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[obsolete & broken] R-Tec "MPAC" Prototype - Modular Piston Autofire Cannon

Obsolete / Not Working

2015-04-19: has stopped working at some point thanks to some changes to SE.
Repair attempt was unsuccessful.
Plus this gun was completly and utterly obsoleted by projector base grav guns anyway.


Update 2014-08-06: torpedos are now immune to grav shields. I'm using a method that involves the new sensor blocks, they shut down the torpedos mass block once they see a small landing gear mounted on the front of the cannon. At that time they are already at full speed. Without powered mass blocks the torpedos don't react to grav shields anymore....


A grav cannon, capable of autofire. Designed to merge with a capital ship and act as its main weapon, although it can also operate alone. I built this to have a standard large weapon for future R-Tec capital ships, but if you want to mount it on your own ships, go for it. Just remember to link to this page in case you want to publish it on Steam Workshop.

Features

- Autofire capable. Meaning you only have to click one button to fire and it keeps firing until you either press another button or the ammo runs out.
- Uses Pistons as means of delievering the torpedos, instead of the popular rotor revolver.
- Exchangable magazine (like a real world assault rifle), via merge blocks.
- Designed to be merged to a large capital ship, as a huge additional weapon system.
- The cannon can also be used as an independent ship, it has its own power source, gryos and some (slow) engines.
- Easy to aim. The integrated cockpit allows for precise shooting. I also added 2 rocket launchers as target lasers.
- Ignores gravity shields.

Usage

- You start inside the cannon with a magazine already mounted.
Make sure the pistons are set to -0.5 m/s and 10m maxium height before firing (the game seems to randomy alter my settings with every update)
Then hit the "3" key to turn the pistons on and watch the destruction ...
- To reload, ditch the empty magazine (turn mergers off) and merge to a fresh one. Be aware that the "merge shock" can sometimes destroy the pistons so the magazine becomes worthless.
Try to be careful when merging to a new magazine - the best way is to turn off the cannons mergers, and only turn it on again when the 2 sets of mergers align up perfectly.
- To start firing again, get the piston of the new magazine moving by pressing "Reverse".

Inner Workings

1. The Torpedo Stack (inside the magazine) is pushed up by the piston(s)
2. The grinders (mounted on the cannon) take care of cutting indivdiual torpedos out of the torpedo stack. This works very fast thanks to the light armor blocks
that were pre-grinded to 2% integrity
3. At the same time, welders repair the mass block and battery.
(This is completed shortly AFTER the torpedo is cut loose so the piston doesn't get smashed by the grav push of the torpedo)
4. The now working mass block of the torpedo and the many grav gens on the cannon speed up the torpedo to max speed.
5. Mass block is deactivated by sensor once it passes by the "small ship" (actually, just a landing gear in front of the cannon). This makes the torpedo immune to further grav influence, for example by grav shields.
6. Torpedo hits its target and does collision damage. If it is a HE torpedo, the explosives blow up when their cargo container is destroyed, dramatically increasing the damage.


Bugs

- Merging large ships can still cause damage to both ships. This can affect the torpedos too, the damage might not even be externally visible at all. The best way to merge large ships is to turn off the mergers, align the stuff perfectly by hand, then turning the mergers back on.
- The game can get extremly slowly when it calculates collison damage