Wemmbu's Orbital Cannons
- By
Call down Wemmbu-style Orbital (Nuke) and Stab strikes with a special fishing rod — no redstone machinery required.
Wemmbu's Orbital Cannons
Call down Wemmbu-style Orbital (Nuke) and Stab strikes with a single fishing rod — no redstone machinery, no payload dupe arrays, no 13,000-block contraption to build and maintain. Aim at a block up to 200 blocks away, right-click, and the cannon answers from above.
The two strikes
Orbital (Nuke) Shot
A formation of 760 primed TNT charges is released 72 blocks above your target and detonates about four seconds later.
The formation recreates the payload of the Unstable SMP orbital cannon as designed by cubicmetre:
- 1 stationary center charge plus 10 concentric rings at radii 6, 11, 16 … 51 blocks (uniform 5-block gaps, roughly a 102-block footprint)
- Ring charges are proportional to radius, and the inner rings are front-loaded — 24, 48 and 56 charges in the first three rings — so the strike opens dense and then spreads outward
- Every charge is placed at a random angle around its ring with a small scatter, so the rings render as dense clumps with real gaps rather than perfectly even dots — the same look the real cannon gets from prime momentum
- Charges spread outward while they fall (drag-compensated velocity), so the pattern opens from a tight cluster into full rings mid-descent
Stab Shot
A vertical column drilled straight down through the world at the target's position: 1 TNT every 2 blocks with 1-tick fuses, up to 192 charges on a standard world. The drill stops at the first blast-resistant block (Blast Resistance 1200 or higher), which makes it useful for controlled excavation instead of a flat crater.
Crafting
Each weapon needs one ordinary fishing rod and one full 64-TNT stack — all of it is consumed.
Orbital (Nuke) Rod — TNT on top of the rod:
. T .
. R .
. . .Stab Rod — TNT under the rod:
. . .
. R .
. T .T = TNT ×64, R = fishing rod, . = empty.
Commands (operator level 2)
/orbital give nuke [player] Give an orbital (nuke) rod
/orbital give stab [player] Give a stab rod
/orbital strike nuke <x> <y> <z> Call a strike at exact coordinates
/orbital strike stab <x> <y> <z>
/orbital reload Reload the config from diskConfiguration
config/callorbitalcannons.json is created on first launch. Out-of-range values are repaired automatically and logged with a warning.
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
targetingRange |
200.0 | Max rod targeting distance, in blocks |
strikeDelayTicks |
10 | Delay between activation and impact |
maxActiveStrikes |
4 | Pending-strike queue cap |
nukePayloadLimit |
800 | TNT cap per nuke (760 = full pattern) |
nukeRingCount |
10 | Rings used, 1–10, innermost first |
nukeSpawnHeight |
72.0 | Drop height above the target |
nukeFuseTicks |
79 | Fuse on nuke charges |
nukeMisalignRange |
0.2 | Per-charge scatter-disc radius |
nukeAngularJitter |
1.0 | Charge angle wander — 1.0 = random clumps, 0.0 = even rings |
stabMaxSteps |
192 | Maximum stab column depth |
stabStepSize |
2 | Blocks between stab charges |
blastResistanceStop |
1200.0 | Blast resistance that stops the drill |
Set nukeAngularJitter to 0.0 for perfectly even rings, or raise nukeMisalignRange for a wider scatter.
Installation
- Minecraft 1.21.1
- Fabric Loader 0.16.14 or newer
- Fabric API (required)
- Java 21
Drop the mod JAR in mods/ along with Fabric API and restart the server.
Credits & attribution
- The orbital cannon design and the Mk.6 payload formations are cubicmetre's work — the original Orbital Strike Cannon, recreated here as a mod.
- Ballistic behaviour is ported from the open-source orbitalstrike Fabric mod by RelmesStudios (Apache-2.0) — behaviour only, no code copied.
- The orbital strikes seen on the Unstable SMP were staged for story-telling purposes.
Source code: https://github.com/Sekai0NI0itamio/CallOrbitalCannons
License
MIT
Wemmbu's Orbital Cannons Team
