No, you see, the PC is the really burly Fomori down the street and at best the GM can clone the exact same build and have the PC's twin to do the exact same thing.

At least you got the point.

If you are referring to the line about drones not carrying passengers, a lot of folks view that as descriptive rather than restrictive.

Because by default, it is true most drones are not designed with passengers in mind.

Right away, though, we have exceptions - at least two wheelchair drones are in Arsenal.

Under the mod rules the Rigger Cocoon is "standard", meaning it can be put on medium or larger drones. Some GMs may additionally require actual passenger space, which can be handled by the Special Storage mod.



-k

Oh come on. Of course the assault cannon ammunition is "exotic". No other guns use it. Geez.


There is only one kind of ammounition, where you really have a grey area. And that would be the battery packs. (Because they are the general ammunition for any kind of energy weapon...)


And yes, recoil rules in SR are silly.
Starting with ignoring the size of the bullet in general and resetting after every pass...

That same argument could be made for the assault cannon shells. OK, since Arsenal assault cannons can also shoot AV shells. But having different projectiles is not something only assault cannons have (almost every firearm can do that).


I partially agree on the first part but the lack of differentiation between weapon types may be simply due to the granularity of the rules. What's wrong with the reset? Resetting after each pass is not more silly than resetting after each round. The time it takes for the bullets to leave the weapon is much shorter than the time an action phase occupies. So it is not unreasonable to assume that the character takes the rest of the time to get the weapon under control.

Now this argument is just stupid. Every class of gun has its own exclusive ammunition type. Shotguns can't load light pistol rounds, ya know.

~Umi

They all use the standart ammunition. After the rules, you can.

Go home, Irion. You are drunk.

~Umi

An assault cannon round is mentioned as being the same sort of ammunition used by the main weapons of some light tanks.

If we assume that by "some light tanks" they're actually talking about "infantry fighting vehicles," then it makes sense to assume that that means the assault cannon rounds are basically autocannon ammunition, and troll-portable assault cannons are really just REALLY FRIGGING BIG anti-material rifles/carbines chambered for those autocannon rounds. Basically, it's like a 30mm rifle.

30mm weapons can and are made to be fully automatic. Granted that in modern times we tend to mount those on things like helicoptors and such, but even so, IRL we don't have soldiers the size of trolls to carry them.

So, yes, you can definitely make a Panther AC (or any other kind of assault cannon) fire at full auto. Now, why would you want to is another matter, because frankly that's probably stupid unless you're using it from a fixed or semi-fixed position, anywhere you can have a huge box full of ammo on a belt. You might prefer burst fire, or semiautomatic, for a more practical application...

But honestly, when you just have to kill everymotherfucker in every room of a building that's facing you dead, nothing beats autocannon fire.

(Also, you should definitely be able to get AC ammo in the various ammunition varieties... But even the best fixer is going to (a) look at you funny and (b) have a hard time scoring you 2,000 rounds of autocannon EX-EX.)

Having found myself shoulder deep in the working mechanism of a 30mm Cannon trying to catch a piece of moving machinery with my bare hands before the breech closes (3 kilos of solid gunmetal and takes my hand with it

Then, having been sat in a tank firing (SA) 30mm shells at a target 2.5KM away

RARDEN Cannon

30mm Calibre

I can happily say I would Not like to try and fire or be on the pointy end of it .. in ANY firing mode, the -> "Ammunition" ALONE is 17 cm LONG
or in the form of caseless up to 25 cm long. and Three cm width

considering a few things

1) the sheer time it takes the mechanism to Fire - recoil over 2 feet of barrel - collect new round - carry round 2 feet forward - breech lock --- fire -- etc.
2) the amount of force generated by that amount of ammo charge ( the old rule of equal and opposite forces)
3) the exisiting size & weight of the weapon and the encumbrance of it, the Barrel is over 4 metres long

the absolute best you could expect would be BF (wide burst) not FA in a full complex action ( like the savalette guardian pistol ?)
the firer would need to compensate a huge amount of recoil to get the round anywhere near target as well as being able to carry it in the first place.
and be able to avoid getting knocked flat on his arse by the force of the shot (these are tank mounted for a reason.

the force in the round takes it on a FOUR Kilometre journey

That said, 70 years of technological progress could quite easily see that weapon compacted and simplified and easily made into a beast of a machine
but pure physics alone says, the second shot is gonna go SO wide it's not worth it but the value of doing it is another discussion over the ability to just do it.


As for the Ammo,, they come in any flavour you want ,, APDS HEAT, and should be considered Anti-vehicular by design. this is NOT a man hunter it's a tank killer

You buy an MMG and "under-Barrel mount" it for killing people, even then the machine guns of today are suppressive fire .. full auto puts 30 rounds into a 50m^2 area .. they are not precise ( due to barrel heat and recoil etc.)


Hooo Boy ... some one made this !

25mm man portable fully auto Grenade launcher .... not quite assault cannon ... but ... I want one !

30mm seems a bit large for what the BBB describes as "common to the primary weapon in many small tanks". The Marder and Wiesel for example use 20mm cannons. That brings the calibre much closer to those of anti-tank rifles. Assuming the assault cannon is a modern successor of an anti-tank rifle also fits the size of the panther (essentially man-portable) much better than assuming an actual cannon.

But yeah the XM307 is a much more plausible weapon that the beefed up anti-tank rifles. But then again IRL LAWs and other rockets can actually hit the broad side of a barn.

there does seem to be some discrepancy on the size of the round on the panther ... so many tanks .. so many variants in ammo

30mm vs 50 cal vs 5.56 mm

also called Panther vs Barret vs LMG

I'd suggest 20-25mm would be the range to look at
as anything larger os 150 kilos of weapon without ammo, without gyro mounts and tripods and yada yada
and just could not be wielded in any way let alone be effective !

I do like a full auto mini grenade launcher with a 2KM range though .... it is just .. tasty

Don't get me started on LAW .. in SR3 a purpose built anti tank weapon is not considered AV ... but my new mantra is "this is not RL .. this is NOT RL !"

Light Tanks in WW2 (assuming Light Tank is synonymous with small tank).

Panzer II - 20mm
Panzer 35(t) - 37mm
Panzer 38(t) - 37mm
M2A4 - 37mm
M3 Stuart - 37mm
BT Tank - 45mm
Type 98 - 37mm

All other light tanks were using machine gun weapons rather than large caliber cannon. If 30mm is still the standard for a light tank in 2070....

I think they were looking at something like the M2 Bradley IFVs which use a 25mm gun. Or any of the many other IFV's (which at least in looks, are much closer to tanks then just the beefed up APCs that they are) that use 20-30mm guns.

Either way, 20mm is a good sight bigger than the .50 (~13mm) ammo that the Barret uses. I'd say that fits the bill pretty well, and any bigger is just ridiculous. I've held a GAU-8 round. I can't see even a troll in heavy military armor firing a weapon designed to fire that and still be standing afterwards.

Interesting...

I aways though this: the reason the Panther Cannon was Single Shot was freaking game balance. In the old "18Deadly" days, one shot was almost 100% (over)kill. Was about gamming style and character style.

Now the "Minigun+gyromount" guy was able to kill even 3 enemies in one round, but there was a lot more randomness and crazieness, tons of recoil and multitarget penalties, very messy.

That was the important diference.

When I see that people are managing to use "recoiless" miniguns and "full automatic assaut cannons", the game balance and differences between playing styles just go down the drain - the game becomes a poor, powerplaying game. Ence we have the "optimum" choices.

This remminds me of an old D&D discussion about staves and rods for wizards. I wanted my wizard to use a staff, but what I wanted to do with it was considered - in game terms - a rod. The DM, wisely allowed me to use a staff, fitting the character concept and apearence, that was a rod in mechanical/rules terms.

As aways, just an opinion, trying to look at the big picture and trying to remmember why we play RPGs.

In the game of Shadowrun, when it comes down to mundane technology and game balance versus verisimilitude, game balance can eat a dick, in my opinion. Tech is already the poor man's option if given a choice between tech or magic.

I see your point, but I was just trying to keep the comparison between different kinds of tech: let's not make this an arms race (almost literaly). Magic was not a factor in my post.

Verisimilitude is desired, but we are talking about futuristic techs, in an alternate universe. On top of that the rules systems will never, ever, be able to grasp "reality"; so I advocate game balance instead, in a way that the aftermentioned "mini-gun guy" and "panther cannon dude" can both have fun, in different styles, in the same party, without anyone being "sub-optimal".

At least every single DM, in every single group that I saw trying to use rules "in the way he saw reality", failed miserably, becuse the "reality" is just too damm complex, and we are not playing in a simulator, its an RPG (a game of interpretation, its about having fun).

Thats why I aways keep an eye at game balance, and uniqueness of choices.

Still, Standart ammunition. You do not seem to get it. What you quote is fluff. Buying 20 shots for your shotgun is (seen from the rules) exactly the same as buying 20 rounds for your light pistol.
As a matter of fact, they do not act differently in ANY way. You may declare them as shotgun rounds. But as a matter of fact, thats happening when you write them next to your weapon. What you buy is generic ammo (after the rules).

Please learn to distinguish between fluff and game mechanics. There are games with different costs, weights, availabilities etc. for small arm ammunition. Shadowrun is not one of them.

@ShadowDragon8685

It is not as much about game balance as it is about making silly arguments. It is quite clear what is meant by non-exotic ammo...
And I am sorry, there are very few things less exotic than the assault cannon.

Irion, you're steadfastly sticking to an irrational interpretation which is nowhere spelled out in the rules.

Arrows are exotic, crossbow bolts are exotic. Grenades are exotic (though there is, in fact, an FA grenade launcher.) Rockets are exotic, ferrous SLUGS from a railgun are exotic!


Assault cannon rounds are a normal bullet writ large. It doesn't have some bullshit clockwork mechanism in it, it's a propellant charge at the ass-end of a bullet, either held together by a brass case or epoxied together in the manufacturing process. It's loaded into the chamber by a recoil mechanism, it fires electrically or with the dropping of a hammer, and the weapon recoils as the round leaves the barrel, causing the weapon to chamber another round and, as necessary, ejecting a case in the process.

Making that process happen very, very quickly, and continue to operate as long as the rifleman holds the trigger down is not new technology. By the time of Shadowrun 4, it's almost two fucking centuries old: the first fully-automatic firearm to operate on that principle was produced in 1887.

@ShadowDragon8685
What destinguishs an assault cannon round from an arrow/bolt rulewise?

I guess the problem with game balance and verisimilitude starts with the poor performance of a single shot from dedicated FA weapons (MMG, HMG) compared to the single shot from a sniper rifle/AMR even though they should be similar. A burst from an MMG would need 3 net hits to penetrate a Mitsubishi Nightsky whereas the Ranger Arms would need only need one. Not to mention that without modification the attack from the machine gun costs at least three times as much.

So people who want the dakka dakka flavor instead of the big badaboom flavor seek options to rival or exceed the other flavor's crunch.

@irion: Nothing. And before you start building FA bows, bows still have the unusual loading mechanism.

Their Names.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Thats true for everything... So? There ain't any exotic ammunition?

Consider this: There are only exactly two kinds of assault cannon ammunition. No frangible, no Hi-C, no APDS, etc. pp., just AV and regular ammo.
Every non-exotic kind of ammunition is available in just about every variation, with few exceptions (Deathdealer rounds only available for certain kinds of weapons come to mind; and aren't there door openers for shotguns only?)

I'll go out on a limb with Irion here and say, yep. Assault cannon rounds are exotic ammunition. Just as gauss rifle rounds are.

Of course Assault Canon Rounds are Exotic. Irion is not stating that, I do not think.
I could be mistaking in that, but that is how he is reading, anyways.

Of course there is.
Assault Canon Rounds are an example.

I am at a bit at a loss here. I think I just supported his view on them being exotic, didn't I?

Edit, and now with actual content: I'm hoping no one is going to quote the Anti Tank rounds from War, p.156. Those are less expensive than AV rounds and, IMO another fine example of really bad editing / rules writing in that monstrosity of a book.

From my reading, he seems to be arguing that ALL ammunition is Exotic, so therefore none is.
He is a bit confusing (or I am a bit confused).

Or we all are

Irion was of the opinion that Assault Cannon ammo is Exotic. He was responding to ShadowDragon.

I for one do not agree. Assault Cannon rounds are bullets, just larger. This is in contrast to arrows, musket balls, or netgun ammo.

They are loaded like bullets, they fire like bullets, and there are existing full-auto weapons in the game that do use assault cannon rounds in the game. Hell, we have full auto 20-30mm cannons in existence TODAY. If it's a projectile attached to a propellant charge designed to be placed into a firing chamber, where the propellant generates rapidly expanding gasses driving the projectile at high speeds out the barrel, it's a damn bullet, regardless of the size.

Granted, the definition of "Exotic" is imprecise in SR, but I feel that it refers to stuff that is clearly not anywhere close to "bullet", or bullet-like. The restriction against full auto for those makes sense, because it'd be difficult if not impossible to create a reliable auto-loading mechanism for them. More of a practical limitation, rather than any sort of game balance limitation.





-k

And yet, you don't get them in all the different ammo types and they have separate prices and categories
As this is true for gauss rifles, flamers and dartguns, I hold it's true for assault cannons as well.


I am not really knowledgeable in the world of ammunition and guns, but this doesn't sound like a regular bullet to me.

I understand your argument, you are looking at it from a rules point of view.

As someone who DOES know a good bit about ammunition and guns, I am looking at it from a practical point of view.

To me, the fact that they are on different charts is completely irrelevant.

They are projectiles launched out of a barrel by the chemical based propellant. There is no good practical reason you should not be able to use the same basic design an assault rifle uses to auto-load ammo for an assault cannon. A real world weapons engineer could theoretically modify a 20mm class cannon to full auto today, with some work.

In contrast, trying to make a full auto, say, arrow launcher would more or less require designing a whole new weapon from the ground up, and as such would be beyond the modding rules.


-k

Yes, I see where you're coming from, then
I also hold that there are full auto assault cannons. Those are called autocannons ^^
No need to mod them, as even the notion of a fully automatic assault cannon being fired from a person, not from a vehicle, seems supremely silly to me

There is no indication that there is a relation between assault cannons and auto cannons or a connection between their respective ammunitions (the latter does not even have ammunition AFAICT). The GE Light/Heavy Cannon on the other hand is said to shoot something that could possibly be similar to assault cannon rounds. It is also described as not exotic. Those two weapons also use the same range as Assault Cannons

The vehicle weapon is not an automatic assault cannon. The autocannon is much more closely related to a minigun.

No, they're just similar enough in damage codes to make the comparison. Sorry if that was unclear.
I still would laugh in the face of every player trying to fire one from the hip.

Whether there is a need to mod a Panther XXL for FA fire or not is irrelevant. It's still possible. And It's still not imbalanced.

People are being really pedantic about this. The Firing Selection Change mod gives very good examples of what sorts of things it considers to be unacceptable. First is the Sakura Fubuki, which has 4 separate barrels, a non-standard magazine, bullets stacked in-line in barrel, and no moving parts. Second is the Pain Inducer, which is a microwave beam weapon that operates off peak-discharge power packs.

Assault cannons don't come anywhere near that level of difference. They fire bullets - very large ones, but bullets all the same. They have a regular loading mechanism, and the ammunition is stored in a "clip" or spring-fed magazine, just like every single FA capable weapon in the game.

~Umi

why you would want to mod one is beyond me anyway . .
at that power, that's too much diminishing returns in my opinion.

Never said it was imbalanced.
I dispute your 'possible', as does Irion. RAW clearly says "This modification is not available for weapons using unusual loading mechanisms or exotic ammunition" and then gives two weapons as examples. Inferring from those examples that there needs to be a correlation to another unmoddable weapon is a fallacy. The Fubuki and the pain inducer would be examples for 'unusual loading mechanisms', not necessarily exotic ammunition.
Your 'possible' is entirely dependent on your interpretation of what is and what isn't exotic ammunition. I don't share that interpretation for reasons stated above. You chose to scoff at this reasoning, but that does not make you right or me wrong. Nor does posting something in bold face and calling people stupid, btw.

By That Logic, Rockets are not Exotic. I am pretty sure we can consider them as such from a Game point of View.
Practicality has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Technically, the fubuki should be FA capable in stock . .

And much faster than HV too.

I'm with BOTH Umi & KarmaInferno on the Ammo, but not on the ability to midify

the Ammo is not exotic, it's big bullets

BUT, the RAW of it says "unusual Firing Mechanism or exotic Ammo"

and as posted previously I've been shoulder deep in many a cannon "Wahey!"

the mechanism .. in my experience is an entirely different beast to that of a standard "Bolt fed" weapon.

not only in the slowness of picking up the round, but essentially it's a goddamn conveyor belt with a mechanical arm that grabs the round and feeds it into the chamber the breech is closed and then it fires with the recoil exerting the force to re-cock.

it's just so different (on the weapons I worked on) as to be unsuitable for switching to burst or FA.

that's not to say 70 years of advancement etc. etc. .. but still by game terms ... not applicable
#edit#
I should add, the cannon is question is SA not SS .. there is a 3 round shelf on it for loading rounds.

Mach_Ten: The Panther has a clip-magazine, though. It's not a breachloader. It's a normal rifle firing mechanism writ large.


It's probably impractical or impossible to do with today's materials science, but the Shadowrun 2070s materials science beats the pants off ours.

I look at the "exotic ammunition" phrase as applying to weapons that can only fire one specific ammo type, and since a Panther can only fire 'assault cannon ammo' it would apply. (And yes, I would apply the same to any weapon with High Power Chambering since that mod restricts the weapon to one ammo type.)

Technically, two kinds of ammo, since there's regular and AV, and even a third kind that's specific to gauss rifles (which are an undercategory of assault cannons, but who's keeping track), but that's the core of my argument, yes.

Sabot Rounds!

Autocannon Here

The second picture down is a comparison of the 20mm rifle to a what is essentially the .50 Barrett.

Just so we're all clear.

It lists two examples that can be 1:1 mapped with the Fubuki as an example of the unusual loading mechanism and the Pain Inducer as exotic ammunition. Exotic does not mean unique. That only one weapon uses the ammunition is not sufficient to make it exotic. It seems to me that exotic ammunition is referring to exotic weapons that don't otherwise describe themselves as using the same ammunition as a non-exotic weapon.

In regards to the mentioned weapons: note the word 'necessarily'
Your interpretation is valid, too. There is no clear definition in the book as to what kind of ammunition is considered exotic, so it's entirely up to the GM arbitrating the issue.
In Umidori's and your groups it would be possible to mod an assault cannon for fully automatic fire (if somewhat strange ), in mine and Irion's it wouldn't be.

Let me just get the core of your argument straight, for the record.

Are you saying that as Assault Cannon rounds are unique to Assault Cannons, they are therefor exotic?

~Umi