Talk:Autocannon

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Concerning autocannon descriptions to avoid misconceptions

Over the course of BattleTech's development as a franchise, there has been many canonical (primarily TRO) entries that are inconsistent or use phrases specific to the games. Primarily "single shot". Where often a weapon is given to be, say, 120mm AC/20 on a Thunder, and the phrase "a single shot", where many of us know that isn't how autocannons work. Although, actually upon looking it up that's an error on a Sarna editor's part as the TRO makes no mention of single shot in TRO 3055 Upgrade (or even the caliber). My point though is that often there are entries stating "single shot" when referring to a single round (as Battletechnology the magazine defines it a 'round' is a cassette full of ammunition which when consumed takes 1 digit off of the counter. This is an in-universe way of saying 1 round = one 'complete' use of the weapon in BattleTech), which in turn can be anything from 1 projectile (unlikely for an AC given the nature of Rifles) to 100 projectiles (ever so rare).

So when I see entries such as the hyper velocity autocannon at damage 10/shot and heat 7/shot, or Thunder's 120mm stated to have 20 damage in a single shot, or Hunchback's Tomodzuru mount type 20 180mm AC/20 with 20 damage in a single shot (which is directly in TRO 3025), or the Atlas's Defiance Mech Hunter 185mm stated to only have 14 shots (as opposed to 14 uses or reloads or what-have-you), it makes it no wonder that the BattleTech layman is simply confused or assume that mechs must be 20-30 meter tall giants with tanks the size of city blocks as they're sporting 285 lb bullets from a fully automatic weapon that mysteriously shoots once every 4 to 10 seconds.

If you were to choose a term to use instead of shot to convey a single use of a weapon without implying an exact projectile amount, that a player could read and understand it to mean a "turn" or "standard activation of the weapon" or what-have-you, what would it be? Koniving1 (talk) 18:57, 26 September 2019 (EDT)Koniving1Koniving1 (talk) 18:57, 26 September 2019 (EDT)

And this is one of the reasons that I have started changing the way that the wiki handles the weapon systems. The old system (as shown in the LB 20-X AC article) basically only deals with game stats and manufacturing info, the new style (as shown on the Autocannon/20 artice) allows for specific weapon brands to be wikilinked and fluff be added as to specific performance factors. Personally I feel that one "shot" is indeed a full cassette rather than a single shell, I also believe that the people who spend considerable amounts energy trying to match up rules elements to real life physics based on a fictional universe data kinda need to go outside occassionally. I eventually hope to have enough in-universe cited weapon statistics to force even the most determined number cruncher to admit there is no one magic formula to how AC's would really work.--Dmon (talk) 19:22, 26 September 2019 (EDT)