THE CANNONS ARE FAKE

AI:

The "Orbital Strike Cannon" made famous by Minecraft YouTubers like cubicmetre and SMP roleplay servers comes with several massive misconceptions. Chief among them is the belief that these machines can instantly teleport and fire anywhere at the click of a fishing rod.

In reality, the mechanics behind this redstone marvel are very different from its mythical reputation:

1. It Doesn't Teleport or "Orbit"

The biggest myth is that the strike instantly appears wherever you aim. In reality, the machine uses highly complex chunk-loading and TNT-duping mechanics. The TNT is physically launched from the cannon’s location and takes several minutes to travel through the air depending on how far the target is.

2. Fishing Rods Cannot "Aim" It Anywhere

You cannot just cast a fishing rod and instantly call a strike on a faraway target. The "fishing rod trick" is merely a remote trigger. To actually aim the cannon, you must manually input precise coordinates into the machine's control panel (using barrels, lecterns, or redstone levers) to program the exact trajectory and speed.

3. It's Not a Click-and-Play Vanilla Feature

While it is technically built out of vanilla blocks, it requires an absurdly deep understanding of the game's rendering and physics engine. Attempting to build or fire one requires third-party optimization mods (like Carpet Mod) because massive TNT calculations easily crash standard unmodded servers. Using mods like Litematica is practically mandatory to avoid building mistakes and still you will only get access to a limited version of the cannon, still very destructive, though

4. You Cannot Use It on Most Servers

Because these cannons rely on highly deterministic physics, they fundamentally do not work on popular server software like Paper or Spigot. Building this on most public SMP servers will either cause the redstone to break or result in an accidental server crash.