My Rigger PC is halfway to his new pet drone - a Thundercloud Contrail, tweaked and tuned to be a match for a Lone Star Interceptor. With the gyro upgrade and a better pilot soft, he figures he can use it as an escape vehicle and a pursuit drone. He even left enough mod slots for a heavy weapon mount, which is where things get interesting.

The best weapon for taking out a medium armored vehicle seems like an assault cannon - it will threaten armor 16 or less on a basic hit, and could easily spike to 20 on a great roll. Best of all, it ignores recoil. Hell, with the bike's Body of 6 I could mod it to Burst Fire twice a round and still not have an issue with it.

I gotta wonder, though, does this seem kosher to you guys? It's a squirrelly little racing bike mounting a light tank weapon with no penalties whatsoever. I want it to work, don't get me wrong, but it sounds too good to be true.

~Mike
Deadmetal: You, Sir, are a Dick GM.

Not sure about Arsenal (havn't read the rules about vehicle mods, yet), but in the SR4 book, weapon mounts can only accept LMG or smaller.

Bye
Thanee

Arsenal is an absolute must-have for anybody who wants to play with vehicles or drones. It's got a short but dense section on vehicle and weapon mods that really open up the system.

Thanks, though.

I see.

I guess that you still have to apply common sense, though, and if it feels wrong, simply not let it fly.

Bye
Thanee

But by the same token... the rules do allow this, even if it is a bit at the edge of sanity...

you can always say "It's 2070s baby, woohooo!!"
but don't forget, anything you can do in the game world is considered usable by the gm

I'd actually go with a sniper rifle rather than the assault cannon. The Barrett is a single step down in damage and AP from the assault cannon (Though it's actually more expensive) but can be loaded with ex-ex rounds to put it on par with the Panther, or with AV rounds to get unmatched ability to cut through armor (-10 AP against vehicles) and will bring ammo costs back down to something far more reasonable than the 450 for normal rounds or 2500 for AV with the assault cannon.

Edit to add: Oh, and it's also semi-automatic by default rather than needing to be modified for that.

It looks like they're planning on making this.

How about a Gauss-Rifle?
Or Laser-Rifle? Maybe just use a Burst-Fire Capable Shotgun?
Should be easy enough, and gives a whole new meaning to "riding shotgun"

Personally, I would find this squrrelly for a number of RLish reasons, and would suggest the following compromise:

1. Use the rules from Arsenal for 'strong characters negating recoil', and use the vehicle's body as its strength. It's nifty, avoids the ridiculousness of body 3 drones having no problems with an LMG that would kick a body 3 person's ass, and keeps the rules the same for vehicles and peeps.

2. I think it's silly that single shot weapons can be fired with any reasonable accuracy from a vehicle with a fixed mount. You would need a flexible mount to give the vehicle some way to aim the weapon. I mean, you can't really point the gun up if its welded to the frame of a motorcycle, unless you have conveniently spaced bumps in the road. Consider a lighter weapon with a flexible mount.

3. For something as a combination pursuit/escape vehicle, let me suggest the Armtech MGL-12 modified with an additional clip. You still have some performance against vehicles with HE grenades, the recoil is not ridiculous (an M203 is a lot like a 12 guage shotgun shell from a breach-loader), and the other clip can be loaded with nifty stuff like thermal smoke.

4. I would not allow any means of concealing a heavy weapon attached to a bike.

5. The gun on the medium armored vehicle will be far more of a threat to you than you are to it. With that in mind, you better take it out in one shot, regardless of the expense of that shot. Consider a rocket launcher, with a long tube out the back so the backblast doesn't blow your leg or rear tire off.

6. On a side note, I consider an assault cannon something like a large antimateriel rifle or small antitank recoilless rifle. As such, it's not THAT big.

Does sound nice, but does it count as LMG or Smaller Sized? Normal Size/ Flexible Aim sounds like a better use of space then Reinforced Size/ Fixed Aim, especially if I want to try and pick off weapon systems or sensors with a called shot.

No easy answer for whether or not a sniper rifle counts as LMG or smaller. Up to your GM. I would say it should fit in the same mount as an LMG, but a barett probably wouldn't.

Seriously. I have trouble picturing anything other then a Barrett .50 when they talk about Assault Cannons. Anybody know the RL equivalent of a Panther XXL so I can compare them?

Maybe this helps to find one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_cannon

There is actually a mentioning of Shadowrun.

Picture of a Barrett XM109

Bye
Thanee

You know...it really does not seem so bad to me...So...you going to mount a Side Car, to get into the ability to take down a Main Battle Tank?

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but arsenal specifically states that the 'ignore all recoil' thing can be ignored or reduced in the case of smaller vehicles/drones.

I think the ignore recoil thing was mostly intended for things of at least car size.

The rules are a little fuzzy - Arsenal starts by saying that, Okay I know we said vehicles don't get recoil but you can't roll full auto on a minidrone with no penalties and expect nobody to call you on it. Which confuses me a bit since I never saw the 'no recoil on vehicles' rule in the first place. It then goes on to suggest, well:



The trick with this being that the body rating is usually quite high compared to normal recoil compensation systems. My motorcycle has a Body of 6, which is a lot of recoil compensation. My rotordrones are body 3, and happily rock and roll with High-Velocity Assault Rifles. I guess the rationale is that a sedan can be a steady mount for a full-auto machine gun, and as chassis get smaller they get further away from that ideal; My bike has no recoil in Burstfire, my Rotordrone has no recoil in Semiautomatic.

The problem is that the recoil rules are only designed to take into account automatic fire and not heavy weps like the Assault Cannon. By all rights it should kick like a Troll trained in Taekwondo, but the rules just let it slide. Obviously it looks like House Rule time, but I wanted to tap the Dumpshock community first to see if someone else had already addressed this or found an official rule.

Double post.

If you consider a Barrett sniper rifle firing a single 50 cal round will have a lot less recoil than an LMG firing a burst.

I admit that a 50 cal round is 40 grams and an M60 7.62x51 round is around 10, but a 10 round burst throws 2.5 the weight of a single 50 cal round.

The Barrett with the 20" short barrel weighs 29 pounds and has a length of 48". An M60 weighs 23 pounds and has a length of 42".

Add in the normal ammo load for each weapon and the Barrett would weigh about the same as an M60.

The Panther assault cannon is a low velocity/low recoil (relatively) anti vehicle weapon designed to be fired by an infantry soldier.

Don't have any dimensions on a Panther but since it can be fired on the move, I figure it would have to clock in around the weight of an M60 (and being single shot, it would be a lot easier to fire on the move than a M60).


Both being single shot would have less recoil than an LMG. So neither weapon is going to cause that much problems when attached to a 5 or 6 hundred pound bike provided the bike has a gyroscopic stabilizer.


Now where you could conceal either of the weapons I have no idea.

I can image what the response from Lonestar would be if a traffic drone got a good vid of the bike.

For Size comparison, I would say use the statistics for the MArine Corps SMAW... it is a single shot (Reloadable) 84mm Rocket with a targeting rifle attached, but what the heck, it is about the right size I would say...

Keep the Faith

The Barrett XM109 is the definitive IRL assault cannon, and I don't see it causing any recoil problems on a 400lb bike traveling at speed, but whatevs.
It's already been pointed out that a 121 with .50 cal APDS is going to make a better hole for a lower cost, and it'll turn less heads doing it. What with the lack of explosions and all.

As for a hard mount vs. a turret, fitting a turret is far more difficult, especially hidden. And the hard point has 5° of articulation (might have ben 2.5°, so double distance or half radius in that case) which gives it a one meter radius of fire per 11.5 meters distance from the target. That means, even at short ranges, your sniper-cannon would still have a radius of fire good enough to hit any part of anything on the road. So, if it's primary purpose is as a chase weapon, your needs should be covered. Besides, spike strips and other drop-style weapons are better against pursuers and a motorcycle shouldn't be riding along side any target unless it wants to get creamed.

Also, in SR, there are TRIKES and TROLL-BIKES around.
On those, these weapons should not pose such a huge problem anymore i guess.
No Sidecars for Bikes in SR4? Or $R4.5? Or Arsenal?

Arsenal.

Bye
Thanee

P.S. Besides, the SR4A is surely worth the $.

Seat rigger in enclosed/armored/armed sidecar of bike, have him rig the bike, no problem right?
Also takes care of the problem of riggers falling from bikes when going full VR ^^