Cannoning

TNTs exploding within sand blocks to evade water-protected walls.

Cannoning is a method of raiding a faction whereby an initiator (i.e., the attacker) breaches a defending faction's base by launching TNTs at their walls. Cannoning exploits a property that water-protected walls can be breached by causing a TNT to explode inside a block (particularly, sand) than inside water (which would cancel the explosion).

Cannoning mechanics differ across minecraft faction servers—what works on other faction servers may not necessarily function 1:1 on CosmicPE. CosmicPE hosts a free Cannon Planet creative-mode server with TNT and redstone enabled, whereby players can collaborate and build full-fledged cannons on their 40×40 chunk plots before rebuilding the same on the main factions planet.

Block Behaviour

In cannoning mechanics, obsidian and enchantment tables are considered specialty blocks because they have a different durability mechanism. Blast resistance of both blocks is lowered, meaning obsidian is not immune to explosions. Obsidian has 4 durability points (DP), while enchantment tables have 6 DP. Explosions reduce DP by 1 and a block breaks when it loses all DP. These specialty blocks can be queried for their DP by right-clicking them using a potato. There is a 5-minute accruement period from the time a durable block is placed, prior to which the block has effectively 0 DP.

Fence gates, brewing stands, carpets, daylight sensors, spawners, and player heads blow up even when water protected. Water will not flow into lava (hence not form stone or obsidian as a result). Water and lava can both be sponged. Water flows instantaneously along Y axis.

TNT

TNTs can be lobbed over Y255, however they will not explode nor deal durability damage if the explosion occurs at any point above Y255. There is a TNT limit of 500 on the server, including any custom TNT spawned by custom enchantments and world events (e.g., bosses). TNT is not affected by water currents. An explosion that occurs underwater will not damage blocks, but will supply knockback to surrounding entities. Besides normal (vanilla) TNT, there are 8 other types of custom TNTs on the server relevant to cannoning.

Gigantic TNT: Explodes in a much larger radius. Spawns 2 extra explosions at $y + 3$ and $y - 3$ of TNT, and another 3 explosions at either $x + 3$ , $z + 3$ or $x - 3$ and $z - 3$ .
Lethal TNT: A more dense explosion. Creates 4x extra TNT explosions at the same location of the original. This effectively destroys 4/4 obsidian in one explosion.
Lucky TNT: Increases chances of a spawner dropping from the explosion by 2x.
Tactical TNT: Explosion only affects spawners. No other blocks are affected.
Mimic TNT: Repeats an explosion many times. Spawns a TNT explosion at the same location every 5 seconds for the total of 15 seconds (i.e., 3 explosions).
Hex TNT: Weakens block durability of any durability blocks it damages. Durability blocks take 2x damage for 30 seconds since this explosion.
Silent TNT: Quiet, makes much less noise. Explosion can only be heard by players with 16x16 blocks (horizontally).
Anti-Gravity TNT: Explosion only affects blocks with gravity (e.g., sand), and do not cause any physical events.

Creeper Egg

A creeper egg is a portable source of explosion. Unlike TNT, a creeper egg can be placed even in enemy territory. This makes it possible to collect spawners and other blocks in enemy land, which otherwise cannot be mined using tools. Like custom TNTs, custom creepers exist. A lucky creeper is the most effective method to collect spawners from enemy land. Creeper eggs cannot break obsidian blocks.

Creepers are neutral, meaning they will not explode soon as they are spawned or are in the vicinity of a player. Instead, they explode upon being attacked. A creeper has an explosion radius of 4, however this can be increased to 6 by using the /smite command to charge the creeper. Creepers have a lower mass than vanilla, meaning they are less influenced by gravity and will appear to float (to some extent) when in air. A creeper may be killed before it explodes, causing it to drop as a creeper egg.

Limitations

When a piston pulses (i.e., turning on and off) near pulsing redstone repeaters, the repeater closest to the piston will experience a slight increase in their game tick speed. This causes the pulse of the repeater to accelerate slightly. In such cases, repositioning the repeater away from the piston will be necessary to avoid an inconsistent pulse across the circuit.
Slime blocks do not properly function (against Minecraft vanilla mechanics).
Only basic redstone comparator functionality exists. Comparators can be used only to compare signal strength or measure states of a container block. A comparator connected to a container (as input) works as follows: 0 items—1 power, 42 items—2 power, 41 items—3 power, and so on. A full dispenser emits maximum power (i.e., 15).
Sand falls naturally from y=1–16. Above y=16, sand instantly teleports to ground (without converting to falling blocks) as a server optimization strategy. This can impact sand compartments.^{[clarification needed]}

Tips & Tricks

Refilling dispensers with TNTs while cannoning is often tedious. Players can use the /fill command to auto-fill dispensers in their vicinity. Sand gen buckets can be purchased from /shop to help with sand-stacking. If you built a cannon on cannon planet, there is a way to export it as a a schematic and then use it for reference on the main faction server, though this is not managed by CosmicPE.

Timeline

2025-01-30	Faction: All successful custom item interactions against blocks are now logged (incl. creeper egg and chunk busters)
2024-12-12	Bug fix: cannoning inconsistencies occurred based on location of cannon and redstone wiring Obsidian: Hand-placed obsidian requires a 5m period before becoming 4/4 durable (previously, obsidian instantly gained 4/4 durability on placement)
2024-11-21	/filldebug: /fill but outputs debug messages (to understand why /fill might have failed) Bug fix: /fill would sometimes not work
2024-11-14	/fill: Removed 64 dispenser max limit
2024-03-14	Anti-TNT Forcefields are once again vulnerable to creeper explosions occurring outside water
2024-03-07	Creeper explosions now break custom blocks and containers (chests, barrels, etc.) underwater (1-block blast radius).
2021-10-04	Fixed some inconsistency between Cannon Planet and Dungeon Planet cannoning mechanisms
2020-07-31	Introducing Anti Gravity TNT: A new space-age anti-physics TNT technology has been developed. This TNT will only affect blocks with gravity, and does not cause any physics events. (Sand, gravel, anvils..etc). This can be obtained from End Creepers and the new Explosive Expert /f upgrade.