Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: Just what is an 'assault cannon'?
Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
Pages: 1, 2
Ferrit
Ok, for a while now I've been wondering (as the topic title suggests) just what in tarnation an assault cannon actually is?

What does it fire?

How big is it?

How long?

Is there any thing man portable like it in the real world?

Basically just what the heck is that troll carrying?

Any thoughts, ideas and/or references would be much appreciated by my troubled mind.

Ferrit
Snow_Fox
It fires a really really big shell, like a big hollow tipped round. The best thing I can find in the easy media is in the final battle in Saving Private Ryan. When the Germans roll up a 20 mm AA gun and blast the men on the tank.
Made to shred light vehicals and structures without exposing the gunner to counter fire, is is leathal to metahumans. (Think about is, a shot designed to break a Honda hitting your lil' ol' body.)
That's generally what we see as the cannon.
Nikoli
That or in the original Robocop, that monstrosity they are playing with when they lure him to the junk yard.
GunnerJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocannon

Different name, same thing.
Snow_Fox
QUOTE (Nikoli)
That or in the original Robocop, that monstrosity they are playing with when they lure him to the junk yard.

Yeah, that's good to. same idea, but set in a cyberpunk setting. The only problem I have with that is those guns had a blast and the autocannons don't, that's why I went with the 20mm in 'Private Ryan.
Nikoli
Don't they have AC's in SR already, that description is a huge bore machine gun. almost exactly like the 20mm pop-gun used byt he germans in Privat Ryan (also the dip-shit in Lock, Stock and two smoking barrels)

An assault cannon fires an explosive round the size of a large cigar (maybe a little bigger)
Arethusa
Bigger, I'd say. In real life, you're looking at a dedicated, man portable, single user operable antimatériel platform in the 20-25mm range.

Of course, it's also possible to interpret it as a breech loaded, frictionally dampened man portable cannon in the 80-85mm range like the HIWS (High Impulse Weapon System) that showed up at Blackwater. Personally, I think of that as a separate type of system.
Zeel De Mort
There's a picture of a Panther Cannon in one of the old SR2 books, probably Fields of Fire.

Basically just a really big cannon (I guess about 1.6m long at least) that fires huge explosive shells, 20mm or something crazy. I don't quite know how a metahuman, even one with Str and Bod 8, can fire one standing up, but it's possible it seems!

Weighs 18kg acording to CC. Which, in SR terms, is about 1.5x what an HMG weighs. Pretty damn heavy!
Nikoli
And, it's a shaped charge, hence no AoE around the target, except from secondary explosions from fuel, etc. Personally I think it could make for a great sniper eapon, using the right magic to keep the beast quiet.
Kagetenshi
Silence on the cannon itself, Silence on the round.

~J
Nikoli
Wow, that would be creey, just an explosion in front of you, no noise, no shockwave, just BAM, and your buddy is a radio-smear
Arethusa
I wouldn't allow that, personally. Silence on the cannon? Sure, you get a silently operating cannon. No noise generated from rattling part or a moving action. Silence on round? No noise if you drop it. But silence on an explosion? That's a bit much for me.
FlakJacket
I always figured that things like the Panther worked on some sort of mechanism similiar to recoilless rifles. But I never really considered it that much.
RangerJoe
The Panther Assualt Cannon is what Hachetman (of blessed memory) calls "Grade-A bang-bang" in the 2nd Ed. Street Samauri catalogue. The weapon itself looks like a very long-barreled, bull-pup configuration firearm, with an unexpected pistol-grip and no stock to speak of. The cannon has a hip-brace and shoulder strap. It fires a "stable, superplast explosive warhead." In short, it will mess up anyone and anything, short of a battle tank... or just a van with a lot of armor and high-ish body.

As an anti-personel weapon, though, the Panther is the single-shot way to go.
Crimsondude 2.0
QUOTE (Zeel De Mort @ May 28 2004, 01:59 PM)
There's a picture of a Panther Cannon in one of the old SR2 books, probably Fields of Fire.

Street Samurai Catalog, p.60.

It looks like a very large-bore gun. The thing is, it has a magazine (bullpup configuration) which SCC gives a 22-rd capacity.

The mag's not that big relative to the PAC.

The shells are on page 64 of SSC, and they look like, well, like big bullets. If the image was a 1:1 ratio, they would be ~4.5" long. I figured that they fire just like bullets, but are large enough to put the explosive round further downrange, and the shell is big enough to contain a stable explosive ("HDX superplast").

The damn thing is probably 6 feet long if it's a foot, especially when you look at the size of the 22-rd mag compared to the rest of the PAC.

[edit]
The Hatchetman quote was in the 1st ed. SSC, too.

Actually, the shells look to be not much bigger than a .50 BMG round now that I think about it. Other than the fact that they are 1" in diameter and don't taper like .50 BMG rounds do.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Arethusa)
I wouldn't allow that, personally. Silence on the cannon? Sure, you get a silently operating cannon. No noise generated from rattling part or a moving action. Silence on round? No noise if you drop it. But silence on an explosion? That's a bit much for me.

Well, it's certainly arguable that when the round explodes that it's no longer a round, so the Silence spell would drop.

~J
Capt. Dave
Technically, as soon as the bullet leaves the case, it's no longer a round, either.
Kagetenshi
Cast it on the bullet itself, then. You couldn't cast it on the round anyway, as it's multiple objects (bullet+casing+propellant, etc).

Except some people won't think of it that way. Ah, the craziness…

~J
Arethusa
Well, if you cast it on the bullet, you get a bullet that does not create sound on impact or, assuming it's supersonic, sound in flight— which I find a little hard to believe, considering the elements in play, but since you'd have to cast it on the gun and every round you're going to fire, chances are it's not that unbalanced. I still wouldn't allow silencing of explosions of any sort, which just creates way too many problems all around.
Kagetenshi
It's area-effect, you wouldn't have to cast it on the gun. Every new bullet, though, would have to have the spell.

~J
Capt. Dave
Make every bullet a sustaining focus. Or, if you have Karma to spare, quicken a silence spell to each one. wobble.gif
otomik
"Cobra Assault Cannon, Grade A Bang Bang!" - Robocop
becomes Panther Assault Cannon
in the movie it was just a Barrett M82 with some funky gizmos on it

it's kind of like a Anti-Material Rifle or it's less powerful cousin the Anti-Tank Rifle but nothing like it really exists.
what cartridge it fires is speculation. look at this page
http://web4.integraonline.com/~bbroadside/...neral_Info.html
in the cannon section it gives a good list of cartridges and rifles that fire them.
raygun has some anti-material rifles listed but none of them have the 18D damage code.
my best guess is the 20x72mm Short Oerlikon might have a 18D code, a big heavy 2000grain bullet at about 2000fps.
BitBasher
QUOTE
The Panther Assualt Cannon is what Hachetman (of blessed memory) calls "Grade-A bang-bang"
Which, as a nod to the movie Robocop, is the exact line Clarence Boddicker said in robocop when he pulled the gun out the first time and demonstrated it for his crew.

QUOTE
my best guess is the 20x72mm Short Oerlikon might have a 18D code, a big heavy 2000grain bullet at about 2000fps
And an uber nifty 60 years in the future recoil reduction system. biggrin.gif
Raygun
QUOTE (Ferrit)
Ok, for a while now I've been wondering (as the topic title suggests) just what in tarnation an assault cannon actually is?

What does it fire?

Well, according to canon, explosive cannon shells, which means 20mm or larger.

QUOTE
How big is it?

Pretty big. Too big for a human to hide on their person. Don't have my SR books with me so I don't know how much it says the PAC weighs (probably optimistic), but probably somewhere between 30 lbs (13kg) and 65 lbs (29kg).

QUOTE
How long?

Probably somewhere between 45 inches (1.14m) and 79 inches (2m).

QUOTE
Is there any thing man portable like it in the real world?

There are several passable examples, though classifying them as an "assault" weapon would not be accepted in modern military vernacular. The closest thing that seems to come to it these days would be what are called "anti-materiel rifles".

Here is what I consider to be the closest modern thing to an "assault cannon". Barrett Payload Rifle.

Here's another man-portable cannon, though "assaulting" anything with it would be rather difficult to do. It's more like giant sniper rifle. NTW20.

Here's another one. Croatian RT-20.

And this one. Steyr IWS-2000.

QUOTE (Bit Basher)
QUOTE
my best guess is the 20x72mm Short Oerlikon might have a 18D code, a big heavy 2000grain bullet at about 2000fps
And an uber nifty 60 years in the future recoil reduction system. biggrin.gif

Except for the Barrett Payload Rifle, all of the rifles listed above fire cartridges more powerful (kenetically) than the 20x72mm Short Oerlikon. All include some very interesting means of recoil mitigation, but they are capable of doing so today.

The cannon Snow_Fox mentioned from Saving Private Ryan is probably the most powerful of all the things discussed here so far, but it was also deployed as a wheel-mounted, crew-served weapon, almost as a short-range howitzer. A bit of a different role than what you'd expect something called an "assault cannon" to occupy. The Solothurn S18/1000 fired a 20x138mm belted cartridge. As an example, this picture shows the 20x72mm Short Oerlikon mentioned above (second from left), and the 20x138mm Solothurn (seventh from left). The cartridge second from the right belongs to the Carl Gustav M/42 recoilless anti-tank rifle.
kevyn668
Ol' Hatch said it in 1st Ed. too.

Just thought I'd date my self here... nyahnyah.gif
Necro Tech
While to SR cannon is troll portable (Or really big humans and orks) the recoil will put you down fast. You have to soak (half power)L every time you shoot with no armor applying. 9L every round stacks up real quick unless you have a truly monster body and a lot of luck.
Zeel De Mort
Well that 9L is stun damage, so, by the rules at least, your trauma damper will take care of that every time.. However the TN 9 knockdown test every time you fire it could cause problems. Even with a balance augmenter that's TN 7 - not much fun.
GreatChicken
One thing about SRUN is the failure to make distinctions between light assault cannons (man-portable, mounted on copters and transports, calibers 20mm-40mm) and heavy assault cannons (light tanks and above, 60mm - 120mm). I suppose that the autocannon provided by the BBB can be considered as 'light' whereas the ones provided by Cannon Comp can be considered as 'heavy'.

The US Army ASP Combat Support Weapon is an example of a light assault cannon, dealing 12D-14D damage.

The standard 120mm gun for modern tanks (PPT WARNING) is an example of a heavy assault cannon, dealing 15D-20D+ damage.

One exception is perhaps Recoilless Rifles which can have calibers of 75mm-105mm. These are man/light vehicle portable, yet by no means are 'heavy assault cannons'. I am not sure about the damage code, but still, anything above 15D is probably enough to kill someone not in a vehicle in 1 hit....
Arethusa
Whoah, whoah, absolutely not. Man portable assault cannons are not tank guns. And, christ, an M1A1'd do a fair bit more than 20D.
BitBasher
I would think a 120mm Tank gun would be doing Naval scale damage.
Arethusa
I agree. I think something in vicinity of Moderate? I'm not really at all familiar with naval damage scale. In any case, it'd far and away exceed the personnel/light vehicle damage scale, that's for sure.
GreatChicken
Considering that the damage scale for even the heaviest weapons in this game are pretty much dumbed down, I dunno. Nothing seems to go above 25D, even missiles and artillery, inclusive of material from CC and BBB (unless I missed something). I don't have naval gun material yet, but it COULD be the first weapon type ever to break that damage rating.
BitBasher
That information is out there and they do FAR more damage than the other weapons. Medium Naval, which I agree a 120mm canon is, does a base damage of 21 boxes of damage, and a really high damn power to a non naval scale target. Serious Naval does 28 boxes.
RangerJoe
For those interested, at last check, the Panther weighs in at 18. You can take that, and every other SR weight with a grain of whatever you like.
Austere Emancipator
The heaviest Autocannon in SR (Victory, can't remember if there're others) does 20D, and that's the equivalent of the current 25mm and 30mm autocannons you see in APCs, IFVs and aircraft. The Vigilant Autocannon at 18D is basically a 20mm cannon. That would suggest that Assault Cannons are in the same caliber range as vehicle mounted 20mm cannons. And I, for one, don't like that, because vehicle mounted cannons should be a heck of a lot more powerful. The designers obviously realized that to a degree, since vehicle mounted Autocannons have a maximum range of 5,000 meters, while Assault Cannons only reach out to 2,400 meters.

For a real world equivalent, I completely agree with Raygun. The Barrett Payload Rifle is the only RL weapon that I could consider an "assault cannon".

Large caliber, single shot cannons are represented in SR by the Light, Medium and Heavy Railguns (6LN, 8MN, 15MN), and Light and Medium Naval Cannons (8LN and 11MN). The ranges of those weapons are 9km, 16km, 24km, 18km and 25km, respectively. I'd consider a Light Naval Cannon to be the equivalent of a 76.2mm and a Medium NC to be a 127mm. To represent an M256 (or any other modern MBT main cannon), I'd absolutely use a Medium NC.

To convert Naval damage to normal damage, multiply the Power of the attack by (1 + Level of Naval Damage) -- 2 for Light, 3 for Medium, etc. Every 2 successes on the Damage Resistance test drops the Naval Damage Level by 1 as normal, dropping to Deadly normal when you get 2 successes beyond LN. Light Naval does 15 boxes of damage and Deadly Naval does 36 boxes, the others BitBasher mentioned above. All damage is Anti-Vehicular with a Blast of -1/m.

The heaviest weapon in the game that I'm aware of is the UGM-188 Sea Saber ASM/SSM, which does a whopping 24DN. That's 120 Deadly + 26 boxes of Over-Damage to any vehicle directly hit by it.
Raskolnikov
The Panther assault cannon is a medium calibur antimaterial weapon. It uses a shaped explosive charge similar to real-life MP (multipurpose) rounds, giving it a high power against armored targets and significant damage even to softer targets. The calibur of the rounds is likely 20mm or there-abouts, but don't be mistaken, this isn't the same round used in the larger vehicle autocannon that does the same damage.

The vehicle cannon likely has a larger powder charge as well as a longer slug. The default damage code is for a standard jacketed round according to R3, and so you can make them exploding, AV, etc. You can't do this with a Panther as it describes it as using special rounds, but I digress.

Essentially the Panther is a short-round (compared to vehicle weapons of the same calibur) 20mm antimaterial weapon. Due to advances in composite light-weight materials, recoil compensation, and aiming devices the arms manufacturers of Shadowrun have apparently made such a thing man-portable and able ot be fired from a standing position.

In real life there is not currently such a thing, but many militaries are or have developed a ~20mm antimaterial rifle to replace the .50 BMG as the 20mm using MP ammunition represents notable improvement.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Raskolnikov)
The vehicle cannon likely has a larger powder charge as well as a longer slug. The default damage code is for a standard jacketed round according to R3, and so you can make them exploding, AV, etc. You can't do this with a Panther as it describes it as using special rounds, but I digress.

Rigger 3 says that Vigilant and Victory Autocannons use Assault Cannon ammunition. You can get Assault Cannon ammunition either as standard or AV. R3 makes absolutely no mention of what type of ammunition is standard for these weapons, other than that it's Assault Cannon ammo.

QUOTE (Raskolnikov)
Essentially the Panther is a short-round (compared to vehicle weapons of the same calibur) 20mm antimaterial weapon. Due to advances in composite light-weight materials, recoil compensation, and aiming devices the arms manufacturers of Shadowrun have apparently made such a thing man-portable and able ot be fired from a standing position.

In real life there is not currently such a thing, but many militaries are or have developed a ~20mm antimaterial rifle to replace the .50 BMG as the 20mm using MP ammunition represents notable improvement.
Raygun
QUOTE (RangerJoe)
For those interested, at last check, the Panther weighs in at 18. You can take that, and every other SR weight with a grain of whatever you like.

18 kilos (39.6 lbs) is actually a pretty reasonable weight for an "assault cannon". The real-life equivalent that Aus and I have been discussing actually weighs a bit less at 13.8 kg (30.5 lbs). Of course, the Barrett Payload Rifle is a prototype weapon, so its weight could change.
Atrox
QUOTE (Zeel De Mort)
Well that 9L is stun damage, so, by the rules at least, your trauma damper will take care of that every time.. However the TN 9 knockdown test every time you fire it could cause problems. Even with a balance augmenter that's TN 7 - not much fun.

So?

Fire from a prone position. Same as with any MMG or HMG without serious recoil comp.
Austere Emancipator
Don't you get the same 9L Stun with a LMG in canon? silly.gif The millions of people world wide who have fired thousands of rounds with LMGs and MMGs from a standing position without any "gyromounts" might disagree.

With assault cannons, I might just buy the 9L Stun + Knockdown. Even that requires you to think of them as being as powerful as the vehicle-mounted light autocannons.
BitBasher
No, the cutoff for that is MMG. LMG's dont follow those rules.
Austere Emancipator
Still one step too low.
Arethusa
I'd say two, really. I can't see the recoil from .50BMG knocking me out cold in 10 shots.
Zeel De Mort
QUOTE (Atrox)
QUOTE (Zeel De Mort @ May 29 2004, 03:10 AM)
Well that 9L is stun damage, so, by the rules at least, your trauma damper will take care of that every time..  However the TN 9 knockdown test every time you fire it could cause problems.  Even with a balance augmenter that's TN 7 - not much fun.

So?

Fire from a prone position. Same as with any MMG or HMG without serious recoil comp.

Hey, if I'm running around with a panther cannon you can bet your ass I'll want to fire it standing up!
Austere Emancipator
And it shouldn't. But at least it's reasonable to say that the recoil from many weapons chambered in .50BMG might be uncontrollable for some, certainly in anything but semi-auto or single shots. On the other hand, anyone can pick up a MMG and fire off a belt or a dozen without any injury, assuming they know how to fire the gun properly.
Hasaku
Reading the article on that Payload Rifle, I notice it says the 25mm solid round actually has worse ballistics than the .50 BMG, and the weapon is meant to fire programmable airbursting rounds. It's basically just a longer ranged version of the OICW's grenade launcher. Not what I'd call an Assault Cannon, in SR terms.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Hasaku)
the weapon is meant to fire programmable airbursting rounds.
QUOTE (http://www.smallarmsreview.com/pdf/payload.pdf)
Barrett’s 25mm Payload Rifle does not have the sophisticated fire control and is not intended for use with the programmable types of ammunition for the OCSW.

It's meant to fire unprogrammed explosive rounds, either High Explosive or shaped charge (HEDP or whatever). Assault Cannons in SR fire explosive ammunition or AV ammunition. Very, very much like an Assault Cannon, in SR terms.
Atrox
QUOTE (Zeel De Mort)
QUOTE (Atrox @ May 31 2004, 01:39 PM)
QUOTE (Zeel De Mort @ May 29 2004, 03:10 AM)
Well that 9L is stun damage, so, by the rules at least, your trauma damper will take care of that every time..  However the TN 9 knockdown test every time you fire it could cause problems.  Even with a balance augmenter that's TN 7 - not much fun.

So?

Fire from a prone position. Same as with any MMG or HMG without serious recoil comp.

Hey, if I'm running around with a panther cannon you can bet your ass I'll want to fire it standing up!

Get a bipod. Rest it on something. Lean into it.

If it worked for cartridges as ridiculously overpowered as 12.7x106mm and 14.5x114mm (without recoil comp, I might add), it'll work for whatever the Panther uses in 2050 and later.
Raygun
QUOTE (Hasaku)
It's basically just a longer ranged version of the OICW's grenade launcher. Not what I'd call an Assault Cannon, in SR terms.

It's actually the same 25mm round that the XM307 OCSW fires, which is a direct fire weapon designed to supplement/replace the MK19 MOD 3 and the M2 HMG. The 25mm round has a much higher muzzle velocity (@ 1400 fps) and thus flatter trajectory than the 20mm OICW round (@ 650 fps). In terms of ballistic performance, it's somewhere between conventional launched grenades and the smaller cannon rounds.

While the ammunition itself doesn't really fall under the conventional definition of a cannon munition (or grenade, for that matter), it comes close enough to allow a weapon used in the fashion of the Barrett Payload Rifle to be considered something called an "assault cannon". There's really nothing else like it out there.
inquisitor_bob
QUOTE (Ferrit)


Is there any thing man portable like it in the real world?

Try this...

http://www.securityarms.com/20010315/galle...es/0100/173.htm

There are various countries using Anti Tank Rifles in calibers from 12.7mm and up.

Foremost are the old WW 2 Russian, German, British, and Italian ones...
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Dumpshock Forums © 2001-2012