still having issues with the projector disconnecting/dissapearing when it shoots after the first shot. new to this kind of weapon so not entirely sure what the issue is. Any ideas?

yeah... same issue

Aloha Major John, it appears something has changed with how the double hinge mechanism works, as of now the subgrid doesnt reattatch which causes the projector subgrid to fly off on a 2nd shot. Sometimes the first shot fires normally, but every time the 2nd shot is a garunteed fail

Same issue. After update projector fly off.

The hinge with the projector disconnects from the main gun with every shot. I didn't have this error before the update, so I imagine it was broken by Keen :/

Large grid gun still works as intended

Maybe youre problem Freudman is that you arent in Expiremental mode? or maybe the pistons need to be reduced in distance? Maybe the older version works best in some environments

is that only me or does this beuty blows its self up while shooting it? Liturally every shot was same, dissapointment and dissaster. I know that those puppies work so what could i possibly do wrong... besides smashing fire button, if settup got more comlicated i dont know about it but is that still oggha boogha proof? Like slap it on your thingy (DONT TOUCH ANYTHING) and samsh fire button, doesnt it?

Hey! Great construction! Unfortunately I have a problem with my hinge (with the projector on it) disappearing after a few shots, even on the direct workshop copy. What's the cause of this and how do I prevent it from happening?

I did see that you made a comment early on that you fixed some stability issues when adding multiple guns (more then 4). My version is stable when it shoots but will randomly explode sometimes, especially when I try to make mine into a blueprint and then paste my blueprint. The reason why I wanted to reverse engineer it and learn how to make it is because I want to build them in our survival server. What tricks did you use to make your gun more stable?
Thank you for your builds and time!
Much appreciated!

Hey Major Jon, I love your builds!
Especially the Clang Cannons. I tried reverse engineering the PJ-33 so I could learn how to make them. Figuring out how to successfully merge the two hinges so you can disconnect and reconnect them was the most challenging part for me.
I eventually succeeded in making it work like yours but I’m still having trouble. Your version seems way more stable. You can copy and past your blueprints no problem. When I make blueprints of mine they seem to be fine but end up blowing up after a few minutes. Is there anything extra you do to make your cannon more stable?
Perhaps I just have my sliders/settings jacked too high or something.
It would be nice to figure out how to make my design more stable. I think the hinges might be causing me the most problems although it could be my pistons… any pointers from more experienced builders would be awesome!
Thanks!

Hello! I put this on my ship and it's a work of beauty! Sad thing is, it can't fire consecutive shots. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but it seems as if the projectiles aren't being welded? I'd appreciate any help you could give me. Thanks for making this beautiful thing.

nvm i got it working again, somehow i had broken the piston system in some subtle odd way

Whenever i try to fire it even in experimental mode it starts spinning uncontrollably?

Thanks man! Really appreciate you answering all my questions.

You can attach two rotors to the same rotor head, like this:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2299616811
simple, but problematic. It tends to crash your game and even entire servers, because you can't properly detach the projectile from the gun.
Or you attach two pistons to the same piston head. There is also a theoretical possibility of attaching two wheel suspensions to the same wheel, but I doubt that is of any use.

If hinges weren't being used then how would I break the speed limit? Is there a method with rotors?

Sometimes the projectile doesn't break the speedlimit when it has not enough blocks. I think 4 is the limit. The hinges just need to be attached to the same head, it shouldn't really matter what hinges you use or on grids they are. But everything on the hinge head has to be a single grid.
I guess having a counterweight on the hingehead is kinda difficult cause it's facing the wrong direction, I don't know if that would help anyways. If it's tilting, that would mean one of the hinges is rotating past 90°, does it show that in the terminal? I've never seen that at least, I thought it wasn't possible.
Tbh I think the hinges are not really that ideal, if I were to remake this gun, I would build it with two pistons, that's just smaller and more elegant.

Sorry about the massive amount of questions, I've just found it really difficult to reverse-engineer this masterpiece.

How would I correct the hinge construction from tilting with a large projectile? Would I need, say, a counterweight or something?

Also, the large hinge connected to 3x3 small hinge design doesn't work when trying to break the speed limit. Am I connecting the projectile side to the wrong part of the hinge or something?

You mean the projectile is tilting, or the hinges themselves? That the projectile itself tilts only happened using a double rotor design for, the hinges were pretty stable and both locked so they wouldn't tilt. If it's the whole hinge construction, then that's probably because the center of mass is just too far off.

If you mind me asking, how did you keep the center payload section from tilting when the pistons were retracting?
I also tried a double-hinge speed break method on my design, and that didn't work either.
Thanks!

When I place multiple guns on one ship at the same time, a fire will trigger all the guns, and all of the guns would be destroyed.How to solve it? Thanks

Unsure where the issue is, but pasted this into my world (Singleplayer, creative, experimental mode) and upon firing it, it tears itself apart and self destructs almost every single time (tested 10 times and it only worked properly once). Please advise.

okay so that probably explains why i suddenly have snail piston gun lol

yeah the force of the pistons is just severly limited in normal mode, it's like firing a crossbow with a rubber band :D

oh does it only yeet the thing at full force in experimental mode, cause i'm playing on normal not experimental. from what i observed when i was aboard the dauntless. i could indeed fire the thing off, the pistons did retract and then fire back into position, its the projectile that i noticed had the issue, from what i could see it was travelling i think at about 15-20m/s (snail paced crawling) not the previous "EVERYONE DUCK AND COVER, HERE IT COMES" speeds that i previously had XD (yeah i'm a bit of a mad one so don't worry about that last bit in the comments lol, i mean i'm currently "playing around" with JD Horax by clanging up his fleet, so what does that tell ya).

I noticed some weird things as well recently tbh, I think some update a month ago or so might have messed with it somehow. For me it seems to work perfectly fine in one world and then blow up in another. I guess I'll have to look into it in detail, maybe I can also figure out a better way to construct the gun and update it.
Some things that might be causing this behaviour for you are the pistons not being able to pull with full force (i.e. not in experimental mode), one of the two hinges might not be attached, or the projectile doesn't get welded up correctly. That last one seemed to be the cause of the issues for me.

hi, sorry to be a pain but something weird is going on here with this gun. not to long ago when this thing came out. i modified an IMDC Hyperion Class starship to have this weapon in the front mount area and it worked like a dream. but i decided to go on today and play around a bit and noticed that for some reason the projectile this gun makes does not go like a bat out of hell anymore. so i thought "uhh maybe its the dauntless messing it up" so i just pasted the weapon itself, switched to station mode and slapped a battery on it (yeah i'm doing this in creative setting) pressed the fire button and same thing. it does fire but the projectile comes out much slower now? what am i missing here, has a space engineers updated buggered something up here or something

NVM i figured it out. But when I tested your old cannon and the projectile flew as fast as you described but when I used mine (i copied the double rotor thing on yours onto mine) the projectile was capped at the speed limit. Do you have any advice on this or what I am doing wrong?

Never mind I found a way to transplant your rotor setup in the older model into my system. Basically convert the large grid blocks into a station and secure the unit with a landing gear on the side, then detach it from both sides. That way it wont spin and I can install it into my own build :)

Also how do you get a rotor head 2 be attached too 2 rotors at once. I cant seem to figure out how to do it,

Also thanks for explaining how t works on the other page, its been really helpful in my own version. One other thing though is if you make a new version you might not want to make some of the blocks hidden on the terminal, it would just make it easier to tinker and change its settings. Its just a small complaint though and over all its a very impressive piece of equipment.

I tested it and they might have fixed it. There was one video I remember mentioning this issue where he was making a venator star destroyer in 2 pieces to avoid this issue. Ive encountered it before with a really large ship (around 500 meters but I only had the outer skin.) I could very well be patched since that a was a while ago.
Basically when a grid was to big the physics would not work properly and you could pass through some walls and not interact with sections of it.

I have no idea, I've never built anything big tbh. I didn't even know there was an issue like that.

One more unrelated question. O the ship I plan to get around the issue where a grid is so big you cant interact with it by spiting my ship into subrigds and connecting them with rotors, connectors, and landing gear as a work around (gyroscopes would be in one segment and engines would be controlled with timers.) Has this been done before or does this sound like a Klang bomb ready to blow?

Thanks. I might say something when it is done.

Sure that's fine, I haven't invented piston guns anyways. I just put a few different technologies together and made my own version. You might need to change the whole timer setup anyways though. These things are quite finicky and if you want to make it bigger, you'll surely have to change quite a few things to make it work.

Hello. Im really impressed with this and I want to use it. Im planning on building a very large ship. I want to reverse engineer it and make a much bigger one ( a few but somewhere between 10-40 large blocks long depending on the gun) to use in time turrets for it. Would I be "stealing your work" if I were to post the ship with the guns on the workshop? (The guns would be my own build, just I would reverse engineer your build to make them)

hello, when i spawned in this creation there where some part missing, and i cant get those parts back on the creation. it involves the piston and rotor that should be next to the gatling gun.

I´m proud of myself i managed to build a ship that can survive more than 5 shots with this godsent god of destruction.

I had a friend send me this and thanks to your great explanations of how it works and some snooping around was able to reverse engineer this and create my own version. It is a truly beautiful manipulation of clang, and damn you're a god at working it out. Now I'm thinking of using this whole concept to make a catapult of sorts to instantly launch from planet to space. Amazing work!

Ok so I reloaded the world and they work now lol

That makes sense. Last question, why is one of the timer blocks in a group instead of just calling it directly? I think changing that might be where I messed it up

They have to to separate the projectile from the grid and turn it into its own grid. It's necessary to prevent crashing the game. Sometimes the game has trouble welding up the projections for whatever reason, if you then fire without a projectile the projector and hinge fly out. Shouldn't happen when there is still a projectile to fire, but with this gun you never know.

I put 2 of these in a ship and when it shoots the projectile hinge part and projector disappears, the one I have outside the ship works fine but im not sure whats happening to the other ones. Why do the hinges detach and then attach again during the weld steps?

Any help would be appreciated

I have uploaded it a few weeks ago.

Can you post it on mod.io too?

can you make a merged together version that you can build with a projector and then remove the blocks?

How can I add this awesome gun to your awesome Cepheus S-400 Carack - Exploration Ship ?
I want your gun in your ship.

Is there a world file for the world you make your builds in? it seems much more suitable for building since the lighting its all wonky unlike in space