Hypertube

The Hyper Tube is a pipe-like transport system used to quickly transport engineers over long distances. A Hyper Tube Entrance is required for entry, but not for an exit. Hyper Tubes are non-directional and can be entered from both ends if an Entrance is placed on each end.

Engineers can change the travel direction or nearly stop during mid-flight by holding the directional key ( or ). No Tube junction or crossing is possible. If the Tube is built through terrain or trees, engineers traveling inside will be able to clip through.

Speed
Travel speed is decreased when traveling upwards or marking sharp turns and is increased when traveling downwards or in a straight line. When entering a Hyper Tube, the engineer's entry velocity is added to the Tube's velocity boost, which, when chained, allows for the construction of cannons that can propel engineers with speeds exceeding 500 km/h, making it over four times faster than the Electric Locomotive. It is currently one of the most effective means of crossing large distances.

If the Hyper Tube booster is built correctly, this is the gained speed based on entry velocity and the number of entrances:

Hyper Tube cannon


A Hyper Tube cannon can be constructed by chaining Hyper Tube Entrances:

How to construct a Hyper Tube cannon

 * 1) Build a row of foundations of one tile x nine tiles
 * 2) Every four meters, place a Hyper Tube Support with a Hyper Tube Entrance on each, up to 17. Chaining over 17 entrances is not recommended as the velocity gained in the Tube will shoot the player beyond the map boundary. Ensure all Entrances are facing the same direction.
 * 3) From each Support, build a short Hyper Tube of two meters each, except for the last segment.
 * 4) The last segment should be slightly longer and curved 30 degrees upwards and point towards the target destination. Use the mouse wheel to control the vertical tilt. A 45-degree launch angle will result in a much longer range and height, but this also increases the traveling time as the engineer will spend a longer time flying high above the cloud.
 * 5) Delete all Hyper Tube Supports that don't have an Entrance attached to them.
 * 6) Power all the entrances.

To use the Hyper Tube cannon

 * 1) Save your game. Furthermore, if the auto-save countdown is appearing on the screen, do not enter the Hyper Tube, wait for the auto-save to complete first.
 * 2) Equip a Jetpack and enter the 1st entrance for crossing the longest distance. As the flight range is affected by the speed of the engineer entering the Hyper Tube, the flight range can be boosted by entering the Tube with a Blade Runner while running on an Mk.5 Belt, then switch to Jetpack during mid-flight.
 * 3) If overshot, reload the saved game and enter from the 2nd entrance for a shorter distance. If still overshot, enter from the 3rd entrance, etc.
 * 4) Generally, 17 entrances are only needed to cross the diagonal of the map. For a distance such as 2km, 15 entrances should be enough.
 * 5) Build walls or U-Jelly Landing Pad at the other end to land safely without a Jetpack.
 * 6) To build the U-Jelly on the correct landing point, you may need to save first then purposely die on the landing point then observe the position of the Death Crate to identify the exact location.
 * 7) Experiment with the ideal launching angle by adjusting the tilt and curvature of the last Tube segment.
 * 8) During mid-air, use  to adjust your flight path.
 * 9) Performing sharp turns during mid-air will impact the flight range.
 * 10) The engineer takes no damage from slamming into a wall or a vertical rock, or scratching a ground horizontally; only receive damage from falling vertically. If lands on the ground at diagonal velocity, then only the vertical part of the velocity is counted towards the fall damage.

To use the cannon for fast map exploration

 * 1) Build The HUB near the cannon to set your spawning point near it.
 * 2) Store all your inventory at a safe place, do not bring anything along.
 * 3) Launch across the map at any chosen angle.
 * 4) Kill yourself by simply letting the cannon launch you outside the map, or click respawn button in the  menu.
 * 5) After respawn, adjust the last tube to a slightly different angle, then repeat the launch. Eventually, the entire map will be revealed.
 * 6) While flying, you can open the Map  and adjust the flight path for maximum reveal coverage.

Hyper Tube cyclotron

 * A variant to Hyper Tube cannon is the Hyper Tube cyclotron, where several short segments are chained to form a loose loop, with the launching Tube placed at some distance away.
 * When the speed gained in the loop is fast enough, it throws the engineer out of the loop and into the launching Tube for the actual launch.
 * As this usually uses fewer entrances than the straight version, it can save some power but is much more difficult to construct.

Fully enclosed hyper tube cannon

 * Another variant is, instead of a short upward curved tube at the last segment, the last tube is connected all the way to the destination. In this case, a jetpack is not required for safe travel.
 * The construction cost will be much higher and more tedious to build.
 * There will be no usage flexibility to this design: the destination cannot be changed freely as there is no mid-air travel.
 * The enclosed nature of this method allows for even higher speeds as you don't have to worry about being propelled outside the map.

Distance equation
Alternative for varying angles: where &alpha; is the launch angle and v is the launch velocity, which can be calculated as

Note
A Hyper Tube Cannon won't work when built vertically on a wall. To fly upwards, simply build the horizontal Hyper Tube Cannon with the last segment pointed upward.

Construction

 * The Hyper Tube has four construction modes: Default, Conveyor 2D, Noodle, and Vertical. Different build mode can be cycled by either pressing or holding.
 * Default: The default build mode.
 * Vertical: The tube will attempt to maintain at the same level as the starting point, then turns vertically when approaching the ending point.
 * Noodle: The tube will try to maximize its curvature radius such that it appears smooth, and it is calculated by aligning its arc tangent at both the starting and ending points.
 * Conveyor 2D: Similar to default mode but with a much smaller turning radius, useful when building a tube in another build mode is not possible.
 * Tubes have a maximum length of 100 meters before an additional Hyper Tube Support is required.
 * Tubes do not transmit power, therefore each Entrance must be separately powered for it to be usable.

Hyper Tube support
When building from a fixed point to a free point, a Hyper Tube Support will be automatically added to the 2nd point, including its building cost. The support itself needs two clicks to be built, before the first click, use the mouse wheel to rotate the support (and thus the Hyper Tube) horizontally. Before the 2nd click, move the mouse up/down to change the support height (between 1- 7meters) then use the mouse wheel to change its pitch (vertical rotation).

Engineer damage

 * While inside, the Engineer will not aggro nearby hostile creatures, however, the damage will be received if they come in contact, which may even throw the Engineer out of the Tube.
 * The Tube does not shield from Radiation.
 * Hyper Tube cannons pointed downwards can deal significant fall damage when the engineer is slammed against the landing point.

Trivia

 * Hyper Tubes somewhat resemble the Tube Transport System from Futurama.
 * In a multiplayer game, Engineers phase through each other if more than one is within, and can drag Engineers standing on the top of the Tube. The Tube can be constructed into a loop once another Engineer enters it, getting them stuck with no exit.
 * The metal rings on the Tube aren't spaced out evenly.
 * While traveling inside the Tube, Blade Runners equipped by engineers will visually disconnect from their leg. This is purely a graphical glitch.
 * If you switch hand items while traveling inside of a Hyper Tube, you can use them (to a limited effect).
 * There is a rare chance that when a Space Giraffe-Tick-Penguin-Whale Thing is at the exit of a Hyper Tube Cannon when the engineer is launching itself out, it will bump the engineer to hit the ground instead and die instantly.
 * For the first few frames when the player enters the Hyper Tube it will appear as though they are underneath it.
 * While Hyper Tubes require power to be entered - if power is tripped or cutoff from the Hyper Tube while the engineer is still transiting it, there will be no impact and they will continue on the normal path of the tube.

History

 * Patch 0.3: Introduced