So, do they know about her or not?

The level of defense you're describing is better suited to trying to repel a corporate or government strike force, not the hit squad of a Mafia family.

The Bigs will not be able to muster that much firepower without other groups catching wind and becoming interested in the target - "are they coming after us? Will there be a war between crime families?"

And to use such an escalation of force would mean the Bigs lose face and draw unnecessary attention to themselves.

Worst case scenario, they call in professional assassins and your head explodes while walking down the sidewalk.

Assuming the hypothetical situation, I'd suggest letting the Bigs hear about a staging area for an attack and set up a similar ambush while launching the real assault against key targets left undermanned by the Bigs' shifting of resources. Provided, of course, they rustle up enough forces to make such plannings necessary.

-Siege

Can you use medium naval guns though for this? Granted my memory isn't good at the best of times, but I seem to recall that caterpillars couldn't take the largest turret needed for mounting them?

At the current time, I don't believe so (though of course, I could be wrong). We've not done any runs for or against the Biggio family that I recall. The one run I do recall against organized crime was done by a different char.

Well, we want to start a war between the crime families and the Bigs to lose face. This isn't just some drive-by shooting; I'm going to be doing a lot of prep before a single shot is fired, including setting up tons of alternate identities, phony organizations, researching targets and personnel, etc. And yes, the whole part of this is to trick the Bigs (who I'm hoping will rely more on guts than brains once their ticked off enough) to misallocating their resources to their detriment.

As for the level of defense, I've been led to believe that the Bigs do have these kind of resources. For this plan to have a smidgen of a chance, the defenses have to be strong enough such that the Bigs can't just stroll in and laugh while they pop whoever's in the farm. It's got to be able to challenge them.

That'll work, of course. I was mostly thinking about mobility in rough terrain and maybe even survivability, but in this case (as usual) heavy artillery wouldn't be anywhere near the battlefield and wouldn't really need either.

Most real life artillery is not mounted on vehicles, so obviously they can't be turreted. Of real life self-propelled howitzers, however, the majority are turreted. M109(A6), AS 90, AUF-1, PzH 2000, 2S1 Gvodzika, 2S3 Akatsiya, 2S19 MSTA-S, etc.

r3.57

The last non-turreted SP-howitzer in the US Army inventory was, AFAIK, the 8" M110. There were about a thousand still in inventory during the 1st Gulf War, but they've all been phased out by the M109 since then.

howitzer

n : a muzzle-loading high-angle gun with a short barrel that fires shells at high elevations for a short range

According to my dictionary, it's an adaptation of the german word Haubitze, which is an alteration of the old Czech word haufnice (Catapult).

That definition is about a hundred years old, though. Since WWI, I should think all howitzers have been breech-loading. Also, having a short barrel is no longer a requirement for calling something "howitzer", as is obvious from the M107 and the M109A6.

These days it's just a name for cannons designed for indirect fire, regardless of barrel length or muzzle velocity -- many howitzers fire their rounds at over 900fps.

the errata for R3, ie R3R, says that a extra-large turret only needs 5 hardpoints.
look here if you dont belive me...

Range, payload, flexibility, and perhaps also accuracy.

The M26 basic tactical rocket for the M270 MLRS system weighs 302.5kg and carries 644 M77 dual-purpose (shaped charge + fragmentation) submunitions to a maximum range of about 32km. The M270 can fire all the 12 rockets it carries in one salvo. The M30 guided rocket has a maximum range around of 70km, with a 215-meter accuracy radius (50% hits within a 215-meter radius of target at 70km). Since 2002, the next generation rocket (Smart Tactical Rocket)with smart submunitions went into the engineering, manufacturing and development phase.

In addition to the M26 basic and extended range tactical missiles, the M30 guided and the STAR, the M270 MLRS can fire M39 Tactical Missiles and variants, with maximum ranges from 165km to over 300km and much better accuracy, employing smart and dumb submunitions against soft and hard targets, as well as a deep penetrating conventional warhead model.

The US M198 Howitzer, by comparison, has a maximum unassisted range of 22.4km and a max assisted range of 30km, but only 16.1km for smart munitions, a maximum rate of fire of 4 rounds/minute. The payload of a single 155mm cargo-carrying (submunition) projectile is around 1/10th that of a single MLRS missile. With guided munitions in low-angle fire, the accuracy is about half that of the M30 guided rocket.

The new M777 lightweight 155mm howitzer, fielding to start in 2006, has about 10% longer range than the M198, a slightly better rate of fire, and is twice as accurate. With the newest XM982 inertial navigation guided round, it can achieve a circular probable error of just 10 meters at ranges up to 40km. The payloads are the same as with the M198, except for the XM982 which has a rather small payload.

[/sales pitch]

This is of course 2005-stuff, not 2064 (or 2070) stuff, but some basics are unlikely to change. Rocket artillery has a far superior range to and can provide far greater firepower over a short duration than cannon artillery. With guided munitions, rocket artillery is just as accurate as cannon fire. The huge payload allows for a large amount of submunitions, and even a large amount of smart, anti-armor submunitions, which provides a massive increase in lethality against any kind of target.

The US Army got its first 155mm howitzers, the French M1918s, in,you guessed it, 1918. Since then there's been the M1 and M2 howitzers through most of WW2 and the Korean war, the M59, the M114, the current M198 and the upcoming M777. The ammunition has seen a lot of changes as well. Much like the differences between the Soviet heavy artillery rocket launchers in WW2 and the MLRS system. The basic principle is the same, though, and there's certainly no reason to assume that rocket artillery will replace howitzers, let alone mortars, in SR much more than they have now IRL.

Artillery can only destroy armored vehicles with shaped charge warheads or submunitions. Dual-purpose (shaped charge + area damage through fragmentation) submunition payloads will no doubt become more common in the future for all medium-heavy artillery weapons, as will guided rounds and especially guided dual-purpose submunitions.

With non-submunition payloads, definitely. With a 155mm howitzer, we're talking about a 40-70kg steel object hitting you at several hundred meters per second, and then 5-10kg of high explosives going off right next to or, better yet, inside you. With non-submunitions, anything called "artillery" these days is definitely an instakill to any metahuman on a direct hit. Or maybe if you hit a troll in the pinky with a 60mm mortar...

Submunitions, though, are often of the same approximate size and effect against personnel as fragmentating hand grenades. Still, with one such submunition per 5 meter (15') square over a 440 x 440 meter area from a single 12-round ripple of M26 rockets, I wouldn't give exposed personnel in the impact zone very good chances of survival...

Oh, definitely. A team of infantry can't carry a light howitzer in rough terrain, but they sure can a light/medium mortar.

With mortars and howitzers up to 155mm, yeah, that's probably what'd get used. Although already at 155mm it might be worthwhile to use guided, shaped charge submunitions. You don't really need a 30kg warhead to penetrate the top armor of an MBT.

Submunitions will be far less effective in built-up areas. Only the shaped charge will penetrate roofs of buildings, and those cause minimal (negligible, even) damage to personnel/civilians. For MOUT, basic HE warheads will probably cause greater damage to personnel, because of their ability (once we get to medium/heavy artillery) to penetrate concrete walls and cause significant damage behind.

If people are actually out on the streets, though, then we'd be talking about massive casualties, but I can't see a situation that would call for DPICM artillery to be used where there'd still be civilians outside near the target area. That does mean, however, that shadowrunners would very rarely have to bother with that sort of thing, at least in the receiving end.

That sort of thing sounds pretty impressive, until you compare it to the M67 hand grenade which releases over 1500 "preformatted fragments" (tiny little metal balls which are easily stopped by light cover). The terminal effect against personnel of a single submunition isn't particularly awe-inspiring. Basically, it's 32 under-strength frag grenades. Not that that ain't scary enough.

Nope, you're reading them right. You need 11LN, 7MN, 6SN or 5DN to damage a Leo3.

[Edit]Interesting point, may or may not be true, but according to some sources there was a rule of thumb in the Soviet military (and perhaps still is in the Russian military) that for a breakthrough assault you need 1 gun tube per meter of frontage for effective neutralization of enemy defenses. Of course that would have been before widespread use of submunitions or dedicated anti-armor artillery rounds, but still... Do not underestimate the power of a good foxhole.[/Edit]