Sugar Engine
Going by the motto of “bigger is better” and “more is dakka” I went a bit… wild, let’s say, and started an experiment in figuring out just how fast firing I can make a weapon. By extension this also turned into an experiment in how many pistons I can use for a single device. The Sugar Engine is the result of that experiment, for better or for worse:
The Sugar Engine is assembled in a multi-step process, since it is by itself too big for the crafting table. So here are the construction steps:
Step 1: Make a body that can feed ammunition from a clip into all four (Yes, you read right) barrels at a sufficiently fast pace. That in itself was fairly easy to solve with a set of fast redstone clocks. A obsidian core seems to be just barely enough to hold this all together and not overweight it.
Step 2: Construct a barrel that is capable of taking an external power source (from the body) for its pistons and accelerates a specifically shaped projectile through it.
Step 2.5: Make four of these.
Step 3: Assemble them. All in all 9 pistons have been built into this, to create what sounds like a machine straight out of the nether.
In order to feed this thing I had to develop a new reloading scheme and ammunition type. Specifically a large clip is constructed which holds the sugar cane-reinforced sticks.
Said, uh… (let’s call them sugar rods), said sugar rods have been fit to the barrels and piston shapes, meaning despite not being sharpened they can deal quite some damage, just out sheer merit of being plentiful and fast.
Plus, they’re quite cheap to make, which is just what I need here. This thing chews through ammunition like there’s no tomorrow.
You can easily fill said sugar canes and sticks into the clip by having the former two and then using the clip itself, to slot them in.
The Sugar Engine takes a bit to spin up and get to working speed, but the firing rate of this monster is unmatched. Unfortunately it is not very accurate due to the large amount of vibrations created by the constant piston movement. So far this seems to be quite a limiting factor, besides its weight.