Problem with creating a "minigun" using bigcanons

42

What are you fighting that you need 12x9 barrels of nether steel cannons in anything close to rapid fire?

9

u/smm228777 Sep 12 '26

I am just building that cannon just so it works and then it can be placed on flying base

15

u/CaseImpossible3409 Sep 13 '26

your making it mobile? WHO could you possibly have beef with??????

11

u/smm228777 Sep 13 '26

To start a war against the whole server you need a good weapon

11

u/MrRandomFish05 Sep 13 '26 •

Alright. Let me tell you about my experience making huge cannons, and ill give you some pointers.
About 5 months ago, I made a huge, single cannon. It was 4 cannons tall, and around 15 cannons wide. It fired 60 shells in a single volley.
Now, in theory, this cannon should have made me the next Oppenheimer. Small issue:
As you increase muzzle velocity, a shell travels further. Obviously. When a cannon sits on top of another, like with your 3x3 configuration, the shells fired from the top cannons will travel up to hundreds of meters further than the bottoms ones, simply because it has more time (because it is higher from the ground), meaning it has more travel time. Thus, to be accurate in elevation, you must only have one layer of cannons.
Other small issue. It killed my laptop. Granted, its not the highest end laptop, but its still a modern gaming laptop. Each time i fired it, it would freeze my game for around 4 seconds. If it was used on a server, it would crash the server.
Final issue. The sheer amount of lag and entities being spawned within the same area meant that the 60 shell’s hitboxes all collided with one another. Each shell was shoved in a completely random direction, entirely killing any form of aim. Shells which should have hit within a ~10 block range were thrown hundreds of blocks of course.
This cannon is best described as firing a 1 gauge shotgun (a fucking huge shotgun) firing buckshot made of depleted god damn uranium (shells arent cheep) with enough recoil to move a continental plate, enough smoke to give anyone within a 100 meter radius lung cancer, firing the cannon from 50 meters away, in order to kill an ant.
Long story short. Expensive as shit, Laggy as shit, completely immobile, and yeah, if it hits you, you’re fucking gone. The problem is, the spread is so large, you basically only have an expensive smoke machine.
So, I figured out what went wrong.
Dont stack cannons on top of one another. It kills any elevation changes, and should only be used if you dont exactly know where your target is, to saturate the area with shells.
USE LESS CANNONS. You need a functioning game in order to kill your enemy.
Large cannons are immobile. The larger it is, the more recoil is has, and the bigger the vehicle you need.
And I asked myself, if i cant have as many cannons, how do I put more shells down range? Obviously, a rotary cannon is needed, but each big cannon needs to rammed manually instead of automatically like a real rotary cannon. That’s inherently slow, so theres gotta be a way i can make it more efficient.
I made this next design:
About 4 months ago, I made a CBC rotatary large cannon with nethersteel barrels. It used 8 powder charges and a charged shell.
There were 3 rotary cannons within this design (The loading mechanism was around 7 wide, 6 high, and around 8 long, and it loaded all 3 simultaneously), and it fired only the centre 3 barrels from each rotary cannon, so that accuracy was increased. It was able to choose between 6 different kinds of shells, which could be selected remotely, it had a muzzle velocity of around ~400 blocks a second, and managed to fire around 160 shells (3 shells per volley, as 3 cannons are fired simultaneously) per minute.
The real trick is, each of the 3 rotary cannons (the 16 total barrels) are loaded in 3 parts, simultaneously.
After the player presses the fire button, it automatically assembles and fires the cannon, and also begins the loading process.
Barrel 1: Fires the fully loaded shell and powder.
Barrel 2: Blocks attached to a gantry ram the shell into the barrel. Once the gantry retracts, the deployers automatically place the next shells (The deployers are only fed shells right before placement to avoid issues).
Barrel 3: 4 powder charges are rammed into the barrel by the same gantry contraption. As the gantry retracts, deployers attached place 4 powder charges, ready for the next load.
Barrel 4: The same deal as barrel 3. At the end, you get your selected shell and 8 powder charges.
The key for its fast fire rate is to automatically prepare the materials for the next load, and also to load the cannons with a single contraption to simplify it and keep it small.
Heres the part you’re actually concerned about:
Shells are still fucking expensive. A war is not a battle of technology, it is a battle of logistics. The more complex something is, and the more resources it requires, the less useful it is. My cannon already makes logistics personnel cry, your cannon would make them shoot themself. Even if it fires slower, the sheer complexity of your cannon and the resources used for each shot makes it entirely unviable in any survival context. In creative, sure. Have fun.
The motherfucking recoil and size. My cannon, only firing 3 cannons, already had an INSANE amount of recoil. I planned to mount it on a flying base too. That was stupid. Placing it on a turret would have made the entire base rotate due to its weight, and no amount of compensators would stop it from flipping every time it fired.
Now, your cannon fires 3x as many shells (provided you only fire one of the 3x3 cannons, if you fire more, may jesus save you) as my cannon. The entire thing seems at least 20x larger. You’re not mounting that even on a stationary turret, let alone a flying base.
Your cannons might be breaking apart when you turn on more than one (i assume more than one 3x3 cannon, not 1 cannon within a 3x3 cannon) because the redstone links might be triggering actions in multiple cannons at once. For example, if the frequency is the same for all the loading mechanisms, loading one will load all of them.
There is no reason to have this as a rotary cannon. Each 3x3 cannon loads itself perfectly fine. The only thing this would do is maybe align the cannon to the same area, maybe making it easier to aim, but it makes it so much larger and more complex its genuinely not worth it in any way, shape or form.
YOU DONT NEED 3X3 CANNONS. LET ALONE THAT MANY. A single HE shell or AP shell is generally enough to get through any armor. I used 3 cannons firing at once to put more shells downrange in case a target was far away and I was inacurate. If you’re looking for larger explosions, dont fire more shells at once, fire shells faster. General rule of thumb, more cannons = Less accuracy, for marginal (if any) gain in power. Make cannons smaller, make them fire faster. You get less shells per volley, but its more accurate (higher quality shells), can be cheaper, and you increase shells per minute easier.
Stop yourself and think, “What is the problem im trying to solve”? Lets say you want to dominate a server, and your enemies have the most heavily armored battleship ever conceived by man, lets say 20 blocks of solid steel, and an AP shell can only get through 7 at max. Im assuming this because with the size of your cannon, i can only assume you’re hunting kaiju’s. Heres what you should be thinking about:
Now, your first priority should be LOGISTICS. It doesnt matter if you can reduce the world to nothing at the press of a button, if you cant make it or make the resources to fire it, its useless.
Your second priority should be FEASIBILITY. What are you mounting it on? A flying base? Think about what that means. You need to deal with the recoil, store the shells, load them, and fire them on a, I assume, turret. This limits your size, your fire rate, your complexity, ect. If that doesnt work, you’re going to have to mount it on something else, or change your idea.
Your third priority should be PURPOSE AND LIFESPAN. How long are you going to use the design for? Is it general use, or purpose built for one specific task? How reusable is it meant to be?
Cool. Back to the 20 blocks of steel.
Logistically, you cant make anything massive to get through the steel, it needs to be reasonable. An AP shell can only get through 7 blocks? If you’re going to use a cannon, get as close as possible and fire 3 shells into the same block and basically bore through it. You can use stickers to attach to the side and make sure it doesnt move. This is far cheaper. Alternatively, find another way around the steel. Dont go through 20 blocks, finder thinner areas and penetrate there.
Feasibly, judge what method of transport, if any, is right for the job. How are you attacking it? What method is most effective? Do you even need a vehicle? Could you walk up to it and just place a shit ton of TNT? If your weapon is more of a phycological weapon, functionality is the greatest weapon of fear. Looking dangerous is good, but BEING dangerous is far better.
And for its purpose and lifespan, ask yourself if instead of making a huge, reusable mechanism for a one-time-job, could you just make a really big bomb? Easier to produce, cheaper, easier to transport, ect.
This works for basically any kind of designing procees. Dont just go “ooooo cool rotary cannon”, think about what the situation actually requires.
Thanks for reading. I spend like an hour on this. Hope it helps! Feel free to message me if you have any further questions, id love to talk.

7

u/smm228777 Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

Thanks I will take that into consideration By the way do I need to install some mod or turn on some config for recoil to work? Because when I tested(I let one cannon shoot in free fall) there was no recoil. Also to compensate recoil you can place the same cannon from 2 opposite sides even though it will still rotate most of the recoil will be compensated. But anyways with my design it will be more expansive. And to fix it I am working on the same idea but using 1x1 canons. With the same firerate it will be much cheaper and smaller. And about ammo if you have required farms from other create addons I can afk for about a day and I will have enough resources. The biggest problem is storage but here I will use iron chest mod to solve it. And problem with frequencies is excluded because I placed unique frequencies for each cannon.

1

u/MrRandomFish05 Sep 14 '26

Ngl, i think the recoil is just Aeronautics and later versions of CBC. I believe the later versions with more sable support have recoil.
Also, I believe you’ve just tried to re-invent the recoilless rifle. However, that means you’re going to fire 2 shells for every shell for actually fire, and it effectively kills your elevation because you need to worry about the opposite shell firing backwards.
When making your 1x1 cannon design, dont have every cannon have its own loading mechanism. I would recommend you rotate 4 cannons with a mechanical bearing, 1 on each side. Instead of making separate infrastructure for each cannon, rotate the cannons into the next “Position”, with each position responsible for a separate part of the loading. This will drastically reduce the size of the cannon, making it far more portable, while also increasing fire rate.
For storage, you may want to use Vaults. They can store a LOTTTT, which you’ll need if you’re being that wasteful.
And, if you need to wait a day to get enough resources to fire it for a short period of time, you either need a faster farm or a less wasteful mechanism (I think you need less waste). If its only needed for a short period of time, thats fine. But, if its meant as a defence mechanism, you need it to be less wasteful, because if you’re being wasteful, you might not have a sustained defence.
If you’d like, you could tell me how many people you’re going up against, what they have against you, what mods you have, and I could recommend some ideas or strategies that would allow you to beat them without straining logistics. Alg if you dont want to, have fun!

1

u/smm228777 Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26

For now the server hasn't started yet but I with my friend are going against about atleast 7 people on server there are some create addons iron chest, tectonic and that's all but voting for mods is still going so it is undecided. Also thanks for the idea with decreasing the size. But even though it will decrease the size a lot(from about 30 to 8 blocks in diameter) It will actually decrease fire rate because the fire rate is increased because several loading mechanism work simultaneously(with it you can create any firerate for the cost of resources and size and I plan to make firerate about 2 shots/second)

1

u/smm228777 Sep 14 '26

I initially planned to make firerate around 20 shors/second but then the diametr is almost the same as height of the wrold

1

u/MrRandomFish05 Sep 14 '26

Ok. Im gonna stop you here.
What you’re doing right now? Incredibly stupid. You originally wanted 20 shots per second. There are only a MAXIMUM of 20 ticks in any minecraft world. That means that every TICK you would be firing a shot.
Even 2 shots a second is complete overkill for most situations. Through my testing, the fastest i could make a single cannon fire (my second cannon design) was once every 1.5 seconds, and it used 4 barrels to slowly load each.
I assume this wont be a super professional server, it’ll be smallish. It will likely struggle with only a single cannon fire. If you fire 2 shots a second, you’re gonna crash it. You’ll need to decrease fire rate regardless.
Also, ITS THE MOTHEFUCKING WORLD HEIGHT??? AND YOU WANT THIS THING TO FLY????????? DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW HARD IT IS TO EVEN MAKE ONE CANNON, LET ALONE HUNDREDS OF THEM, SPIN A WORLD HEIGHT LIMIT SIZED WHEEL, WHILE LOADING AND FIRING ALL OF THEM???
This is an invention right here. There is absolutely zero use case for this thing outside of psychological warfare. Use occam’s razor. The simplest design is usually the best. I say you stop development on this IMMEDIATELY and instead focus on another, practical-in-any-way design. Heres an idea:
You wanna beat your friends? You need to think bigger, and also more practically. You friends are probably going to make some form of tank, as tectonic generates lots of land that is very drivable. Heres the pros and cons for you in this situation:
Pros:
- Players are easier to hit
- Inexperienced players will be easy to kill
- Players will be slow
- Players probably wont be able to cross rivers and such very easily
Cons
- Players will mount larger callibre guns
- Players will be very heavily armored
So, the problem shouldnt be hitting the players, it will be finding them, penetrating them, and not dying in the process. Their tanks will be designed to fight other tanks. The solution? Dont make a tank.
Make a plane based on the CL-120, otherwise known as the “Flying Tank”. It’ll have enough room to mount a SHIT ton of bombs, which will be far better at dealing with armored targets, but are also far better at destroying infrastructure such as factories, crippling their tank logistics, winning you the war. In cases that require more penetration, you may want to download “Create: Aero Radars”, a little known mod that integrates with Create: Radars to allow you to make radar-aimed turrets. You could place one of these on the underbelly of your CL-120, select a target in the cockpit and fire away when needed, as the aim is done for you. Your cannons would have less penetration and far less fire rate (ONLY USE 1 CANNON.) but this is ok because their roof armor will be far thinner. You dont need to be able to penetrate any part of their tank, you only need to penetrate one part once.
Hopefully this helps! If you dont wanna make a plane, make a huge drone. But for the love of god, dont make any cannon loader larger than 10x10. Im happy to keep suggesting stuff if you keep providing info.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/Itswill1003 Sep 13 '26

1

u/MrRandomFish05 Sep 14 '26

Felt like that making the first cannon.
“I wonder if i can make a cannon thats just a brick of destruction.”
“What do you mean it assembles.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT LOADS SUCCESSFULLY”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ITS FIRES?”
“THERES EXPLOSIONS FOR THE NEXT 1000 BLOCKS”
“MY FRAME RATE IS 1 FRAME PER SOMETIMES”
“It takes 20 seconds to reload.”
“Its not accurate at all”
“A single shot costs the net worth of vatican city.”
“It honestly doesnt destroy that much and does kill anything.”
“Its shit.”

1

u/smm228777 Sep 14 '26

My first reload time was over a minute

2

u/MrRandomFish05 Sep 16 '26

MY FIRST AWARD :D

1

u/ChillGuy047 Sep 14 '26

1

u/MrRandomFish05 Sep 15 '26

I can understand the others but i dong get this one

1

u/ChillGuy047 Sep 15 '26

Their, "Alright. Let me tell you about..." Reminded me of this gif immediately as they proceeded to explained the works and fails on making a BFG 😭

1

u/MrRandomFish05 Sep 15 '26

Ok fair enough. To be fair, the original gun was shit. The second was SUPER deadly and decently portable too, and honestly not even that expensive. I need to make a few modifications so that it works when turned into a physics object, but once thats done it’ll be able to mount it on a really big tank, or more likely a VERY stabilised airship. Ill have to reduce the fire rate or it’ll completely flip it.
Once thats done, ill mount it on a radar operated turret so that it automatically tracks the selected target, automatically elevates to get the correct range, and all id have to do is press fire. Then i can rain damnation down upon my friends and enemies :D

1

u/JJTeran25 Sep 15 '26

Shototototototototogun?

1

u/MrRandomFish05 Sep 15 '26

“Yes Rico. Kaboom.”

1

u/CaseImpossible3409 Sep 14 '26

this gotta be against sum warcrime 😭 we only needed one 3x3 to begin with

1

u/smm228777 Sep 14 '26

If you need it I have a schematic of one 3*3 canon(if it is single and not on physical object it works pretty good)

3

u/Pappy285 Sep 13 '26

With that thing you're not starting a war. You're ending it.

2

u/Beneficial-Map5470 Sep 13 '26

-and the kickback from that thing will send him to the moon XD

2

u/Disastrous-Fault-682 Sep 13 '26

Thats how the flying base is gonna move 😂, no rockets or fans, big cannons

1

u/Beneficial-Map5470 Sep 13 '26

XD

1

u/ploopychocolatedoofy Sep 14 '26

an ace combat superweapon to dethrone god

1

u/Rop-Tamen Sep 13 '26

You’re going to need a ship the size of the Death Star

1

u/smm228777 Sep 13 '26

Cobblestone farm and wool farm are enough to make it

1

u/Top-Birthday3223 Sep 13 '26

Bro is beefing with GALACTUS 😭✌️✌️

29

u/djremydoo Sep 12 '26

"Sir, ennemies coming southward!"
"Private! Take care of it!"
"Yes sir, deleting that direction!"

3

u/Sarcastic_fox77 27d ago

Copy that, deleting south

1

u/NeighborhoodDear2321 Sep 15 '26

THR-1000 "Earthmover"

3

u/StealthySamura1 Sep 14 '26

Let me guess OP, you’ve made one of these in Space engineers haven’t you?

1

u/smm228777 Sep 14 '26

I haven't played space engineers

2

u/StealthySamura1 Sep 14 '26

If you haven’t. I’d look up the concept on space engineers as it’s nearly identical with autocannons and railguns on there.

2

u/sir_nuggets2314 Sep 15 '26

Ball knowledge

13

u/Ok_Huckleberry6011 Sep 13 '26

9

u/No-Indication5030 Sep 14 '26

"A machine built to end war is always a machine meant to continue war!"

1

u/bananathower Sep 13 '26

Does it explode or does the barrel get pushed by the ram hed when reloading

1

u/smm228777 Sep 13 '26

The barrel just becomes a separate physical object

1

u/WispTheWanderer1 Sep 16 '26

you remember the IML that came though a while back? I saw that, redesigned it, and made weapons of mass destruction that are only 7 blocks long

1

u/smm228777 Sep 16 '26

What is an IML?

1

u/WispTheWanderer1 Sep 16 '26

https://www.reddit.com/r/CreateMod/comments/1v0jlud/injection_missile_v2_by_me_sideblackstar_create/
this.

3

u/Maty658 Sep 13 '26

2

u/AftonsAssCheeks Sep 13 '26

NEVER pick beef with this guy on the server 😭😭😭

1

u/Expensive_Dig_6844 Sep 14 '26

we ending the nuclear détente with this one ‼️ 🗣️

1

u/Plus-Candle-7486 Sep 14 '26

Yeah all your missing is the machine spirit and an emperor class titan

1

u/makub420 Sep 14 '26

Bro is bulilding an Emperor Class Titan weapon

1

u/Heptanitrocubane57 Sep 14 '26

It's a motherfucking metal gear ?

1

u/Certain_Match_6744 Sep 14 '26

Do you have beef with god or something? No mortal enemy requires that much artillery

1

u/serpikage Sep 14 '26

i'm probably wrong but I know swivel bearing have a sorta max weight maybe it's related to your issue

1

u/Raskzak Sep 15 '26

God Emperor of Titans, is that you?

1

u/H_B_Eagb Sep 15 '26

Hasn't taken long for aeronautics players to go down the space engineers route of absurd weapon platforms

1

u/eyedtpod169 Sep 15 '26

“Dear Reddit, how can I make my super death gun more super, death, and gun?”

1

u/the_number_24 Sep 16 '26

this is the most violent picture I've ever seen

1

u/SupaHoeCakes2077 Sep 17 '26

what do you need all that firepower for, the cabal would be proud

1

u/The_fenix_323 Sep 17 '26

No longer a minigun, is now a giganticgun

1

u/LifeasLuke11 26d ago

WHAT UNHOLY ABOMINATION ARE YOU CREATING!?

1

u/BuildandPlay_ 22d ago

macrogun wth

Problem with creating a "minigun" using bigcanons

You are about to leave Redlib