YouTube Video of Shell
"The XM1028 shell holds 1100 10mm tungsten balls that are propelled out of the gun barrel and begin to disperse. The tungsten projectiles are lethal at up to 700 meters. The official requirement of the XM1028 is to kill or disable more than 50 percent of a 10 man squad with 1 shot and do the same to a 30 man platoon with 2 shots."

I want this on a drone! BOOM.

Cannister Shot for tanks. *shrug*

I don't see anything similar. This would be a spread effect, and if it is expected to be lethal at 700 m, it can't be a normal AoE, since 'scatter' won't work like that. The damage would also need to be high enough that normal people would become a thin red mist (meaning it should probably be at least 15P).

I would say there's no place for anything like this in SR4, but oh well. I assumed that Pax meant this was nothing new in RL, but I agree that I've never heard of it *in SR4*.

The problem is that (well, apart from needing a tank!) you've just described a DV that is in the highest tier of vehicle cannons… and they already have blast radius, at that range+. So why bother? Maybe it's vastly cheaper? In reality, the point is to kill soft targets while not hurting hard ones (or maybe to knock out walls and trees?), but I dunno if that would work in SR4s damage rules. If you gave them a low AP, then you'd fail to kill the infantry in the first place; too high, and it's hurting those hard targets (and isn't different from the cannon rounds anyway).

Cannister shot for artilery pieces has existed since ... um, since well before the Boer War, I believe.

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

A whiff of grapeshot...

If you wanted to add this to SR, I'd just have it operate under standard rules of vehicle cannons with blast radius. The only realy difference is in flavor.

~Umi

I had rules for a assault cannon round based on this concept. Basically an even bigger shotgun.

You could just use the same relationship that already exists when you switch a firearm from a solid slug to shot. A shotgun gains +2 damage, +5 AP. (yeah, it's not realistic and when they say fletchettes they actually mean shot but it's what is already there and that's a completely different discussion) You probably want a wide spread for this crowd control style weapon though, so -2 DV, +9 AP (already factoring in fletchettes). I would say expand the 3 targets within one meter of each other for wide shot to be +1 target per 3 DV (round up), within one meter of each other. Have it cut the ranges in half (roughly like shot does versus slugs in shot guns).

So an assault cannon doing this gains -2 DV, +9 AP and the defenders take a -4 to avoid being hit, making it a 8P, +4 AP weapon. With a good shot you probably have 4 guys rolling to resist 10P-11P. It's effective out to 750 meters. It doesn't have a whole lot of advantages over automatic fire for most street sams, but could be useful for drones or others and it does the crowd control.

Put it on a GM Light Cannon you're looking at 11P, +3 AP against 5 targets, all of them rolling -4 to avoid being hit. That's enough that they're probably rolling against 12-13P, enough to drop or heavily injure most of them. Close to your 50% of a 10 man squad. Also out to 750 meters.

Put it on a GM heavy cannon (like I would expect on a tank) and you're looking at 15P, +1 AP against 6 guys. That's pretty close to what you want I think.

Hmm. Very interesting. Thanks for this.

This kind of round has sufficient energy to punch through lots of cover such as trees or even closely ranked people. Face it; this is like firing 1100 sniper rifles simultaneously.

Equally important is that canister can do "grazing shots" that ricochet off the ground and bounce down the range.

At close ranges they will, but at the ranges it was designed for, most of the balls are going to be going much closer to pistol speeds. These balls are also closer in size and weight to pistol rounds. (They weigh about 10 grams each)
A Tank cannon firing a shell might have speeds close to 1500-1700 m/s (most of which are sabot rounds designed for high velocity), but if we go based on shotgun shot vs. slugs, the shot leaves at a lower velocity. The balls don't have as great an initial velocity as your typical tank round (though very close to a sniper round), they have way more drag, and they have less momentum. I would guess that maximum range of 700 meters is set by the loss of velocity.
Edit: A swarm of pistol rounds still isn't something I would want to be hit by either.

Cannister rounds are also sabot rounds. The cannister is essentially a sabot designed to disintegrate just as it leaves th end of the barrel - adding shrapnel to the mix of shot.

So is the shot cup in a shotgun, if you want to look at it that way. Regardless, most shot does not leave at the same speed as a slug. I couldn't find any actual velocities for the ammo in questions, but I would guess that it's still leaving slower than your typical anti-tank shell.

Shot doesn't work as a Sabot, however. The shot cup doesn't actually get fired out of the weapon. The reason shot leaves the barrel slower than slugs is because the propellant has to propel each pellet individually out of the shot cup and down the barrel, rather than the entire package in a sabot.

The weapon in question doesn't work that way, however. It fires a sabot at standard shell speeds. Once in flight, the sabot opens, releasing the "shot". Now, the shot will suffer more drag than a normal shell, because it isn't as aerodynamic, but that's a separate thing from muzzle velocity. This should be leaving the barrel at the same speed as any other shell of comparable weight and propellant.

~Umi

Funny, my Airship Pirates group uses this stuff all the time.

The turned the deck of one ship into a abattoir with one broadside once. Not bad for black powder muzzle-loaded cannons.

Naval ships - and by extension, one presumes Airships as well - tend to use Grapeshot. Larger submunitions, so it can punch through the hull of the enemy ship on it's way to the soft, sweet, splatter-able bodies of it's hapless crew.

That would be what "shrapnel" originally meant, a round which releases its load of small projectiles somewhere along the flight path (but the projectiles are still powered by the muzzle velocity, not an HE charge as in a fragmention round). Looking at the video in the OP, the M1028 looks more like a canister shot, i.e. a big shotgun round with no fancy timed fuses.

Not that bigger - your average 12-gauge shotgun already has a 18,5mm (2/3 of an inch) bore, which cames very close to an assault canon which i'd expet to be something like a 20mm bore. Take a 10-gauge and you're gettign the same bore. What the assautl canon could get is an heftier charge and tighter spread to get a shotgun-blast like effect at longer ranges.

Point of note, I believe that a 12-guage is .72 caliber... or 18.29mm.
Just for those that are a bit curious...

The shot cup is fired out of a shotgun, along with the wad. Are you thinking of the shell?

Also, I don't think you understand how sabots work. They fire a smaller sized projectile in a larger barrel, so that the projectile leaves at a greater velocity. The sabot occupies the room around the projectile to form a seal. The XM1028 projectile is the full size of the barrel already, with a cup like canister that peels away once it leaves the barrel. You could call that cup a "sabot" if you want, but it's not really doing the same job.

It seems that they work similarly to a shotgun, based on the images-

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/sys...tions/m1028.htm

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6_io3WBd3Ag/TK_f...otgun-shell.gif

The XM1028 just has a hell of a lot more powder behind it. Now it might be that they them leave at the same speed as other shells, but I could not find any numbers one way or the other on that.