Grand Theft Auto has always been about being over the top and GTA Online's latest DLC, The Doomsday Heist, is a masterclass in over the top.
The city's most dangerous criminal teams up with a billionaire and an AI to save the world from nuclear apocalypse, launching missions from a flying fortress? Pretty extreme — but even that doesn't top one of the less central, but extremely bothersome additions of this particular DLC.
When players buy their Facility properties, they unlock the possibility to buy an orbital cannon, because the next step after corrupt CEO is probably Bond Villain. The cannon itself costs GTA$ 900,000, which on its own isn't much of a paywall.
However every single manually aimed shot costs GTA$ 500,000, and if you want it to auto-aim on a concrete target, you'll have to shell out GTA$ 750,000.
Add to that price a timer of 48 in-game hours (48 real-time minutes) between shots, and you'd think the weapon is fairly well regulated — I mean, who has that kind of money, right?
Well, hackers, is who. But then, that's what the cooldown is for... although apparently there are a host of glitches which can be exploited to cheat that cooldown, and reset it immediately after a shot.
The orbital cannon's shot is, basically, an area-of-effect attack which automatically destroys all vehicles and destructible props, and kills all players within its blast radius, regardless of cover or armor. Nothing in the game exists which isn't destroyed in a single shot. Its also a completely binary effect, so there's no lower-damage area on the edge.
You're either in the radius, or not.
If you happen to be inside a building, but fall into the radius, you still die. If you're flying above the shot's impact at the time of firing, you die (presumably the shot goes through you. Ouch). If you're in your yacht with defenses on, you die. If you have several floors of parking garage above you, you die. This thing may as well etch a huge middle finger into the ground wherever it is fired.
Currently, the only two ways to not get blasted from orbit is to have passive mode turned on or be in an instanced property, like an apartment, Bunker, Office, etc. Beyond these, players have discovered some interesting tidbits about the orbital cannon.
The camera trigger point for aiming regular shots is fixed in the same physical space as the game world, floating in mid-air but not at the top of it. In spite of this being an "orbital" cannon, players can fly over the aiming camera, and thus not be targeted manually. Auto-targeting does not rely on this camera, so that can still kill you.
