How is the orbital cannon supposed to work? (Spoilers)

[Fear Ghoul]

So I beat the game and this is one part of the story I don't really understand. So the reason for the loops is that the Ash Twin Project activates a black hole using power from the exploding sun, and like we see in that experiment on Ember Twin with the black hole and white hole, with enough power they can have something appear before it comes out, so the loops are the information going back in time to your character.

The orbital cannon is firing probes out all over the place in an attempt at finding the Eye, and we find out from reading logs that the Nomai involved with it wanted to put way too much power into it and didn't care if it broke, which seems to be what's going on at the beginning of the game. What I don't understand is how it's facing a different direction at the beginning of each loop. I'm guessing the information it sends out on what the probes find is also sent back, so it's supposed to adjust where it fires based on that? It's just strange how it's already facing a different direction right away instead of starting at a certain point and then having to adjust from there.

Am I also supposed to assume it's been firing for over 380,000 years, and this just happens to be when it finally breaks from being fired off with too much power?

[OxYmoron]

I am sure our Master Archivar Nert will be able to provide a more elaborated answer, but I will try in the meantime nevertheless ;-)

To my knowledge the probe is connected to one of the three masks (the other two being connected to yourself and your fellow aerospace colleague Gabbro). So, yes the information is being sent back.

I think you are right with your assumption that it actually should turn first before it fires, but maybe it does so until/while your character opens its eyes.

"Am I also supposed to assume it's been firing for over 380,000 years, and this just happens to be when it finally breaks from being fired off with too much power?" --> Yes, it has been fired for a loooong time until it finally found the eye’s coordinates somewhere beyond its 9,000,000 shot. Where I think you are a bit of is that I assume it breaks EVERY time and the Nomai anticipated it but knew they will need it just for this one (repeated) shot. Though I can’t base this on facts :-)

[Bobywan]

I assumed the same. The cannon breaks every time.

[Psymon²]

I am also unsure "how" the cannon is able to rotate before firing every time, but I'm assuming we're thrown back in time to the EXACT point we wake up from, which would mean there's no time for it to change its aiming direction.

... maybe, as Oxy says, there's some time before that allowing the cannon to aim, and we just happen to awake as it fires?

am keen to understand this better.

[Nert]

I have been summoned!

tldr: The Orbital Probe Cannon never fired before today, it only started once the project activated.. It does pass data back every loop so it knows where not to fire again and it changes direction while we're asleep at the campfire

The order of operation's talked about in the ATP itself:

Originally posted by "AshTwinProject":

YARROW: We’re nearly ready to activate the Ash Twin Project! Here is what will happen: First, the Sun Station will receive the order to fire at the sun, prompting it to explode.

YARROW: Using the energy from the resulting supernova, the Ash Twin Project will send the order for the Orbital Probe Cannon to fire back in time by 22 minutes.

The cannon has to be within the loop as there is only one probe! So the supernova comes first, and he cannon only fires once time has already looped once - knowing that even launching the probe into deep space, it'll be back again ready to fire once time has looped

You get hints about this from inside the Control and Probe Tracking Modules, which are connected to the first Mask inside the ATP and have been passing their memories back since the first loop, unlike us:

Originally posted by "OPC Modules":

Retrieving previous launch data from Ash Twin.
Request to launch probe received from Ash Twin Project.
Cannon aligned with randomly selected probe trajectory. Gravity field activated.

We are actually asleep during the memory transfer, we wake up to the cannon firing but it has time to have re-aligned itself before then - despite all text saying otherwise, the loop is actually a bit longer than we think, closer to 23 or 24 minutes!

Separately we know Avens and Mallow juiced the cannon up, and while they thought it would be a slight strain on the cannon, they didn't realise it would utterly explode on firing!

Originally posted by "ProbeTrackingModule":

PRIVET: You won’t ask the Orbital Probe Cannon to use so much power that it breaks, will you?

MALLOW: Fret not, my nervous friend! We only need to fire the probe once, anyway, so who minds if it compromises the Orbital Probe Cannon’s structural integrity slightly?

This is why it explodes every single time it does fire, but it's not been fired yet!

The plan complete, they fired the sun station in order to cause the supernova! But it failed.

Originally posted by "SunStation":

YARROW: What happened? Did the Sun Station not fire?

PYE: It fired, Yarrow. But it failed. The sun barely responded (....)

YARROW: Return to Ash Twin first, my friend. Perhaps a change of task would help: Spire noticed a comet approaching this star system that we’d like to investigate.

Originally posted by "ConstructionYard":

CASSAVA: I have bad news, Avens. Yarrow says there was a problem with the proposed power source, so the Orbital Probe Cannon won’t be asked to fire.

Their plans halted, and they went to go play on this fun new comet that had just arrived... and, well, we know how well that went. They never got the chance to reset or try anything else


So everything has just sat there, dormant, for 281,042 years.. Until today. The day our sun goes supernova on it's own, doing what the sun station never could

The ATP finally got it's supernova juice, and it did it's job, sent the order to fire back by 22 minutes, the loop began. No matter how many times the loop happens, it's still the same 22 minutes, being overwritten time and time again

9,318,054 loops and probes later, the Eye would be found! The statues will be told to wake up, and our game starts with the very first loop we'll ever remember

[Nert]

Originally posted by Psymon²:

I am also unsure "how" the cannon is able to rotate before firing every time, but I'm assuming we're thrown back in time to the EXACT point we wake up from, which would mean there's no time for it to change its aiming direction.

... maybe, as Oxy says, there's some time before that allowing the cannon to aim, and we just happen to awake as it fires?

am keen to understand this better.

We wake up after memories finish downloading into our brains, but if you sit and watch the ATP in action at the end of a loop, our memories being recorded don't cease until the black hole closes, and it's open for about 30 seconds

So we know the white hole has been open and doing it's thing for at least 30 seconds before we wake up, there might be extra startup time that we don't see too, it's definitely not 22 minutes exactly, only the travel time for the probe is! Firing the cannon is the most important part so that data would have been processed first

[Psymon²]

if there is that "time" before we wake, that gives the cannon a chance to rotate, than I'm satisfied and can rest my mind.
thanks for the highly detailed answer!!

[Fear Ghoul]

That makes a lot of sense, thanks. Were you involved in the game's production in some way, Nert?

[Nert]

Originally posted by Fear Ghoul:

That makes a lot of sense, thanks. Were you involved in the game's production in some way, Nert?

I wish! Just in love with the game and it's story, I'm really into timeloop settings and games with this sort of non-linear storytelling and there's a really nice community on r/outerwilds that discuss the lore to death with me XD

I watch a lot of people stream it so I get to see how they interpret things and how differently the story progresses depending on what you find first, and every couple of weeks someone will ask a question that makes me really think about things again from a new angle..

The worst part is I was even signed up to Fig's first project - Psychonauts 2 - and still had never heard of OW until a friend saw someone else playing it, saw that it had a timeloop and asked if I'd played it yet

The regret that my name's not in that backerlist.... T_T

[SMJSMOK]

One thing I never understood: The canon always fires from the same position on the orbit around the planet. Wouldn't there be "cones" of space where the probe can't go because it's blocked by the sun and planets? (Especially the planet it orbits around.) The tracking module clearly shows that it went to virtually every direction before it hit the correct angle to find the Eye.

The only explanation I could come up with is that the probe has a some kind of mini engine that can correct its course and effectively go "around" the obstacles. But perhaps I'm overlooking something.

[Nert]

Originally posted by SMJSMOK:

One thing I never understood: The canon always fires from the same position on the orbit around the planet. Wouldn't there be "cones" of space where the probe can't go because it's blocked by the sun and planets? (Especially the planet it orbits around.) The tracking module clearly shows that it went to virtually every direction before it hit the correct angle to find the Eye.

The only explanation I could come up with is that the probe has a some kind of mini engine that can correct its course and effectively go "around" the obstacles. But perhaps I'm overlooking something.

That's definitely an error, if the game were real there'd have to be loops where the cannon had some time to orbit before firing - although the probe can't collide with any planets so it does just shoot right through them, even Giant's Deep XD

They don't seem to have any propulsion technology post-Crash, everything is gravity based, even the cannons pull things up and out of them rather than push!

We can make up an excuse like it uses GD's gravity to slingshot around to areas behind it though

[SMJSMOK]

Originally posted by Nert:

it does just shoot right through them

It's fun to imagine that there has to be a loop when it shoots the probe directly into you :-D Not the best way to wake up.

Originally posted by Nert:

We can make up an excuse like it uses GD's gravity to slingshot around to areas behind it though

Well or any other planet, for that matter. Is it possible though, to do this FROM the orbit while being so close? It's an idea for a mod for KSP I guess. Also, there could be a situation where a certain angle is being blocked by GD and some other planet as well. That would require a double-slingshot. That's some serious mathematics, but nothing that Nomai technology couldn't handle, I suppose.

[Psymon²]

Originally posted by SMJSMOK:

Originally posted by Nert:

it does just shoot right through them

It's fun to imagine that there has to be a loop when it shoots the probe directly into you :-D Not the best way to wake up.

muahahahah!!
wakes up
sees orbital cannon explode
SPLATT
wakes up...

[Nert]

Originally posted by SMJSMOK:

It's fun to imagine that there has to be a loop when it shoots the probe directly into you :-D Not the best way to wake up.

Oh that can happen! Collision isn't detected between the probe and anything....except you and your ship

It's rare but I've seen clips of it just straight up D E S T R O Y I N G the ship right as they get to the top of the elevator, and the explosion threw them off the top of it to their death XD

I kinda wish they had turned on collision so in random loops you'd find the probe just slammed into the ground in different places and it'd be one more mystery what it was and why it's not there next loop

If the Nomai plan had worked they also could have let it run for a few million loops, spotted the blind spot in the PTM's data and after a while stopped the project, let the cannon orbit a bit more and started it back up, we're lucky that wasn't required in our lifetime or we'd have been trapped forever!

[Fear Ghoul]

Have you played Majora's Mask? I love that game, and when I heard that this game also had a time loop where you play through the same events trying to figure things out, that's what finally made me interested, since I've been wanting other games to develop on that concept for 20 years now. It also reminds me quite of bit of Metroid Prime with how you explore alien worlds and read ancient messages left behind, which I also love.

[Psymon²]

Originally posted by Fear Ghoul:

Have you played Majora's Mask? I love that game, and when I heard that this game also had a time loop where you play through the same events trying to figure things out, that's what finally made me interested, since I've been wanting other games to develop on that concept for 20 years now. It also reminds me quite of bit of Metroid Prime with how you explore alien worlds and read ancient messages left behind, which I also love.

Two very good games you mention there!!
I enjoyed both thoroughly back when they were released.