Loose Cannon
“ | Ya call those bombs, ya wee little romance novel? I'll show you bombs!
Click to listen
— The Demoman on old-fashioned bombs
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The Loose Cannon is a community-created primary weapon for the Demoman. It resembles a pirate-style cannon with a stock and a sight near the front of the barrel.
The Loose Cannon fires explosive, glowing cannonballs that travel 20% faster than the Grenade Launcher's projectiles. Cannonballs explode faster than grenades only having a fuse of 1 second. Unlike other grenades, bombs from this weapon do not explode when hitting players, instead dealing damage and significant knockback on the target while continuing in the same path, potentially hitting multiple enemies until it explodes due to its fuse or bounces off a surface. The explosion of the bomb works as normal and has the same property as normal grenades where they deal half damage if they hit a surface before exploding. Overall the impact of a bomb deals half of what a normal grenade deals, and the explosion is 40% less damaging than a normal grenade, but shares the same explosion radius.
The Demoman can hold down the fire button to start the cannonball's fuse without shooting until the button is released, allowing control over how long it takes to explode once fired. As a reward for doing so perfectly, if a cannonball impacts an enemy and then explodes within half a second, the enemy will take mini-crit damage from the explosion and ignore explosive damage falloff (Meaning the total damage will be 131), other enemies hit by the explosion do not recieve Mini-Crits and will be damaged as normal. This is known as a "Double-Donk" and produces a unique sound and "DONK 2x" effect on success. Holding a primed shot for too long will automatically fire the shot, which will immediately explode, similar to the Beggar's Bazooka overloading, and deal damage to the user. Over-shortening the fuse in this way can allow for a strong grenade jump known as a cannon jump.
Both the impact and explosion of a cannonball are considered explosive damage. The Loose Cannon was contributed to the Steam Workshop.
Contents
[hide]Damage and function times
[collapse]Damage and function times | ||
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Shot type | Projectile | |
Damage type | Explosive | |
Ranged or Melee damage? | Ranged | |
Damage | ||
Base damage | 100% | Direct: 50Splash: 60
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Maximum fall-off | 50% | Direct: 25Splash: 30
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Critical | Direct: 150Splash: 180
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Mini-crit | Direct: 68Splash: 81
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Splash damage | ||
Minimum splash | 50% | 2.8m |
Damage reduction | 1% / 2.88 | |
Self-damage | Splash: 38-73Overload: 64-73
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Function times | ||
Attack interval | 0.6 s | |
Reload (first) | 1.24 s | |
Reload (consecutive) | 0.6 s | |
Maximum charge time | 1 s | |
Values are approximate and determined by community testing. |
Note: Explosive damage varies depending on how it hits a player. The larger the classes' hit box and the closer to the explosion, the more damage delivered. The further away from the explosion, the less damage. Explosions do the most damage when they happen at the mid point of a player model. The explosion will cover more of the hit box, thus doing the most possible damage.
Demonstration
Crafting
Blueprint
Loch-n-Load | Reclaimed Metal | Loose Cannon | ||
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Class Token - Demoman | Slot Token - Primary | Scrap Metal | Possible Results | |||||||||||||||||||
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Strange variant
[expand]Strange variant information |
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Related achievements
Demoman
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Sniper
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Update history
- The Loose Cannon was added to the game.
- Fixed missing text in the recipe description for The Loose Cannon.
- Fixed not hearing the Loose Cannon impact sound when playing on dedicated servers.
- Changed attributes:
- Range no longer affects direct cannonball impact damage.
- Reduced charge time to 1 second.
- Added Double-Donk (directly impacting an enemy within half a second before the bomb explosion) sound and particle effects.
- Double-Donk damage now mini-crits.
- [Undocumented] Removed hidden +50% damage bonus.
- Updated the Loose Cannon description to match the updated gameplay.
- [Undocumented] Added Strange quality.
- [Undocumented] Added Collector's quality.
- [Undocumented] Fixed crit boosted glow not showing.
- [Undocumented] The Loose Cannon's cannon ball explosions now use a deeper sound.
December 22, 2014 Patch (Smissmas 2014)
- Double donk explosive damage now deal full radius damage to victims. Previously double donk explosive damage was reduced by radius distance from the explosion.
- Removed a hidden penalty where Cannonballs that touched the world would deal 50% less damage in addition to regular grenade damage reduction on world touch.
- Reduced the amount of self-damage received from the Loose Cannon.
- Fixed a bug related to the Loose Cannon's Double Donk damage calculation.
July 2, 2015 Patch #1 (Gun Mettle Update)
- Updated description to better detail the weapon's features.
December 17, 2015 Patch (Tough Break Update)
- Changed attributes:
- Reduced projectile speed increase from 50% to 20% (now a visible attribute).
- Reduced cannon impact damage from 60 to 50. Damage also scales with distance.
- Reduced knockback from cannon hit. Knockback strength is now similar to airblast.
- Fixed a bug related to the Loose Cannon and bots in Mann vs. Machine mode.
- Fixed an issue where the Loose Cannon would sometimes not apply knockback on hit.
- Fixed the Loose Cannon not being able to Double Donk.
December 21, 2017 Patch (Smissmas 2017)
- Added Festivized variant.
- Fixed The Loose Cannon continuing to play the priming sound if the weapon is holstered while priming.
Bugs
- Cannonballs reflected with a compression blast do not deal mini-crit damage.
- Since the cannonball impact is considered to be explosive damage, it will gib players on kill should their health be low enough.
- Rarely, the priming sound and effects will still play, even if the Loose Cannon is not being primed.
- This can be fixed by switching to a different weapon, or firing the Loose Cannon again.
- The Loose Cannon uses the same reload animation as the Grenade Launcher, resulting in it reloading downwards instead of in the barrel.
Trivia
- A "loose cannon" was a cannon on a ship which broke loose from its mounts and thus became a danger to the ship and crew; in modern idiom, it is a person who has little to no self-control.
- Despite the item description stating a faster projectile speed, its cannonballs can go slower than the grenades from the Grenade Launcher. This is because its projectile's larger surface area is subject to greater air drag.
Gallery
RED first-person view.
BLU first-person view.
RED Festivized variant.
See also
[expand]Weapons |
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