Hive Blaster — bronze, amber and a heavy cannonball

AoA 3.7.1 / Minecraft 1.20.1 · released-file baseline and original upgrade concepts · native upgraded weapon not accepted.

What the original does

Hive Blaster is a non-fully-automatic cannon using the native Cannonball ammunition family. It fires HiveBallEntity, which follows an arcing path. Its recognizable appearance is a broad cylindrical front, dark brown body, copper bands and upright tubes, an amber-colored chamber and a charcoal grip.

The inspected weapon/projectile classes do not summon bees or apply a honey effect. They inherit the shared heavy-cannon impact path: a living target's armor and toughness adjust the raw multiplier before the heavy-gun attack, and a successful hit reaches knockback and the blocking-player shield-disable path. The shared base impact-effect hook is empty for this weapon. Bee swarms and sticky resin are optional new design ideas, not original behavior.

Baseline inputs

Property	Released input / behavior
Item	aoa3:hive_blaster
Base damage input	20.5; not final damage against every target
Durability input	850
Firing delay input	24 ticks; nominally 1.2 seconds at 20 TPS
Stored recoil constructor input	approximately 0.2; not an effective camera angle
Ammunition	Cannonball
Automatic mode	BaseCannon returns false
Projectile	HiveBallEntity
Lifespan / damage-multiplier / piercing inputs	120 / 1.0 / 0
Gravity return	approximately 0.1
Firing sound	ITEM_SHADOW_BLASTER_FIRE

The shared cannon multiplier includes 1 + (armor × 1.5 + armorToughness × 0.5) / 100, followed by the native heavy-gun damage system. The rest of that pipeline, target state and other mods still matter.

Original projectile and performance-sensitive behavior

Unmodified projectile texture.

The registered renderer uses this ordinary cannonball texture and adds flickering sparkler requests across eight iterations per render invocation. Its colors alternate between the YELLOW constant and RGB (223,153,0). Particle constructor inputs include scale 1 and age modifier 3; the latter is not a verified three-second lifetime.

The renderer holds a counter initialized to 12 and a toggle. It decrements the counter inside the render-loop iterations and resets it when switching the color. That state is stored on the renderer, not the projectile. Do not assume the color cycle is a per-projectile game-time clock, and do not present render-call counts as measured particles per second.

For the upgrade, separate presentation timing from render passes. Evaluate a bounded game-time emission or ribbon/atlas solution while preserving the amber/yellow character. Test several visible projectiles, paused time, high refresh rates and extra shader passes. No FPS improvement is claimed until the replacement is measured and visually compared.

Acquisition

The released recipe is Shadow Blaster + Lelyetian Upgrade Kit → Hive Blaster, using aoa3:upgrade_kit. The recipe's presence does not by itself establish how every ingredient is obtainable in every modpack or version.

Original identity and proposed premium versions

Unmodified original sprite.

• Amber Crucible: the closest silhouette to the original. A heavy bronze cannon, readable amber chamber and purposeful copper vents. The conventional Cannonball path must remain understandable in the final loading model.
• Swarm Crown: honeycomb-shaped armor and spectral insect motifs. A real damaging swarm would be a separately defined functional module with explicit ownership, targeting, resource cost and spawn limits; decorative insects alone grant no attacks.
• Resin Bloom: articulated amber petal plates and an optional resin-pulse branch. Any slowing, lingering field or splash damage needs its own declared server behavior and compatibility tests.

The concept shows proposed projectiles and impacts. It is not a native screenshot or proof that the models animate correctly. Its small pixel inset is labeled as an inspired reconstruction; the separate original image above is exact. Earlier concept v1 retained.

Additional attachment and inspection ideas

• Vent crowns that visibly articulate during discharge/recovery, with optional amber, smoky-bronze and honeycomb finishes.
• A spherical-breech presentation or optional recharge treatment, without imposing mandatory reloads on every upgrade.
• Earned bee/amber charms with declared gameplay bonuses, plus static, glowing or animated decals.
• A harmless inspection in which a tiny spectral insect circles the vents and returns to the chamber. It must not consume Cannonballs, spawn a real attacking entity or modify health.

Acceptance still required

• Capture the original flight, amber/yellow particles, block impact and entity impact in the exact release.
• Preserve heavy-cannon target, shield and knockback behavior in original mode.
• Model the breech, grip, vents and attachments with real hand/clearance checks.
• Keep multi-projectile effects independent of renderer instance state and repeated shader passes.
• Validate all proposed swarm/resin gameplay modules separately from cosmetics.
• Test native import, animation interruption, networking, saves, shader/Vulkan compatibility and actual frame/tick costs.

Audit tool and original concept prompts · Released class/renderer/recipe evidence · Weapon research standard · Customization

Original AoA assets and identity: Tslat and contributors. New concept exploration was generated with the built-in image tool.

Recoil interpretation

For this pinned 1.20.1 release, the stored constructor recoil input is not the inherited modifier getter: the inspected BaseGun.getRecoilModifier() returns approximately 0.35. The per-shot method and later client application determine the actual recoil path. Do not infer a stronger or weaker measured kick from the constructor column alone. This clarification does not change the original values, weapon balance or acceptance state. Resolved method routing.