The Hades Autoloading Grav Artillery is quite user-friendly and simple to use. However, this design does have double piston extenders, welders, grinders, gravity, artificial mass blocks and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ EXPLOSIVES all working in close proximity to each other, so in order to avoid any mess-and-associated-cleanup, it pays to understand how the system works.

You can find the basic operation instructions in the description of the blueprint for the Hades. What follows are some in-depth instructions to the safe operation of this weapon, including preliminary checks, as well as tips on Projector Rig alignment, timer configuration, making your own shells, and piping the cannon into a larger ship.

Until you're familiar with the system (and frankly, even after), it's a good idea to quickly run through the following safety checks.

1. Ensure that Tool Shake is turned OFF in the world settings. With tool shake off, this weapon is extremely stable and reliable. It will still work with tool shake on, however, I can't guarantee that you won't have the odd self-detonation or two.
   
   
2. Ensure the Projector Rig is properly aligned and locked into position, with its thrusters and inertial dampeners OFF, and the projector ON.
   
   
3. Check that the Shell Feed Pistons and the Firing Pin Pistons are all fully retracted (as far as their limits allow- they have minimum distances set), either visually or by checking in the control panel. (This is only really necessary if something has gone wrong recently, such as a jam or malfunction caused by lag, or the Emergency Stop was activated. VERY RARE, but worth keeping in mind.
   
   
4. If the Hades has been incorporated into a ship, ensure that all gravity fields that overlap the magazine, breech or barrel and aren't part of the Hades System are turned OFF.
   
   
5. Check that the Loading Status Light (green, L) is OFF , and the Safety Light (red, R) is ON
   
   
   
6. Check that the Programmable Block has indeed got Taleden's Inventory Manager loaded.
   
   
7. All good? You're ready to go!

L and R of the flight seat are panels that explain the Status Lights and the current action bar set up.

1. Press 1. to initiate the loading of the magazine. The Loading Status Light will begin flashing Green, to indicate loading is underway. This will take anywhere from 1-2 minutes depending on the current Welder/Grinder you've calibrated the Hades for. By default, it's calibrated for X5 Welding and Grinding.
   Once the sequence is initiated, the Initiate Loading timer is deactivated so that you cant accidently start a second sequence while loading is still in progress. The Programming Block will also start running constantly in order to pull Uranium into the shells' reactors.
   
   NOTE: If you're using the Hades as is, and not integrated into a ship, you may want to press 2. to engage the Gyro-Lock. This will keep stop you from maneuvering while loading, but will also prevent the weird physics from making the Hades start slowly flipping from the downward pressure of the Shell Feed Piston. If incorporated into a larger ship, this usually isn't necessary as the mass of the ship and its gyros counteract it.
   
   
2. Once loaded, the Loading Status Light will stop flashing and stay Green to indicate that loading has finished and there is a shell in the chamber ready to go. The Shell Feed Piston will have pushed the shells down and will have locked into position to prevent them from floating back up the magazine. The Firing Pin Gravity (number 8 on your toolbar) will have left itself ON in order to keep shells firm against the rear wall of the magazine and the firing pin. You should see this
   
   
   
3. Align yourself with your target. Use the Targeting Camera (press 6.) to accurately aim at long distance targets. Remember, the camera is, by default, on the top of the barrel, so you'll need to aim a hair higher than your intended impact site.
   
   
4. At this point, you may want to press 2. to engage the Gyro-Lock and lock the weapons alignment. Even if you wish to adjust your aim in between shells, it's recommended to engage the lock as you fire, to prevent the barrel from swinging and the shell from colliding with the inside of the barrel. It is, however, completely optional, as long as the ship isn't turning rapidly while firing.
   
   
5. Engage the Gravity within the barrel by pressing 3.
   
   
6. Press 5 to disengage the Safety- the Safety Light (Red) should go out. While the safety is ON, the Firing Pin is turned OFF and can't push the shell into the gravity field.
   
   
7. Press 4. to fire the shell. The Firing Pin Pistons will extend, shunting the shell into the gravity field.
   
   
8. As the shell leaves the chamber, the Loading Staus Light will turn OFF and the next shell will be pushed into the chamber. As soon as the Loading Status Light comes ON again, you can press 4. to fire the next shell.
   In perfect conditions, the Hades should fire the entire magazine in just under 20 seconds.
   
   
9. As soon as the last shell is fired, the Safety will engage, the Safety Light will turn ON, and the Shell Feed Piston will retract as the system resets itself.
   Press 3. to deactivate the Barrel Gravity, and 2. to deactivate the Gyro-Lock if you used it.
   The system reset will take about 13 seconds, after which the Initiate Loading timer will become available again.

Reliable loading of the Artillery requires proper alignment of the Projector Rig- misalignment can lead to catastrophic results, usually a detonation at the top of the magazine.
If you follow the process below, the Artillery will load reliably every time.

1. Pilot the rig into position.
   
   
2. From a top down view, ensure the rig is centred horizontally on the Artillery's connector.
   
   
3. Switch to a side view, and hold down "thrust down" and "thrust back" ('c' and 's' by default) (See pics)
   
   
   
4. When the rig is pressed hard against the floor and back wall and is no longer moving, press 'p' to lock both the connector and landing gear.
   
   
5. Turn on the projector and check the position of the projection. The conveyor "tail" should be aligned with the conveyor tube of the projector rig, The tip of the shell should be as close to the front of the magazine as possible while keeping the conveyors aligned and joined.
   
   
   
   
6. Check the alignment of the projection. There should be a slight, even gap between the projection, and the large landing gear on the end of the Shell Feed Piston (see pics). If the projection cuts through the landing gear, or the gap is noticeably uneven, try the alignment process again.
   
   
   
   
7. If everything looks good, turn off the rigs thrusters and inertial dampeners. You're ready to go

It's good practice to re-align the rig whenever you load a world containing the Hades, or whenever you copy/paste it within a world.

KNOWN ISSUE: Sometimes after loading and firing a full mag, the landing gear will automatically unlock. This isn't really an issue, as the landing gear are mostly there to help align the rig as the connector will keep it in position. However, during prolonged use it's recommended to occasionally check the landing gear and re-engage them if needed.

In its current form, the Hades is calibrated for worlds with both Welding and Grinding set to X5 speed. However, recalibration for different speed settings is actually quite simple.

There are 29 timers involved in the loading process- 5 for each shell, and 4 controlling the feed piston that pushes the shells down the magazine. This may seem complicated but there are only 2 timer blocks per shell (so 10 in all) that require adjusting- 1 that controls the length of time the welders are on, and another for the grinder.




Type '-2' in the control panel and you'll see the 2nd timer for each shell. (so 3-2 is Shell 3, timer 2). Select them all, then adjust the delay to the appropriate amount for the welding speed you'll be using (see table below).




Type '-3' in the control panel and you'll see the 3nd timer for each shell. Select them all, then adjust the delay to the appropriate amount for the grinding speed you'll be using (see table below).


The table below shows displays the timer delay required for each speed setting, as well as some analysis of firing/reload times, and comparison to a more traditional single shot grav cannon (ignore the table on the R for this- it's not relevant) The rows in grey highlight the timers that need to be adjusted and the corresponding delay for each speed setting.

Remember, all the '-2' timer blocks control Welding and need to be set the same, and all the '-3' timer blocks control Grinding, and likewise need to be identical.



IMPORTANT: Messing with any other timers' settings is not advised- mess around at your own peril. See the section on 'Integrating the Artillery into a Ship (+Survival)' about moving the timer blocks.

I'm quite proud of the shell I developed- This thing can reliably penetrate 5 large ship layers of light armour or 4 of heavy armour, and in both cases will usually partially damage an additional layer. The warheads blast the gyros out in a fragmentation effect. It should be noted that this is about as powerful a shell as I've been able to create that will work in survival, at all Inventory capacity settings.

That being said, I'm sure people are able to make better shells than I (especially in creative!), or may want to try a different shell type (high explosive or maybe just a solid kinetic), or even adapt their own shells for this cannon. So, instead of having people bumbling around, wondering why their shell is detonating inside the mag, below are some parameters to consider when creating shells for the Hades. If you follow these, your shell should work fine.

• No more than 14 blocks long- I recommend you keep to exactly 14 to prevent unwanted movement within the mag- small shells may bounce around when the ship banks, rolls or decelerates hard. (this shouldn't happen due to gravity in the mag pulling the shells against the back wall, however if for some reason the gravity is turned off, smaller shells can become a hazard)
  
  
  
  
• Must be 5W by 5H. any smaller in height and the firing pin may strike the bottom 2 shells instead of just the one. This causes a lot of mess.
  
  
• The shell doesn't have to fill an entire 5x5x14 space. As you can see by my shell, I used fins and collars to make up the dimensions. This helps guide it smoothly down the magazine, and the forwards swept fins on the back collar help the shells slide back and forward against each other without catching.

The shell must contain:

• 2 Artificial Mass blocks (shown in Red), which must be turned ON.
  
  
• At least 1 Gyro with the override turned ON (shown in Green)- this is IMPORTANT. If the override is left OFF, the shell will tumble when launched and potentially detonate inside the cannon.
  
  
• A reactor that is directly piped to receive uranium from the projector rig (shown in Blue). The "tail" leading from the reactor to the Projector Rig must enter the rear of the shell aligned on the far right and centred vertically, and must extend exactly 5 blocks out from the rear of the shell.
  
  
  
• Lastly, a sensor to turn off the Artificial Mass blocks (shown in Yellow). Strictly speaking, this isn't required, however, it's good practice to include a shut off in your grav torps/missiles so that they aren't deflected by enemy grav shielding, or any other gravity field the shell might cross before it hits the target.
  
  Set the sensor so that its detection range overlaps the sides, top and bottom of the cannon barrel, then extend the range back (towards the cannon) as far as you can, and reduce the range in the shells flight path to minimum. Then make sure that the sensor only detects allied large ships.
  
  For actions, leave the "detected" (left) slot empty, and make the "no longer detected" (right) slot turn off all Artificial Mass blocks. When making the shell into a blueprint, make sure the sensor hasn't accidentally tripped and deactivated the Artificial Mass blocks. If it has, just quickly select them in the control panel and turn them back on.
  
  When fired, your shell will now continue accelerating until it's far enough that it can no longer detect the cannon.

Currently, the Hades runs Taleden's Inventory Manager to draw uranium into their reactor of each shell to power the mass blocks. This same system can be used to pull explosives, stone, or whatever you want into inventories on the shell. Have a look at the scripts workshop page to see what you'll need to do.

It's very unlikely that anyone would try and build the Hades in survival, but integrating it into a ship for a scenario is another thing.

First, a sneak peek at the WIP ship I'm currently building for which the Hades was developed


Isn't she beautiful?

......er hem......moving right along

Besides the obvious factors of making a ship big enough to house it, and making sure you don't block or build too close to any of the pistons, there are a few things that need mentioning.


The current design is pretty bare bones to make it easy to install into a ship. Basically, cut the testing thrusters off, and pipe it up.


Piping needs to lead to 2 different areas

1. The Shell Assembler (shown in Blue)- All the construction components needed to build the shells need to be able to reach here. Link up to anywhere that is blue in the pic- you can even pipe it from the front into the far welders, although it makes more sense to have the piping hidden behind the cannon.
   
   
2. The Projector Rig Connector (shown in Green)- All that needs to pass through here is Uranium, which will be drawn into the Rig's reactor to keep it powered, and through the rig into the shell itself in order to power the mass blocks and cut off sensor. In fact, it may even be worth not piping up with the rest of the ship so that it doesn't pull any fuel (admittedly it wouldn't be much) from the ship's reactors, and instead, pipe it into a small cargo container that you can manually put Uranium into. In the most updated version where TIMs is being used, this is already done (uranium should be placed in the red cargo container)
   

I tried to keep the Timer blocks within the outer dimensions of the cannon and still allow physical access to each timer in case repairs are needed. However, if you're integrating the cannon into your own ship design, you may wish to move these timers elsewhere, perhaps to a 'Server Room' along with all your programmable blocks (this is what I've done).

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to move 40 timers while guaranteeing all the settings stay the same. The method I used to avoid confusion is as follows-

Place/build your timers in their new location within the ship, keeping the old ones for now.
Rename all the new timer blocks exactly the same as the old ones (copy & paste), only put an * at the start of the name.
Now methodically go through each timer by copying the name of the old one, and pasting it into the control panel. It will come up with only the old timer, and it's replacement. Look at the settings and actions of the old and replicate it in the new. Check that they are identical, then delete/destroy the old one. This way you know exactly which ones you've done, as there will be only one of that timer.

It's a pain in the arse, but great things come to those who wait.

This project has been a bit of a labour of love for me. If you like the concept and would like to incorporate this design in one of your ships, go for it. I believe the workshop exists so people can bounce ideas off one another and be inspired.

All I ask is if you do publish something containing this design or an adapted version of my magazine loading system, please give credit where credit's due.

Also, if you like the design, please rate it and share, and leave feedback.

Now go blow random things up.