The Arsenal minigun rules mention that LMGs, MGs, and HMGs can be constructed as miniguns. How would one do this?

At a guess, I'd say get a bunch of barrels, an electric motor, some batteries, and re-work the feeding system.

Oh, wait, you mean in the rules, don't you?

If you mean by "one" Joe Average Shadowrunner with a screwdriver... He can't

buncha L/M/HMG's strapped to a turning electrical motor . . only problem would be the ammo-feed *snickers*

While there's no explict rules for it, taking a regular machinegun and and using the HV mod on it, would kind of work.

The medium and heavy miniguns are listed as vehicle mounted weapons, Gatling not mentioned in name but rules are mentioned in descriptions.

Use the build rules.

Looks like

Threshold 12 to 16+, minigun is intricate or exotic weapon to build.

Interval of 2 Weeks to 1 Month. (2 weeks maybe if you have a facility)

I'd require at least a Shop but I'd prefer a facility because building a gun is difficult but a Minigun is a greater undertaking.


As for parts?

For a Light Minigun I'd say 4 LMG's, Medium Minigun 6 MMG's and for a heavy Minigun 8 HMG's.

Like Canray said a electric motor (gas would be funny), power source for motor, feeding system/feeding port.

Heat Shielding, Heat Sinks, for the heavy I'd say a full on cooling system (Specter gun ships have Liquid nitrogen cooling systems for there Miniguns if my memory is correct.

Timed Firing mechanism (dont want that gun throwing rounds between the barrels), Handles, Trigger.

I know that this is a ridiculous list but keep in mind that a Minigun is a hell of a gun. I hope this gives you an idea. I just put it all out there to the best of my knowledge this is what you would need + some custom stuff that I cant even think of a name for.

You'll have to forgive the amount of realism I'd rather give you too much than not enough.

What can be said about chainsaws also applies to miniguns : electric motors just can't compete stylewise.
Damn, my lifelong dream of building a character who has a specialization in chainsaw in every skill has just been replaced by something even better...

Well, the Arsenal rules also state that a heavy barrel is for automatic weapon recoil control so...yeah.

You either make it a mini-gun from the get-go or you don't at all.

As noted by others above, you need:

• An electric motor
• A complete machine gun
• Two – Five additional barrels

The two most iconic modern Gatling guns are the 20mm M61 Vulcan cannon, and the eponymous 7.62mm minigun. Both use six barrels.
For man portable weapons, it seems that number of barrels actually goes down as caliber goes up (probably due to weight issues). So I would suggest (based on common examples):

• LMG & MMG – 6 barrels
• HMG – 3 barrels

Somebody already said, but I'm going to repeat, that the MMG and HMG gatlings are listed as vehicle mount weapons.

Hm... do said weapons cause recoil when fired from a weapon mount?

RL miniguns come in all sizes from .22 caliber (.223), to 30mm and everthing in between with 3 to 6 barrels. There is also a 12 guage shotgun version, (though I believe that was a Hollywood invention). As for making one yourself, go for it. Just don't invite me over to watch the first firing of it. I don't want to clean up the mess.

By man portable I did not mean to suggest that they could be fired from the hip, but rather that the components (gun, tripod, ammo) are man portable. In real life the minigun from Predator (a MMG) is a crewed gun. What you could not see in the film was the multiple crew carrying and feeding the belted ammo to the gun. There have been prototype 5.56mm (LMG) minigun's, but they have not been widely fielded as far as I know. I would guess that since no minigun is practical as a carried weapon, once you are making a vehicle or emplacement weapon you might as well go MMG or bigger.
(Although in my games a metahuman of sufficient Strength and Body may use such an MMG/HMG)

Depends on how big. A Gatling gun can be as small as 10 mm, and as large as 30. A 20 mm is not an insignificant amount of recoil at all, and is the kind mounted on many modern fighters like the f-22A. Then theres things like the 30 mm GAU that you'd find on an A-10. These things produce muzzle force equivalent to half the thrust from both of the A-10s engines combined.

You know, no matter how many times I see that gun, stand next to it, read about it or watch videos, I never fail to be awed by it.

That is the sound of angels watching over infantry.

Gattling guns are fairly simple weapons in a lot of ways. Don't forget that the prototype was one of the ORIGINAL Gattling Guns that was taken from a museum and had an electric motor put on it.

Most of the complex bits that are put onto it are to ensure bullet feed, as Gravity-Feed ammo systems aren't exactly what you'd call "Reliable".

That said, if you want a Ghetto-Gattling, you could build an original design of a Gattling Gun, and get a motor for it, and just handle the expected misfeeds/jams. All you'd need is a High School Metalshop, and the appropriate alloys. (OK, probably a College one just to be sure.).

Arsenal Pg. 124

MMG/minigun: GE Vigilant Light Autocannon
HMG/minigun: GE Vanquisher Heavy Autocannon

These weapons appear to be the larger miniguns, as they use mingun rules as per there descriptions.

The GE Autocannons and GM Cannons are not MMG or HMG based they are much bigger. Below is a combined list of SR4 weapons, with the real world caliber that beast matches the descriptions.

•   7P, -1 – Light Sport Rifle (~.30-30)
•   8P, -1 – Medium Sport Rifle (~.308)
•   9P, -1 – Heavy Sport Rifle (~.375 H&H)
•   6P, -1 – LMG / Assault Rifle (~5.56mm)
•   6P, –2 – MMG (~7.62mm)
•   7P, -3 – HMG (~.50 BMG) / Light Sniper Rifle (~7.62mm)
•   8P, -3 – Medium Sniper Rifle (varies)
•   8P, -4 – Light Autocannon (~15mm)
•   9P, -4 – Heavy Sniper Rifle (~.50 BMG)
• 10P, -5 – Assault Cannon (~20mm)
• 11P, -6 – Heavy Autocannon (~20mm)
• 13P, -6 – Light Cannon (~25mm)
• 17P, -8 – Heavy Cannon (~30mm)

Note: Certain calibers are all over the map in effectiveness based on the weapon they are fired from, and while long barrels do add to power IRL (more time to accelerate before leaving the barrel), there is too much variation for my taste in the list, but it is RAW.

Thanks MJBurrage you beat me to the punch.

Back on topic of building one, how about this...

IIRC SR assumes that half of the cost of something is materials.

So.... we use the cost of the class of weapon we want to minigunize and cut the cost in half.
For S&G's say an LMG costs 1500 ... that means parts are 750 multiply by the number of barrels (for a true to word minigun... 6 barrels) then add the High velocity mod and you are pretty close. This is not exact but would be a good base. It will end up costing more than just buying one from a company.... but hey, they get all the fancy nanobots and stuff to do it.

And 2-5 additional bolts and firing pins. You might as well make that "3-6 Machine guns" because you're going to be using most of the important parts anyway.

Let me give a bit of perspective. This is the GAU-8

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...s_VW_Type_1.jpg

Note the VW bug next to it.

It is a custom build from start to finish.

Arsenal however has some of the more ridiculous rules in weapons building I have come across. If you would wish to make it better I can really recommend BTRC's Guns, Guns, Guns.

While all of this real-world stuff is good and interesting, to be frank I don't care. I need rules help here.

So. It appears there are no rules for modding a gun into a minigun. So, can anyone tell me if a gun on a weapon mount causes recoil? IE, does ti take the negative dice mod? If so, how can it be comped for?

On another rl note. Miniguns are actually more "accurate" than a normal version of said machine gun. At least from a vehicle mount standpoint. Since they put more rounds downfield in the same amount of time. The little bit of time you are on target causes more rounds to hit the target.

And the 15mm "Light Autocannon" is actually more powerful than the .50 BMG (like the Barrett). It was designed as a slightly heavier replacement for use in tank coax mounts and other armored vehicles without going to a full autocannon and it's requisite recoil and mass.

The project didn't really go anywhere, BTW...

Probably too many Ma-Duces around, and too much .50 BMG ammo manufactured.

And, frankly, it's hard to improve on that old warbird, eh? 60+ years of reliable service!

In fact, good ol' Ma Deuce just hit 75 years young this year.

Her older sister, the M1 is 85 this year.

Well, happy birthday to her! May she keep chugging along!

Theres mention of vehicle mounted weapons having little to no recoil or using the body rating as recoil comp IRC.

OK, you can not turn an existing conventional weapon in to a minigun. Full Stop.
They're too different in design, layout, mechanical operation, and by the time you got done with your "mod", you'd just have a custom-built minigun and not a "Ares X2000 MG" anymore.
There, it's officially been stated clearly and succinctly.

Recoil mods for mounted weapons? I would say that Prime Mover has an absolutely phenomenal rule there just above this post. Besides, you don't need our, or the developers, permission to just do your own thing. Think up something that makes sense to you and your group and run with it.

The RAW, or the potential lack there of, in this instance isn't exactly Holy Script burned into tablets of stone by the finger of God that all shall game by or all non-believers will suffer the death of a thousand dogs, Amen.

Pointing out two other things here:

Gatling guns are really damned heavy, and they have hellish recoil. Gatling guns are ALWAYs mounted for a reason. In Terminator 2, when Shwartzanegger(yeah, I know I misspelled that harsh) is firing that gatling gun, he has a steel beck brace to keep him standing. Now, that's firing blanks with minimal powder. If you're firing 7.62mm rounds at 2800 feet per second, and you're firing THOUSANDS per minute, the recoil is actually strong enough to push humans around like nothing. In addition is the weight. Belive me, a few hundred rounds are pretty heavy. A few thousand like you need on a modern gatling gun, would make it pointless to carry around.