Tutorial:TNT cannons/Mid-air maneuvering

Mid-air direction changes are mostly achieved using Injectors.

All of the cannons in this section have the advantage that they can be build to Shift freely around the enemy with often very small barrels.

Down (D<damage type>)

A Downwards cannon hits the enemy from above.

The hopes here are, that the enemy might have less armor or shielding there. This isn't the case very often. But Downwards cannons also have the efficiency provided by Mortars.

Up (U<damage type>)

An Upward cannon hits the enemy from below.

Oftentimes the ground or water prevent the usage of Upward cannons. But if they can be used they usually also hit the most vulnerable part of the enemy. This is due to the advantages of Nether cannons compared to other Buffer cannons and the advantages of Ascending- compared to Descending cannons. The use of Upward cannons is mostly limited to scraping the enemy from below since for full penetrations the Downward cannons are more efficient.

Flank (F<damage type>)

Flanks hit the enemy from their side.

The main use of Flanks is speculation for double kills. The idea behind that is that Formations tend to be symmetric... For this reason in metas, where Flanks are generally as strong as or even stronger than front Tunnlers asymmetric Formations are greatly encouraged. In metas where Flanks are weaker also less shielding is to be expected so in that case one would only use them to punish the enemies negligence when it comes to that.

Back (B<damage type>)

A Back cannon hits the enemy's rear.

Often enemies disregard protecting their back side. A Back cannon's only common purpose is to exploit this missing armor and shielding. Apart from that, it is generally weaker than the other types because the enemy blocks its ideal flight path and so it uses weird diagonal up to orthogonal angles or is forced to have an extra redirection phase (every time TNT is redirected in mid-air the accuracy decreases by a lot and this starts to become quite severe for the efficiency of many Back cannons).

Warhead (W)

Warheads change direction inside the enemy.

In essence Warheads are just worse Flanks or Downward cannons because they first need to dig inside the enemy. Sometimes they can be useful because the middle is better protected than the sides, or enemies put their cannons very close to each other and so Warheads can kill the other with almost no effort.

Delayed fire

Automatics tend to be among the first cannons targeted and so it is advantageous to let them be done with their job by the activation of TNT damage. To get rid of any TNT at the launch point the projectiles and Injectors are boosted forward at low velocity. This technique also finds use for better far shifts but generally Multiple impact cannons do the same job in better (since each shot penetrates the enemy only partially they also can use slower velocities and thus are slow enough for all shots to escape in time).

Gust

A Gust is a front cannon that changes direction outside the fight machine for the purpose of smaller barrels or further shifting.

It suffers the same problems as a Back cannon but at the front there are no armor/shielding gaps to compensate.

Momentum cancelling

Blocks that cancel entity momentum (such as powder snow) can be used to change the direction of TNT in mid-air but that is not advisable except for chunk phasing cannon applications since this technique applies after one processing of the TNT and so higher delays - the most important step for efficient cannons is not possible here. Apart from that the technique is quite precise.