Thought we needed some raiding stuff here, so I decided to post stuff on base defenses and cannon mechanics.
Note: I will TL;DR the big paragraphs. The first thing is important, but short, so read the Gametick section.
Gameticks:
Most people know about redstone ticks, but gameticks are a little more obscure: there are 20 gameticks per second, versus 10 redstoneticks per second (s). In other words, 1 gt = 0.5 rt = 0.05 s and 20 gt = 10 rt = 1 s.
Pretty simple, right? Well here things get interesting.
Every gametick (at least in 1.7, which are the mechanics basically every factions server uses), each entity is completely processed, one at a time. In other words, funny things happen when things go very fast. This is very nice for two things: tunneling and, more importantly, sandstacking.
Sandstacking: TL;DR: When a clump of sandentities goes downward very fast, you get a sandstack.
When sand falls as a clump, as it comes from the sand compressor (basically the thing that collects however much sand and turns them all into entites and shoves them into a oneblock space, Sand compressor, not very good tho) in your cannon (with no hammer), a single sand block stacking when it lands as well as a nice explosion of sanditems. Not very useful, and highly sand inefficient. Here comes in gameticks. Sand's terminal velocity (maximum y velocity due to gravity) is less than one block per gametick, which means when the sand clump lands, the first one stacks, but since theres already a block in the space of the rest of the sandclump, the rest of the sand just breaks. So in comes one's hammer. Hammer basically goes directly above one's sandclump, and explodes, which propells the sandclump downward VERY quickly, from the current y-position, to wherever the ground is in one gametick, resulting in a big stack of sand. Basically, since this happens in one gametick, the sand entities are shot down, one at a time, hits the ground, and turns into a block, and then the next one repeats this process, until the sandclump runs out of sand, or the sandstack reaches the location of the sandclump.
Tunneling: TL;DR: when a clump of ignited TNT is going very fast, and hits something the same tick it explodes, it explodes a big line of blocks.
TNT actually works in the same manner. TNT travels however many blocks/tick in a gametick and is processed separately--including the blocks broken from the explosion. So normally, a clump of tnt hits a block, stops and explodes, as it hits the block and loses its velocity, then explodes howevery many ticks the delay was later. However, shooting a clump of tnt that explodes the gametick it collides with the block in the same tick does something interesting: the first tnt that is processed hits the block and explodes, destroying it, before the rest of the tnt continues on its merry way. But wait, what if the thing you're hitting is solid ground? The first tnt would hit the nearest block and explode a few blocks, then the second tnt would explode the next unexploded block, and so on, until the tntclump's {blocks} distance in blocks/per tick is reached, or the tnt clump runs out of tnt. Tuneller cannon. This is part of how nukes work.
Actually Using Gameticks: TL;DR: Lol JK, this part's important, and pretty short, so you should actually read it.
So you might be wondering if a redstone tick is two gameticks, how do we actually time gameticks?
And the answer is: Minecraft is really finicky and redstone is sketchy when it comes to gameticks, and the ways we do it are generally kinda sketchy, and redstone tends to randomly generate gameticks when there's many repeaters present.
But it's a generally bad idea to time gameticks like that, rather, it's a problem because random gameticks end up getting added to super precise timings, which can ruin your day. I can't really explain well how to avoid it, but you'll figure it out as you get into more complicated cannons.
Anyway, enough rambling, and into the two best ways to time gameticks:
Pistons and comparators.
Comparators = 3 gameticks = 1.5 redstone ticks (MAYBE) TL;DR: Comparators can be sketchy
Comparators CAN take an extra gametick over one redstone tick. However, despite that, it's kinda sketchy. Usually, if it's one or two fairly easy cannon components, like slabbust or nuke, comparators are your friend. However, when you stary wiring things that need super precise and consistent coordination, they can mess you up. Similar to learning how to avoid extra gameticks, its hard for me to teach you how and when to use comparators using text.
Pistons and Redstone Blocks: Layout: ----->P-|RP -|R>----(R = redstone block, P = Sticky Piston, -| = piston arm) TL;DR: One piston can either equal one redstonetick or one and a half, depending on how it's powered, but it's consistent if you know what you're doing, and are more reliable once you get more experience, but usually you have one piston push a redstone block into another piston+redstoneblock, which generally adds 5 gameticks, or 2.5 redstone ticks.
I actually don't really understand whats goin on with these things, if you read the tldr then you just read my entire entry for this haha.
