Create Aeronautics: AMBUSH

Make your world fight back!

Encounters That Feel Like Part of the World

AMBUSH adds natural encounters, rival factions, armed airships, ground vehicles, boats, and fleet battles. Get surrounded in the mines, capture an enemy vessel, defend a convoy, or build an alliance with the villagers.

Encounters respond to your progression, surroundings, and faction reputation. Early encounters favor smaller threats, while later encounters can bring heavier ships, stronger crews, and coordinated fleets.

Earn the villagers’ trust to receive support and supply gifts. Make enemies, and their patrols may become a much bigger problem.

Explosive cannon fire can damage terrain. Back up your world before testing large battles. Administrators can enable AMBUSH cannon terrain protection with /ambush admin safe_mode on.

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Moving Ships, Cars, and Boats

With compatible Create Aeronautics, Simulated, Sable, and Create mods installed, AMBUSH can turn structure templates into moving encounters.

Vehicles can pursue targets, steer, move forward or reverse, maintain firing distance, patrol an area, and position themselves for broadside attacks. Ground vehicles check terrain and obstacles along their routes.

Crews can acquire targets, operate weapons, and fight opposing factions. Ships can arrive alone, surround the player, escort a merchant, or attack as a coordinated fleet.

Ship movement, steering, targeting, cannon timing, propulsion, engine settings, formations, loot, and health events are configurable through datapacks.

Aeronautics support is optional. Standard mob encounters work without it. Individual vehicle encounters require the mods used by their machinery and weapons, you can still use the mod with aeronautics and without create big cannons

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Bosses and Fleet Battles

Airships can use their remaining hull blocks as health and display a boss bar. A single vessel can act as a boss, or several ships can share one health pool.

Health events can activate weapons, call reinforcements, release rewards, play sounds, apply fog, trigger destruction sequences, or begin another encounter.

AMBUSH also includes cooperative invasion modes, including standard, endless, ground-defense, and naval profiles. Join a battle, prepare between waves, and face increasingly demanding encounters (IN PROGRESS).

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Factions and Progression

Factions can be hostile, neutral, or allied. Reputation changes through combat and configured events, affecting which encounters and support options are available.

Allied villagers can send supply balloons, with better gifts available at higher reputation. Support encounters can include armed patrols and escort formations.

Encounter progress, cooldowns, unlocks, and reputation can persist across server restarts. Nearby players can share natural ship encounter timing, and a more hostile reputation means harder enemies to fight.

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Commands

Use /ambush list and command autocomplete to find the encounters available with your installed mods and datapacks.

Commands marked OP require operator permissions.

Spawning and Testing

• /ambush — Shows command help.
• /ambush list — Lists available encounters.
• /ambush <id> [player] — OP: Starts an encounter for yourself or another player. Use the exact ID shown by the list or press tab to autocomplete.
• /ambush admin always — OP: Toggles testing mode for manual encounter eligibility. This spawns the ambush even if you haven't unlocked it.
• /ambush clear — OP: Queues cleanup of active AMBUSH entities, vessels, structures, and scheduled encounter activity.

Natural Spawning

• /ambush admin rate — OP: Shows the current natural encounter rate.
• /ambush admin rate <10–4000> — OP: Sets the rate as a percentage. 100 is normal, 50 is half speed, and 200 is double speed.
• /ambush admin rate up — OP: Doubles the current rate, within supported limits.
• /ambush admin rate down — OP: Halves the current rate, within supported limits.
• /ambush admin rate reset — OP: Restores the normal rate.
• /ambush admin spawning — OP: Toggles natural encounter spawning.
• /ambush admin spawning status — OP: Shows natural spawning status.
• /ambush admin spawning <id> enable — OP: Enables natural spawning for one encounter.
• /ambush admin spawning <id> disable — OP: Disables natural spawning for one encounter.
• /ambush disable [pack] — OP: Disables natural encounters from a datapack namespace.
• /ambush enable [pack] — OP: Re-enables natural encounters from a datapack namespace.

Cannon Terrain Protection

• /ambush admin safe_mode on — OP: Enables terrain protection for AMBUSH-owned cannon shots.
• /ambush admin safe_mode off — OP: Disables that protection.
• /ambush admin safe_mode status — OP: Shows the current setting.

Safe mode persists with the world. It does not provide blanket protection from combat damage or unrelated weapons.

Invasions

INVASIONS ARE A WORK IN PROGRESS. THEY ARE BARELY TESTED USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

• /ambush invasion or /ambush invasion status — Shows invasion status and available profiles.
• /ambush invasion join — Joins the active invasion.
• /ambush invasion leave — Leaves the invasion.
• /ambush invasion ready — Marks you ready for the next wave.
• /ambush invasion stop — Stops an invasion you own. Administrators can stop other invasions.
• /ambush invasion start [profile] [waves] — OP: Starts an invasion.
• /ambush invasion classify — OP: Lists a selection of invasion-compatible encounters.

Administration and Diagnostics

• /ambush admin check [id] — OP: Validates loaded encounters or inspects a specific definition.
• /ambush admin inspect — OP: Inspects an active nearby vessel.
• /ambush admin natural — OP: Shows natural encounter timing, selection pools, and eligibility information.
• /ambush admin entries — OP: Shows tracked first-dimension-entry encounters.
• /ambush admin weights — OP: Shows encounter weights and chance information.
• /ambush admin reputation — OP: Shows faction reputation.
• /ambush admin reputation set <player> <faction> <value> — OP: Sets a player’s reputation with a faction.
• /ambush admin unlocks — OP: Shows encounter unlock progress.
• /ambush admin unlockall — OP: Unlocks encounters for testing.
• /ambush admin debug — OP: Toggles debug logging.
• /ambush admin debug positions — OP: Reports vessel position information.

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Made for Modpack Creators

AMBUSH is data-driven. Add your own encounters through datapack JSON files without rebuilding the mod.

Trigger conditions can use biomes, dimensions, structures, weather, time, height, inventory items, mob kills, villager trades, portals, active machines, and more.

Spawn behavior supports caves, open air, land, water, formations, and positions outside the player’s view.

Combat behavior can include custom equipment, named armor sets, attributes, targeting rules, projectiles, reinforcements, and multiple stages.

Progression and rarity support weighted selection, cooldown groups, increasing chances, unlock requirements, and natural encounter curves.

Custom factions can define relationships, reputation, support encounters, and gifts.

Vehicles and weapons support reusable ship profiles, configurable controls, turret aiming, ammunition loading, landing behavior, patrols, and health events.

Datapack definitions can be reloaded without rebuilding the mod.

Documentation and source · Discord community

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Requirements

Minecraft: 1.21.1
NeoForge: 21.1.228 or newer
Java: 21

Optional Integrations

• Manned Cannons, an AMBUSH Addon (always supported): allows for villagers to man and fire your cannons at enemies and ambush ships, they will also not fire at your allies: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/create-manned-cannons-an-ambush-addon

• Create: 6.0.10 through 6.0.x. Provides machinery and seats used by moving encounters.

• Create Aeronautics: 1.3.0 through 1.3.x. Provides aircraft components for compatible ship schematics.

• Simulated: 1.3.0 through 1.3.x. Provides vehicle components for compatible ships and fleets.

• Sable: 2.0.3 through 2.0.x. Enables moving structures and vessel physics.

• Create Big Cannons: 5.11.7 through 5.x. Supports mounted weapons, cannon ammunition and shell-rain encounters.

• FTB Quests: 2101.1.30 or newer for Minecraft 1.21.1. Connects encounter events to tagged quest tasks.

• Create Aeronautics: Burner Fuel: Integration targets 1.0.2. AMBUSH gives eligible adjustable burners enough fuel for the ship’s remaining lifetime at full output. Ships without a timed despawn receive two hours of fuel.

• Offroad: Supplies parts for compatible wheeled vehicle encounters.

• Lootr: Enables per-player loot in supported ship containers by default.

• Guard Villagers: Supplies guard crews for compatible villager fleets and support encounters.

• Custom NPCs: Lets datapacks spawn configured saved NPC clones.

• Create Aeronautics Toolgun: Lets encounters import compatible .excraft ship schematics (without ship AI for now).

• CBC AT, CBC Enhanced Shells and CBC Neo Warfare: Encounters can use supported weapons and ammunition from these add-ons. Compatibility depends on the weapon and projectile type.

Datapacks only require the mods used by the content they reference.

You can include AMBUSH in your modpack or videos.

Have an encounter idea or a schematic you would like to share? Join the Discord!