. then you click and hold for fire power, (and optional coding if you want to be able to move the turtle.)

Topic is old. Thanks for searching, though.

Locked.