Orbital Cannons v1
Sometimes a creeper sneezes near your base and suddenly half your storage room is a crater. Sometimes a raid spawns on the wrong side of your wall. And sometimes you just want to press a button and watch the sky answer for you. That is exactly the energy behind Orbital Cannons v1, a compact datapack that turns ordinary crafting ingredients into devastating orbital strikes. It is the creator's first datapack ever uploaded anywhere, which makes its mix of ambition and simplicity all the more charming. You get four craftable stab shots, a handful of survival-minded extras, and a kill potion that does precisely what its name promises.
What Orbital Cannons v1 Actually Adds
The core of the pack is a set of four craftable stab shots. Each one is a consumable or throwable that calls down an orbital strike on the target area, and each has its own recipe and flavor. Because the recipes are craftable rather than command-only, you can build these weapons inside a normal survival world without touching creative mode. That design choice is what makes Orbital Cannons v1 for Minecraft feel like a genuine gameplay expansion instead of a toy for map makers.
Alongside the strikes, the pack includes a few extra items the author added specifically to make you more survivable. Think of them as insurance: tools that help you weather the chaos your own orbital fire creates. There is also a kill potion, which is exactly as blunt as it sounds. To get its recipe, run the command /recipe give <name> drill:potion in your world, and the recipe unlocks for that player. From there, brewing becomes a very different experience.
- Four craftable stab shots, each with a distinct recipe and effect
- Extra survivability items to help you survive your own strikes
- A kill potion unlocked through the /recipe give command
- Lightweight datapack structure with no resource pack required
- Works in singleplayer and on multiplayer servers
Supported Versions and Loaders
Minecraft Java Edition and Datapack Loaders
Orbital Cannons v1 is a Java Edition datapack, so it runs through the vanilla datapack system rather than Forge or Fabric. That means you do not need any mod loader at all, which keeps your installation clean and your world portable. The pack targets the modern 1.20.x and 1.21.x release lines, where the recipe and loot table formats it relies on are stable. If you are on an older 1.19 build, expect some recipe behavior to differ, and always test in a backup world before committing a long-term save.
If you would rather skip folder juggling entirely, the foxygame.net launcher handles Orbital Cannons v1 as a one-click install straight from its add-on catalog, and it keeps the pack updated whenever the author ships a fix. That saves you from manually re-downloading files every time a new build lands.
How to Install Orbital Cannons v1
Installation is the part that trips up most first-time datapack users, so here is the short version. You do not need to extract anything, and you do not need a mod loader.
- Locate your world folder. In singleplayer it lives under saves in your Minecraft directory.
- Open the world folder and find or create a folder named datapacks.
- Drop the Orbital Cannons v1 zip file directly into that folder. Do not unzip it.
- Load the world, then run /reload if you are already in-game.
- Type /datapack list to confirm the pack appears and is enabled.
On a multiplayer server, place the zip in the world's datapacks folder on the server host and restart. Every player who joins will have access to the recipes automatically, which is ideal for a faction or anarchy-style world where nobody wants to babysit permissions.
Getting the Recipes and the Potion
Once the pack is active, check your recipe book. The four stab shots should appear as craftable entries, assuming you have discovered the required ingredients. For the kill potion, remember that its recipe is not granted by default. Run /recipe give <name> drill:potion with your own username in place of <name>, and the brewing recipe will unlock for you. If you are an operator setting up a server, you can grant it to everyone at once with a target selector.
Final Thoughts
Orbital Cannons v1 is a scrappy, fun first release that punches well above its weight. Four craftable strikes, survival extras, and a kill potion give you plenty of reasons to load it into a fresh world, and the datapack-only format means there is nothing to break. Whether you download Orbital Cannons v1 for a chaotic survival run or a private server with friends, just remember to back up your world first. The sky, after all, does not check who is standing underneath it.