Cannons and their applications

[Pig Princess]

In today's discussion about cannons ("Mushlight light radius is abysmal and needs a buff", offtopic part) I shared some tests regarding cannons, the ways I use them, and some people mentioned their disappointment. However, it seems like cannons may be better than I described, and my tests just weren't accurate enough the first time I did them.

Working power of canons (mining, chopping, hammering) indeed happens in very small AoE (that includes both part where cannonball lands and path to it), and after further tests it seems like radius is actually 1/8 of a tile instead of 1/16 (still not impressive); however, area of attack, i.e. area where mobs and walls take damage is much bigger: It's radius is something between 0.625 and 0.75 of a tile (between 5 and 6 units of geo grid, and 1 tile has 8 in it). That means one can design farms in which monkeys are blocked, blockers are not damaged, but monkeys are dying satisfyingly fast.

This is one example of such farm. Walls can't be used for blocking monkeys because they are damaged by cannonball within the same big AoE and monkeys pathfind around them; statues are not great choice either because apparently if they are not straight up hammered by cannonball and are in damaging area of cannonball, each hit moves them along Y axis to the point of character being able to walk under them (I was surprised and laughed hard ). Fossils and player skeletons work though: they are not glitched like statues, only working AoE applies to them instead of hitting AoE (unlike walls) and mobs don't pathfind around them. Since there is limited amount of fossils in the word, I decided to take skeletons as basis for design.

On the image above one can see 2 U-shaped areas: this is because 1 such build can't hold more than roughly 30 monkeys and they start glitching through skeletons; however, double trap can consistently protect player from 50 monkeys (although I still recommend to not take any chances and kill them all asap), and realistically there wouldn't be so many in the world chasing player at once. Still, killing 50 monkeys with 4 cannonballs (or 30 with 2) is very satisfying sight.

Either road or cane is mandatory in order to build up distance between player and monkeys, and if one has both, it's even better. Longer acceleration path is also preferable.

One should keep in mind that both fossils and skeletons can be hammered by cannonball in principle, so it's important to leave enough space between them and center of working AoE of cannonball; on the image above one needs to aim to minisign in order to get the best result.

For reference, I used quite a few skeletons, farm needs cannon and cannonball blueprint and some cobblestones under it, there is cannonball upkeep, as well as precise tuning of distances is needed since cannon has fixed range that can't be changed; but in late game it's one more thing one can do for fun and profit, I think.

If anyone found other interesting uses for cannons, it would be interesting to see them as well.