Just a quick question as I know very little about guns. I watched Smoking Aces on the weekend. Very dull bar two good characters, but there's a woman in the film who has some sort of great big rifle she uses to snipe across at another hotel. I just wondered if this weapon is what an assault cannon is supposed to be. If so, it will make a very good reference for me to give to my players (who also tend not to be very familiar with firearms).

Thanks in advance,

-K.

Edit: Said 'rifle.' Meant 'cannon.'

I think it's more similar to the Barret Model 121 that was in the Cannon Companion than a PAC.

Yup thats a .50cal rifle.

The shadowrun equivalent would be the Barret 121 that was in the cannon companion(SR3). There is no equivalent in SR4...yet

Shadowrun Sniping:

How to make friends and influance people, from over a mile away!

Yep that is what as Barrett, I saw one on Future Weapons, that the former SEAL sniper host of the show, used to shoot at a target 2,500 yards away.

It is the .416 Barrett,

"This new sniper’s round produced by the renowned maker of .50-caliber weapons fires faster and with more accuracy and power than any other type of rifle ammunition. Accurate to 2,500 yards - that’s a mile and a half away! - the .416 can hit home on the first "cold bore shot," giving no warning to the target. Barrett's new M99 rifle, seen here, has recently been configured to handle the new ammunition"


Very nice weapon and nice show also

WearzManySkins

Wow! I've just looked up the Barrett 121 in Cannon Companion and it's not actually a heavy weapon. And the Panther Assault Cannon actually has a power rating of 18 compared to the Barretts 14. (In SR3 terms).

So what I'm being told here is that the panther assault cannon is considerably bigger and more powerful than that!

Frightening. Was that movie exaggeration or is it really that powerful?

Thanks for all the replies.

-K.

Basically they are two different weapons, the Barrett is a long range anti personnel weapon aka sniper rifle, the Panther Assault Cannon is a 20mm anti tank rifle.

Barrett is long range sniping, shoots at weak points in a targets armor.

Panther brute force rifle, for defeating heavily armored targets by blowing thru the armor.

Basically two different weapons designs.

I see nothing wrong with the DV of either.

As for the host of the show....I have no issues with his style, as a SEAL he has "earned" it the hard way many times over.

I served with several USN SEALS, when they were not in the SEAL function, actually he is fairly typical of the ones I served with. Doing what they do, lets say they tend to have a blunt type of flair, or attitude. After abit of working with them, you do not notice the flair any more.

WearzManySkins

I'm not entirely up on all the fluff for the Panther, but as I recall it is essentially a smooth bore (possibly) explosive launcher, rather than a proper 'gun'.

You can't, for example, get APDS rounds for it... or couldn't... because it doesn't fire a bullet so much as an explosive charge, possibly shaped. It's man portable artillery, not to dissimilar from the 60mm mortar fired from the hip (possible and slightly frighting concept, I know), only smaller and without the ability to soft lob shells in a high arc.

It is, essentially, a Cannon in every real sense of the word.

If the artwork is any measure, it's rounds will look like larger versions of the 40mm grenade rather than the 12.7mm or 25mm.

Of course now I need to dig out my old first edition Street Sam catalog and reread the old entry....

If you ever play Battlefield 2142, there is an unlock in the game for the engineer class called the Pilum AVR(Anti-Vehicle Rifle). It reminds me very much of what the PAC should be.

*edit*
link

http://bf2142fever.com/content/Koenig_H-AVR

There's a video clip somewhere of a low-impulse 3" shoulder cannon.

Doesn't look very practical, though... how many rounds can you hump?

Well you can use the US Army's "Polish Nuclear Hand Grenade"......AKA the Davy Crockett, a bazooka that fired a nuclear tip rocket.

One minor issue, range of rocket kept the firer in the Primary Blast Radius...!!!!!!!

Talk about a one way mission........

and from the wikipedia you link to:

you did not go to the Utube video.

Wiki's are input by volunteers, information quality.....????

Sigh, inside the fallout radius. Not the primary blast or primary radiation radius.This is the difference between death instantly/within a few days and death at around 50 due to cancer.

Wikipedia is a fun "wow, that's cool!" read but don't take anything it says as chip truth. Many blatant errors (dates especially) have been found and anyone with an account can "update" the information. It's a nice way of finding out something exists or some trivial things but other research is definitely required.

The inaccurate facts and information are also a reason why school teachers won't let you use Wikipedia as a source of information.

it also depends on the topic. for technical stuff id expect it to be fairly accurate. but when it comes to more politically charged stuff, good luck...

and i would say that a nuclear RPG would fall under the latter

Sounds like the nuclear handgrenade from the Paranoia game. It came with a full set of instructions that had to be read and followed in order. They took you through priming the grenade, starting the countdown. The final instruction was something like "11. Throw Grenade no less than 50km away from you."

clicking around wikipedia the other day, i came across their list of articles that are currently locked due to excessive content dispute. one of the locked articles was Anchors. you know. big, heavy, keeps boats from drifting away.

Since we are all on the topic of nuclear weapons now: I was recently reading official military 'hypothetical senarios' involving nuclear weapons used against US troops. What people don't realize is how very huge an impact a few hundred feet can make.

Actually, its the stupidest things than make or break your 'survival' against a nuclear attack. Sure, if you are in ground zero you're hooped, and within a few hundred feet of ground zero, unless you are in a lead lined box buried underground...

That dude standing in a foxhole? He has ten times the survivability of a guy standing on teh ground... from a radiation standpoint. From the 'blast' standpoint he's good. For lower yeild 'tactical nukes'... still bigger than the hand grenade/Davy Crocket senarios, anything outside a kilometer will be able to fight on with good leadership.

Great leadership, really. The biggest threat of a nuke from a strategic standpoint is the demoralization of survivors.





that said: I am aware of the Assault Cannon's rules not matching up with the Fluff... that's what makes for interesting discussions about it. Obviously the writers thought' bigger guns go farther' and left it at that.

As for the hip fired 60mm... standard option for it. They even call the tube a Cannon. The mortar guy that told me about it said it 'wasn't fun'... but I suspect he isn't a fan of things going boom, oddly enough. Either than or he is a mortar man because he likes keeping mountains between him and the guy he's shooting at...

About 5 minutes of research on google puts this in the "Myth Category". The you tube video is inconclusive as it could easily be faked.

Oh haha I was looking for a current weapon system, my bad. The original poster made it sound like something that was being field tested today. I didn't think to look at stuff that was a prototype back in the 60's and never issued. At least according that link.

Yeah, I would seriously doubt such a weapon system would be part of today's arsenal in light of current political/social climate. Though, there are the suitcase nukes... then again, it's the russians that have them and they could care less about public pressure. Does the US have an equivalent? Always in pop culture it's the russians lost track of them and such.

those eccentric Italians would be well advised to have those nuclear pits closely examined before trying to use them. Pits degrade over time as the useful uranium (or God forbid Plutonium) isotopes turn into not so useful isotopes, and you get an embarrassing fizzle.

The warheads probably weren't well cared for when they were in the WPact hands, and almost definitely aren't being maintained now.

Better yet would be to quietly sell them back to the US State Dept.

Closer to original topic, The XM-109 "Payload Rifle" has always lovingly whispered "assault cannon" in my ear.

Here is a link to Anti Tank rifles of WWII

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahti_L-39

http://www.antitank.co.uk/ww1_anti-tank_rifles1.htm

http://www.antitank.co.uk/german1.htm

http://www.antitank.co.uk/russian1.htm

http://www.antitank.co.uk/uk_&_canadian1.htm

http://www.antitank.co.uk/polish1.htm

http://www.antitank.co.uk/finland.htm

http://www.antitank.co.uk/switzerland.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_97_20_mm_AT_Rifle

Most of these weapons are large and heavy.

Google/Wiki Carlos Hathcock.

As I'm sure some of you know, he recorded the longest confirmed kill, up until recently, sniping with .50 cal BMG using a freaking M2 with a scope mounted on it.

This inspired all the various 12.~ mm/.50 cal anti-material rifles.

First off if the new book doesn't have a picture here is the panther assault cannon.

http://cyberpunk.liber-mundi.org/images/Pa...ault_Cannon.jpg

Personally I think the assault cannon to be like a recoiless rifle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recoilless_rifle

http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/LF/Images/2_0/40.jpg


Except it doesn't bother with the "recoilless" part.

In case you don't feel like reading the article a recoiless rifle has a shape similar to a rocket launcher. The difference is that instead of fireing a rocket it fires a rifled artillery shell. The reason for the shape similarity is that the back of the barrel has holes in it so while the charge is expelling the shell it's also blasting gas out the back so as not to send the trooper flying.

For a time recoiless rifles had better range and accuracy than their Bazooka like counterparts.

I figure sometime in shadowruns history someone said. "Hey we've got freaking trolls wandering around with gyro stabilization rigs. Why don't we scale a recoilless rifle down some and forget the whole recoiless gas system in the back. Screw recoil, they can handle it"

I'm guessing it gets it's range because the SR writiers noticed that it seems as bullets get bigger the range goes up, and just went with that.

I also say scaled down because of both the damage code and the size of the clip in the picture of the panther. Of course I have no idea how much collaboration between the writers and the art department went on.

As for the explosive thing I think of the shell as being "somewhat shapped". With the round not being large enough to merit giving up space for much shaping. So it might just have a harder shell on the back and sides and maybe a slight indent in the front. But that's just me.

Pure politics. Just look at how the US and other governments bend over trying to shut them down.

hmmm.... world's shortest thread is now well into its second page. . .