Assume you have the Jesus Christ of firearms, the guy who, in Shadowrun terms, throws a million die and has a -200 to all TNs. Using only small arms, does he have any chance (trivial or otherwise) of disabling a tank? I understand that it is effectively impossible, that 'one in a million chance' is optimistic, I'm simply wondering if there's a one in a billion chance, or if it simply, absolutely, physically impossible.

In Fourth Edition is depends on your view of how longshot tests and called shots to bypass armor work. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

My answer would be no, you can't harm the tank with a simple pistol. These things are made to shrug off fully automatic MMG fire. A pistol just won't have the punch needed to put a hole in it, let alone disable anything.

I would say that the answer depends on several factors. What, exactly, are you talking about when you say "small arms"?

No pistol, not even a Ruger Warhawk, should really stand a chance. Maybe a heavy pistol, a magnum pistol, with a really terrific ammunition type, might stand a chance. But don't bet on it.

Now, if the Jesus Christ of Firearms is using something a lot heavier - a full battle rifle, even a heavy rifle firing a round that one would use to kill awakened, armored elephants, then yes, especially if he's got some really terrific ammo. He could make called shots to disable sensors, or pot one into the engine compartment for a mobility kill. But it will NOT be easy.

However, you could damage exposed sensors, antennae, lamps, strapped on equipment.

It effectively depends on what type of game is being run. The tank versus pistol issue is sufficiently extreme that nobody would let the pistol killing the tank fly unless they wanted to. In other words, it would only work if the GM and the players wanted to run a Golgo 13 style campaign.

my gut response is no, not a chance in hell against a perfectly functioning MBT, Light tank or APC

I guess theoretically you could fire so much ammunition that you immobilise it in spent brass (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) but I bet you are all using that faffy caseless stuff (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

my immediate thought was you'd have to get TO the tank in question and do something horrid like jamming gunports or a bowling ball and some epoxy down the main gun (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) which would neuter it as opposed to destroying or removing it entirely from play, but it might get the crew to come out >:)


Saying that I recall as a counterpoint to that, a friend of mine who was tank crew in the UK army saying while they were on tour in saudi / afghanistan / iraq that they had some guy with a gun climb on top of their vehicle and they couldn't get him off, so they put a satchel charge into the main gun and fired it with a shell, which pretty much just engulfs the tank in a honkin great big ball of fire apparently (they did get in trouble for screwing up the interior of the gun tube / outside of the vehicle however)

This may or may not be true, but it is what I was told by a serving tank crew.

i suspect that the question really is what one expect. sure, there is no way that one will see a single shot from a handgun and then have the tank blow up in spectacular fashion.

but i recall some story about a soldier killing a russian tank driver during ww2 by aiming for the view port.

but in SR those will either be bullet resistant glass, AR or even rigger immersion so...

Viewing systems are periscopes, so no actual path. And in SR they would be mostly sensors.

Right, in WW2 you could fire an SMG through the driver's port-think of Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan when he took out the Tiger Tank. By the 1960's there was a thick level of plexiglass over the slits and today it is periscopes.

All I can think about is maybe something that disables the tracks so the tank can't roll. Breaking some small moving part so it can't move anymore, but against the armor plate? nope. not a chance.

i'm with Snow Fox. i'm not a tank expert, so i couldn't say for sure, but it seems like maybe a few perfectly-placed shots might be able to break a tank's treads. now, as i understand it, that's not going to 100% immobilize a tank in every terrain; it may still be able to crawl around on its road wheels if the terrain is flat enough and firm enough. and even if it can't, the tank can still blast just about everything it can see--you'll have to avoid the hell out of it.

the other option i can think of is pretty cartoonish. if you're looking straight down the barrel of the main gun, it seems like maybe you could listen for the sound of the breech being opened to load a new round and fire a shot straight in. a round bouncing around in the autoloader machinery might do... something, i dunno. if it's a tracer round, maybe the WP will burn something badly enough to knock it out of commission, or even set off one of the rounds?

in SR3, if i allowed such shots at all, i'd be houseruling the hell out of the called shot rules. at a minimum, i'd be stacking called shots--you'd be looking at a +4 TN to avoid armor, plus another +4 TN for special effect, and maybe even an additional +4 TN to hit a specific location. in SR4, i wouldn't allow such shots at all, because it's too easy for someone to stack on enough mods to make just about anything possible. or just use a longshot, if it comes down to it.

for really good infantry-on-tank action, y'all should really check out the movie The Beast of War. it's about a group of Mujahadeen fighters taking on a lone tank in Afghanistan during the 80s Soviet invasion.

I am reasonably certain that's the entire reason Longshot rolls exist.

and i'm reasonably certain that it gives the GM the option of saying "no, you can't use a longshot in this situation." i don't particularly like the fact that the rules require that much GM adjudication, but since they do, i'd certainly use it.

I think Ravor's got it. By a strict interpretation of the RAW, you can make the shot and expect it to work.

Mfb: Correct me on this, but I don't think there's any restriction on Longshot tests. There is an "impossibility limit" on burning Edge for auto-crits, but that's different.

not specifically for longshot tests, but there is the section in The Abstract Nature of Rules that says to ignore the rules when they don't make sense.

i'm not sure this is the place for that discussion anyway. suffice to say that if i were running an SR4 game, i would be pretty liberal with my GM fiat--whether the rules back me up or not.

hmm, i wonder how far some in here would push that one...

The coax machine gun is called that because it is coaxial with the main gun. So as you try to shoot down the barrel the gunner pushes the coax switch and shoots you 50 times in the head and chest.

hey, i said it was cartoonish, i didn't say it was smart.

It also makes for one hell of a cinematic Longshot test.

indeed.

I should have been more specific. I didn't mean if it's possible using Shadowrun mechanics, but rather whether it's possible IRL. mfb's idea is precisely what I was wondering about. My initial thought was, of course! For instance, you can keep shooting out periscopes and sensors until the tank is blind (at which point it's basically disabled until it gets another spotter, which JC of guns can then shoot out in turn). Or maybe like Snow Fox' idea, you can shoot out the treads. But as I thought about it, I wasn't so sure if that really would be possible. I mean, I'm sure they have redundant systems for their periscopes, and I have no idea if you could shoot out some part of a tread so it would stop working. I just don't have the background in military hardware to take a stance either way.

It sounds like if our super-crazy good guy were super-crazy enough, he could step out on the field and have at least A chance (as infinitesimally small as it may be), although clearly he's more likely to just get shot dead for being an idiot.

Does that sound about right?

nezumi, you're taking oldschool texas shoot out duels to an entire new level
*dramatically plays the good, the bad & the ugly themesong*

No. You can shoot at the treads all day, but there is a reason why all the tools on a tank weight >30 lbs. Treads are very heavy metal. They are bolted together with really heavy bolts on really strong rods. Two pound AT mines will blow treads, pistols won't. Typically even when the treads are forced off the tank they are still connected in a loop, and the first thing the crew has to do is break track.

Tanks are designed to have people shell them, and fragmentation from artillery shells that sprays the tank is more damaging than pistol bullets. And if you do damage the periscopes, the crew has spares for the parts that are possible to damage.

You can shove a log into the treads to screw it up, but that is why tanks don't ever operate alone, they run in pairs in the West.

It would be impossible to disable a sealed tank with a pistol. To give an example of why - anti tank rifles have been phased out of popularity due to the impossibility to actually doing anything with the things despite WWII examples being 14.5 milimeter with high velocity tungsten penetrating rounds. Even when fired at the tracks of cold war era tanks, they do absolutely nothing. A 9mm pistol round is not going to improve the situation.


Interestingly, lots of soviet AT rifles got repurposed as sniper rifles in the Korean war, so you can draw direct comparisons to the big anti material rifles of today and even shadowrun.

A bunch of old armor troopers with time on our hands did do a think on how some guy with a M16 could try to kill a Leopard II. The end result is yes, Jesus can do it, but only Jesus and since you needed to know where to aim and had to hit the right spot and time it so that you hit that spot at the most vulnerable moment. Longshot could do it, given the rules.