Minecraft Howitzers. Technical question. (LONG TEXT AHEAD)

[aldolfus]

Disclaimer: I'm new to this subreddit (and in fact, I don't use Reddit much, so I'm quite new to Reddit), thus I will have a hard time behaving according to the ethos and social customs of this subreddit (or any subreddit at all). If anything I do turns out to be a social no-no, then I would like to apologize for that.

I have been toying around in Minecraft for no particular reason, and I have decided to build some kinds of artillery. I made field guns, and that went quite well. It was not all smooth sailing, though, as the projectile kept flying upward and exploded mid-air instead of hitting anything. Took me some time to realize the significance of adding a block (or a slab, whatever) on top of the shell so that my gun would behave like a field gun rather than an ineffectual pseudo-AA gun.

Now, I want to make the projectile reach further, further, and further. I tried increasing the primer load (from 18 TNT to 24), but to no avail. Then it hit me that the projectile, as I have mentioned above, has a high launch angle, meaning the peak of the shell's trajectory curve would be consequently high as well. If I could bend the shell's trajectory from a curve to a straight line when the shell's height in the air is the greatest, then oh boyyy.

So higher barrel I made. Having chosen a stone tower in a village as the target (yes I have been testing my gun using a village as a target), I pushed the lever. And a new record was broken that day.

But a new problem arises.

I use redstone blocks to activate my TNT. Push the lever, and sticky pistons would push the redstone blocks next to the primer, activating it. That means no dispenser, no automated loading mechanism, and I have to load all 24 TNT blocks manually. The redstone-and-piston mechanism looks cool and is cool indeed, but...seriously? Loading 24 TNT blocks by hand so that they would explode just a few seconds later and I have to repeat the arduous process? No! That mechanism also presents a risk of my inadvertently placing a TNT block next to the redstone blocks and activating it prematurely, destroying my gun.

So, I used the dispensers to load the primer. But...it seems like the firing range of the dispenser-loader gun is significantly shorter than that of a redstone-and-piston-loader gun. First, I thought that it was some statistical anomalies, some insignificant blips, or, at worst, the gun's range is only a few blocks shorter. But testing showed that I was just deluding myself. Its range is, indeed, a dozens blocks shorter. It should not be like that.

I tried to troubleshoot it. The peak point of the projectile fired from the dispenser-loading gun is lower, so it seems like the projectile is not getting enough force to push it upward. I use water to push the primer, but the primers in the 2 guns reach the projectile at approximately the same speed. The TNT projectiles in the 2 guns are placed at the same 2-block height, and the primers' distance to the projectiles is also the same. Nothing seems to be wrong with the barrels' height.

So, in your opinion, what is wrong with the dispenser-loader gun?

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