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[Alastar]

Hello! I tried to set up a watergun (no practical experience), and apparently missed something basic.

FFF
╔═
~╚
╗D
╔╗
╗╚
╗╚
╗╚
╚╝

F Fortifications, solid tiles above
═ Impulse ramps
~ Channel. Below: NS ramp, infinite water supply from the west
D Door over track, mechanically operated


Yes, I shamelessly stole from someone much cleverer than me.
The basic idea: when the door is open, we have continuous fire at low velocity and high RoF. When the door is closed, the loaded minecart spools up to ludicrous speed; hooking it up to an appropriate repeater should allow high-velocity shots at modest RoF. In literal dry runs, it appears to behave as desired.
With water, it just floods itself until the minecart gets stuck in the ditch. The same happened when I tried to build an exact copy of Larix' design.
Any pointers?

[Larix]

I couldn't properly remember the workings, so i just went and built this thing on an ad-hoc world to check:

Your cart is releasing the water on the level above, because there's no ceiling over the tile where it releases the shot - the northeasternmost track tile (EW ramp) in your case. Since there's solid wall north of that tile, the water crashes into the wall and drips down into the cannon itself.

You need to either close the ceiling over the ramp (floor or wall or the like constructed over it) or dig away/carve fortification into the wall north of the cannon on the level above. The latter's only useful if you also have most of your "shooting range" on the level above.

[Alastar]

Ahhh, thank you!
I did indeed misunderstand something fundamental. That actually sounds like a very useful quirk, allowing guns from 2 z-levels to concentrate on the same kill zone.

Surprisingly, everything is working as intended now, and I'm quite satisfied. A pressure plate triggers a near-instantaneous high-velocity shot, followed by ~2-3 low-velocity shots in 44-tick intervals. A lever on repeat keeps a similar pattern indefinitely. Operator fatique introduces irregularities, but no time is wasted - if it's not shooting, it's accelerating to maximum ramp speed. Rapid fire mode is strictly inferior to a variant without the closed acceleration loop... but the option is there.
Shutoff via door seems fragile in theory (trigger not synchronised to cycle, so it can get stuck), but it hasn't been an issue.

***

For something with a more regular output, I had some hopes for the following:

FFF
^╝═
~ ╚
╗ ╚
╔D╚
╗╔╝
╗╚
╗╚
╚╝

F Fortifications, solid tiles above
^ Pressure plate over SE track corner
═ Impulse ramps
~ Channel. Below: NS ramp, infinite water supply
D Door over SW corner, linked to plate


It fires a decently-fast shot every 111 ticks or so, and I like how it looks in action... but I'm not sold on the performance. Larger, fussier, less flexible, unresponsive (only natural shutoff seems a hatch on the firing tile, meaning it starts from a standstill), it generally seems to do less with more and excel at nothing.