Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:vorloncruiser 7740.jpg|link=Babylon 5|frame| You're about to be [[Touched by Vorlons]] [[Wave Motion Gun|in a rather painful way]]. Have a nice day.]]

 

Sometimes a full broadside cannon barrage isn't enough to bring down those pesky enemy ships. Or the enemy may be running away as fast as they can, and you don't have time to turn and give them the full fury of your weapons array. That's why you should remember to design your ships with a [[Wave Motion Gun|really big weapon]] pointed straight forward, to make running away very unattractive as the cannon rips into them from behind.

 

 

Commonly referred to as the "main gun" or some other such name to indicate how much more powerful it is compared to the other weapons.

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'' has the Macross Cannon, aka the Superdimensional Converging Beam Weapon.

** Averted in the sequels ''[[Macross 7]]'' and ''[[Macross Frontier]]'' where tranforming the ship into ''[[Humongous Mecha|Attacker Mode]]'' places the [[Wave Motion Gun|Macross Cannon]] in the "arms" of the ship ,allowing it to be aimed independently of the ship.

== [[Literature]] ==

* ''[[A Piece Of Cake]]'', [[Derek Robinson]]'s WWII novel. The seminal moment where the Luftwaffe realizes the fixed-forward cannon in the nose of the Me110 (its only weapon) are absolutely lethal if the target aircraft is obliging enough to position itself in front of you, but no use if the RAF pilot elects to come in from the side or rear... the feared German planes are forced to get into a mutually defending circle like settler wagons beset by Indians, and are absolutely impotent at defending the bombers they are meant to be escorting.

* ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'': The [[The Callista Trilogy|Darksaber]] is a cylindrical ship that houses a superlaser and makes up the majority of the ship itself.

* ''[[Honor Harrington]]'': The newer generation Light Attack Craft, nicknamed "Super LACs", have spine-mounted weapons, often [[Frickin' Laser Beams|grasers]]. Previous generations of LACs instead carried a single broadside of the biggest missiles they could carry, in hopes of delivering their payload before they were swatted out of the sky. ''In Enemy Hands'' mentions that the thought of spinal guns for ships of the wall had been banished as unfeasible earlier, specifically in contrast with using these on the much smaller and more agile LACs.

* ''[[Troy Rising]]'': Assault Vectors have several spinal mounted heavy laser weapons that are clustered on the nose, each with their own independent power supply.

 

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'': The [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Ori]] mother ships have a massive slow-firing weapon that frequently decimates any ship it hits. There are smaller pulsed weapons on the sides that can still take out a Ha'tak with a single triple-volley.

** In all the incarnations of ''[[Star Trek]]'', Klingon ships have a [http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090525062206/memoryalpha/en/images/a/a4/IKS_Amar_firing_forward_torpedo.jpg big honkin' torpedo launcher on their nose].

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'', the Vorlon Cruiser, pictured above. Also the Narn G'Quan cruisers are equipped with those.

** All Vorlon ships appear to have only forward-facing weapons. The crown jewel is the ''[[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Eclipse]]''-class Planetkiller, a 45 kilometer monster whose forward-facing beam can [[Earthshattering Kaboom|destroy a planet]] with a single shot [[Star Wars|Death Star]]-style. They had a number of those (at least 2) and weren't shy about using them during the end of the Second Shadow War.

** Many of the smaller warships in the B5 setting are equipped this way, such as the White Stars, the smaller of the Centauri's two depicted warships, Earth's cruisers, and even the Star Furies.

== [[Tabletop RPG]] ==

* ''[[Star Fleet Battles]]'' (And it's PC implementation the ''[[Star Trek Starfleet Command]]'' series) has the Romulan Mauler, essentially a ship built around a massive beam weapon and it's supporting batteries/capacitors designed to break starbase or planetary defense shields in one shot. Not typically a stand alone vessel though - it depends on its sisterships to defend it while it get's into position.

** Other races have Maulers as well, notably the [[Joke Character|Canadi'en]] Maple Leaf mauler, which has Mauler weapons facing in [[Lethal Joke Character|three different hex directions]].

* ''[[Traveller]]'': most starship weapons did incremental damage and could wear down an opponent over time. Spinal mount weapons (either a particle accelerator or a meson gun) ran the length of the ship and could [[Wave Motion Gun|blow opposing ships to atoms with a single shot]].

** Self-propelled artillery vehicles proper include Minotaur (with a pair of Basilisk artillery weapons mounted forward and level) and the Shadowsword (a Titan-scale gun on superheavy tank chassis).

** Human and Ork [[Humongous Mecha|Titans]] seem to make great use of this, with Ork Gargants and Stompas mounting a forward firing cannon in their "belly" and the current Epic model of the Imperial Warlord Titan has a pair of shoulder mounted Turbolasers that don't seem to be able to pivot in any way.

** Meanwhile, suitably large ''space'' units—as in, 750,000 tons and up—may potentially be equipped with as-yet-experimental mass drivers, whose firing arc is literally just the straight line of hexes in the direction they're pointed into (which for WarShips, which can only carry one at most, means dead ahead). They're also quite massive themselves and rather inaccurate even if they do get a target lined up, so many players don't consider the damage they can potentially inflict really worth it (it's not ''that'' out of line with a simple volley of more 'regular' naval weapons, anyway).

* In ''[[Full Thrust]]'', this is a standard part of Kra'Vak (the most antagonistic alien race) design philosophy; their ships carry mass driver cannons called K-guns (for Kinetic Gun) as their main weapons, and only the smallest two classes can have more than a sixty degree firing arc. A typical Kra'Vak ship carries the two biggest K-guns the ship can structually carry on outrigger-type pods facing forward (sometimes with barrels as long or longer than the main hull of the ship) as her main battery, plus secondary weapons. A few Kra'Vak ships carry a third main gun as a spinal mount in the main hull, while some of their biggest ships carry four outriggers.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** ''Wing Commander III'' gives us TCS Behemoth, a one-of-a-kind planet-killing cannon with a ship built around it, in a desperate attempt to end the war in one shot. {{spoiler|It failed.}}

** In ''Prophecy'', the [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum|Nephilim]] Kraken-class ship had a [[Wave Motion Gun|fleet-killer plasma cannon]] that could only face in on direction... but could wipe out a fleet in battle formation with one shot. After being captured, it was given a new fixed mount between the Midway's split forward arms.<ref>The game's designers weren't aware of the plot plan for the plasma cannon when they made the ship design, it was just a happy coincidence.</ref>

* ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'': Spinal mounts for destroyers, strafe sections (although these are a batter of smaller weapons) and impactors all point forward. Heavy beams usually do, but certain dreadnought specifications have the option of using them as broadsides and the Zuul have them turreted. The [[Colony Drop|Siege Driver]] is probably the crown example, insofar adding one does not so much add the weapon to the ship as add engines and a cockpit to the weapon.

** The human variant of the Siege Driver is especially prominent, as it is, essentially, a battleship-sized revolver that fires asteroids.

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[A Miracle of Science]]'': The Solar Navy destroyer ''Gorbachev'' hides a top-secret [http://www.project-apollo.net/mos/mos110.html decoherence cannon] in its bow.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** Likewise, a never-used variant of the German Me-262 jet fighter replaced the 4 30mm cannon of the standard model with a single 57&nbsp;mm reason. This was because it took 12+ well placed hits from the 30mm to bring down a B-17 or B-24, and the 262 was too fast to maintain a firing position. The 57mm required one hit almost anywhere on the plane.

* Similarly the German Ju-88P was a tank killer variant with a 75mm PaK gun.

* The approach taken by most WWII "tank destroyers" and assault guns was to mount a single larger fixed-forward gun than similar-sized vehicles with a turret gun.

* Scaling down the concept to a giant shotgun mounted on a rowboat gets you the "punt gun", which was used for duck hunting in the 1800s. To a lesser extreme, gunboats with powerful chaser guns fixed in the bow were a staple of coastal defense in the days of [[Wooden Ships and Iron Men]]. Individual gunboats were not at all survivable, but they could be built and deployed en-masse, with the added advantages of shallow drafts, fiendish maneuverability in the confines of a harbour no matter which direction the wind is blowing, and a disproportionately heavy armament for their small size.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Bigger Is Better]]

[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]

[[Category:For Massive Damage]]