That's exactly how I picture an assault cannon looking / working.

Now I need to go rewatch it, dang you!

Yes, I'm an evil bastard. No, I don't care.

That doesn't fix it. Assault cannons are weak. The "normal" entry for sniper rifles would be 8P -3AP compared to the "normal" assault cannon of 10P -5AP. At best the assault cannon can be turned 10P -6AP versus meat targets and 10P -8AP against vehicles. The sniper rifle can be 9P -4AP versus meat targets and 8P -7AP versus meat targets and 8P -9AP against vehicles. The sniper rifle is only marginally less effective against armored targets. While the sniper rifle will deal less damage to meat targets once you're up in the 9P+ range of damage you're starting to hit the one-shot kill range anyway.

The only advantage to the assault cannon has been a high damage, high penetration, and long range weapon in the heavy weapons skill.

Damn skippy!

It's also what I thought of when I first read about assault cannons in SR1.

Indeed...

The Thunderstruck is an assault cannon, too. (Actually the most commonly bought heavy weapon for our group.)

The Barrets main advantage is that it can be used from the Firearms group. If someone invested into Pistols + Heavy Weapons thinks might look different. And the HW guy would IMO bring more firepower.

The Thunderstruck is an assault cannon in name only. It has special rules just for it. It uses special ammo just for it. It's weapon stats aren't in line with the other assault cannons. Most of the discussion regarding the Barret vs assault cannons has been ignoring the Thunderstruck and rightly so.

That's not the Barret's main advantage. The skill "advantage" is an advantage for the assault cannons. The Barret has a wide and better selection of ammunition as well as cheaper ammunition. It's cheaper than assault cannons. It can accept a wider variety of modifications that assault cannons do not get.

The Thunderstruck is a very special, extra-illegal, extra-pricey magic assault cannon. That doesn't make the category as a whole less problematic.

The Barrett is a sniper rifle, but it's flat out *better* at doing the assault cannon's job than the assault cannon; that's crazy.

The Barret is better and the "norm" stats for sniper rifles is only slightly worse.

I´d take my magical assault canon over the Barret, king-of-the-hill that one might be. Normal assault cannons do have only slightly better penetration, but that would rarely be an interesting advantage. The usual improvement/replacement should be HMGs rather than sniper rifles. (FA salvos against vehicles, chunky.)

StealthSigma: One problem at a time. I assume this all comes from the move away from SR3-style damage codes, but you'd think we could still make it work.

Given the balance of personal armor and vehicle armor, I still feel we could tweak the AP of Assault Cannons to bring them into line with their intended purpose. If simply increasing their AP wouldn't quite work, we could also give ACs an 'innate bonus' instead. The gauss weapons already get (-half), but even just something along the lines of the AV Rockets (-2 people/-6 vehicles) might be a good idea. The AV Assault Cannon rounds sort of do this (-4/-6), but those are an upgrade *and* it's only a difference of 2.

Conversely, we could make the sniper rifle APs only/mostly affect 'human' targets (-3/-1), or something like that.

Ryu, that's the whole point: the gauss *is* great. We're not discussing the gauss. The 'good news' is that the Barrett is nearly as expensive and illegal as the gauss, though.

AV Assault Cannon Rounds are listed as -1/-3* with the asterisk saying that AV Assault cannon Rounds have and additional AP of -1 versus people and -3 versus vehicles. That wording is awkward when compared to the wording of AV Rounds. I'm not sure if AV AC Rounds are supposed to be -1/-3 or -2/-6. If it's -1/-3 that flat out makes assault cannons inferior to sniper rifles on penetration. If it's -2/-6 then they're worse at meat targets and better against vehicles.

I see them listed as -4/-6, but either way. I'm suggesting that maybe Assault Cannons should be innately like that, with the specialty AV rounds being an extra upgrade. Ideally, I'd like sniper rifles to be good at human targets, and assault cannons to be good at vehicle/barrier targets. Obviously, there's some crossover for each of them (otherwise your brain would rebel), but that's the general goal.

The issue is that sniper bullets cost nothing, and AC rounds cost a lot. So it's much less of a problem for ACs to be secondarily good at killing people, because they wouldn't typically be used that way. It's a big problem for sniper rifles to be (as) great at vehicles as people.

i stand by my point of explosives rules for AC rounds both in terms of blast radius and damage against barriers.

Yes, that too. I think there are several possible good ideas bouncing around. I do believe that AC rounds are based on shaped-charge/penetrator-type methods, so they would have really a small blast radius, though.

Power -2 per meter, like AV Missles?

Half delirious with fever, but--

I thought against vehicles, even sniper rifles had to suffer through the hardened armor bit, whereas AC's did not. Or am I thinking of an edition of a bygone era, when trolls were Trolls, and Cyberdecks were en vogue?

In SR3, normal sniper rounds would not scratch hardened armor, if it was high enough.
There WAS no AP. There was only AV Ammo which allowed to damage hardened armor without needing more power than armor . .

Thats the normal AV rounds, AV assault cannon rounds are -1/-3.
There also some very wierd wording there, the * for those assault cannon rounds say that they have additional AP value of -1 against people and -3 against vehicles, while the * for the normal AV rounds just says they have AP of -4 against people and -6 against vehicles implying that AV assault cannon rounds are the only type of ammo witch AP value is added to the base AP of the weapon, but that doesn't make any sense.

You're right, thanks. The correct table is on the *next* page, sorry.

Stahlseele, the AV rockets are -4/m (and the Ballista and AGTM's are even more), but yes, that's the basic idea.

FA Salvos against vehicles are no good if the bullets cannot penetrate the armor.

Depends on the targets you are used to see, yet 7P/-3 base is nothing to laugh about. I´ll give you that 10P/-5 is better for penetration, and that 10P/-8 leaves a very short list of "hard" targets

Using ammo, sniper rifles are 7P/-9AP (Armor 15-), 8P/-9AP (Armor 16-), or 9P/-10AP (Armor 18-) for vehicles.
Using ammo, assault cannons are 10P/-8AP (Armor 17-) for vehicles. (Thunderstruck excluded)
Using ammo, HMGs are 7P/-9AP (Armor 15-)

HMGs are on par with the worst sniper rifles as far as penetration goes.

It is a difference in the functionality of the weapon, the Barrett model 121 functions like a standard rifle, albeit at a very large caliber. The assault cannons on the other hand are not rifles, they're some sort of cannon capaple of firing light artilery shells sort of like a recoiless rifle except they have recoil (ignored in SS mode) and probably fire a smaller shells somewhat like an autocannon except that autocannons are normally FA rather than SS.

The issue in usefullness isn't necessarily that the Berrett is too good, its more of a problem with the ammo mechanics. Ammo for all firearms cost the same, even though the cartridge for the Barrett should cost significantly more than whan you'd expect to pay for your Ares Predator IV (.50 bmg at ~$4.00/ea vs 9mm at ~$0.25/ea). On the other hand the assault cannons have a very limited shell selection compared to regular firearms and their anti-vehicle rounds got gimped.

So if you were to change ammo prices by caliber and give more munition choices on par with regular firearms I think everthing would look a lot more logical. To add more confusion look at the anti-tank rounds in WAR, they specifically can be used in sniper rifles or assault cannons, even though they are significantly cheaper and more potent than regular assault cannon ammo. Perhaps just have assault cannons use identical ammo to normal firearms and use a mark up multiplier for certain weapons, like sniper rifles cost 2x and assault cannon ammo costs 3x. If you want to have a lower powered campaign you could start lower and go higher like AR and sport rifle ammo cost 5x, sniper rifle ammo costs 10x, and assault cannon ammo costs 15-20x.

wut

Besides everything else that's been said, a cheap AK-97 firing on full auto (narrow burst) has a -9 Dice Pool penalty. An assault cannon has none.

Watchu talkin about willis?

And can't beat armor, don't forget.

I got to point out a stupid following of the rules her. The AP and DV "Modifiers" fro assaulst cannons are stated as a base weapon that beans assault cannon rounds by RAW are 2x better than the stat block. The gauss doesn't get this. sure a 20dv -6ap gun is much better than any sniper. Still I realy doubt it's RAI but theres your RAW fix.

Wh? Where does this interpretation come from exactly? Please provide more information.

I figured his logic out pretty quick. The damage and AP modifiers of assault cannon ammo are listed as ""as cannon" which would indicate that when using these shells you use the base value as a modifier to the existing base value effectively doubling its listed damage and AP. Clearly thats not what was intended, but if they meant for the ammo to have no effect on the base weapon damage and AP then it should read "-" like regular ammo does instead of "as cannon" as was written.

It's basically exactly the opposite of Damage for Missle Launchers where it should be as Missle for the Launcher and not As Launcher for Projectile.

Hmmmmm... I did not read it that way in the least... Go Figure.