Tutorial:Hypertube cannon

A Hyper Tube cannon is a specific setup of Hyper Tube Entrances and short Hyper Tube segments, which can be used to reach very fast speeds, capable of crossing the entire playable world in seconds.



Construction

 * 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. After clicking to confirm the tube's position, 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 pioneer 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.

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

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 pioneer 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 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 enclosed nature of this method allows for even higher speeds as being shot out of the map doesn't have to be worried about.

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.

Transiently powered cannon
As we only need to power the cannon when we want to use it, we can instead use a switch between between the cannon entrances and the supply power, and place a power storage on the same grid as the entrances. With the switch off most of the time, it doesn't continuously drain power, and then when you want to use it, flip the switch, wait 5-10 seconds for the storage to charge up enough (good time to equip the jet-pack), and flip the switch off again. You should have a few seconds to get into the cannon before the storage runs out.

The advantage of this is that we only ever have the power draw of a single cannon (and the energy storage) to worry about, and we can build as many cannons as we like without having to worry about the cumulative load on the power grid.

Usage

 * 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 pioneer 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) Using a Jetpack is easiest, but if you do not have one, a Parachute can be used instead.
 * 4) 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.
 * 5) Generally, 17 entrances are only needed to cross the diagonal of the map. For a distance such as 2km, 15 entrances should be enough.
 * 6) Build walls or U-Jelly Landing Pad at the other end to land safely without a Jetpack.
 * 7) 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.
 * 8) Experiment with the ideal launching angle by adjusting the tilt and curvature of the last Tube segment.
 * 9) During mid-air, use  to adjust your flight path.
 * 10) Performing sharp turns during mid-air will impact the flight range.
 * 11) The pioneer takes no damage from slamming into a wall or a vertical rock, or scratching a ground horizontally; damage is only received from falling vertically. If lands on the ground at diagonal velocity, then only the vertical component of the velocity is counted towards the fall damage.

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.

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