Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

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.

* ''[[BattleTech]]'' mostly avoids this; weapons are standardized no matter what platform mounts them and even big guns are usually just part of a unit's entire array. There are, however, a couple of cases that play the trope more or less straight:

** For ground units, it's the heavy Gauss rifle, whose massive recoil prevents it from being arm- or turret-mounted and makes firing it while moving risky for BattleMechs because doing so forces a piloting skill roll to avoid falling.

* In the starship miniatures game 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.

 

* ''[[Star Trek Elite Force|Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force]]'' had one level that took place on a vessel called [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|"Dreadnought"]] which was described in game as "a giant cannon on autopilot." The monster has a barrel 700 meters long that you repurpose to fire on a Harvester ship approaching [[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]].

* ''[[Master of Orion]]'' ships can be designed with narrow firing arcs if the player wants to mount more guns since guns with a larger arc take up more space. A spinal mount is an option in ''MoO 3''.

* The Galactic Armory mod for ''[[Star Ruler]]'' adds a Spinal Mount Hull option, which allows you to link a weapons system to it to greatly improve that weapon's capabilities.

* ''[[Videogame/World Of Tanks|World Of Tanks]]'': Most tank destroyers and artillery have guns that are almost entirely fixed to the hull with only a very slight angle of adjustment before you have to move the entire tank hull. Several exceptions exist, such as the American "turreted TD" line, and some artillery like the GW Panther. The American M3 Lee medium tank is one of the only tank tanks to have a fixed gun.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

** Several medium and light bombers in the US inventory had solid noses, as opposed to the normal glass nose traditional to bombers of the time, with multiple machine guns in immobile mounts for the purpose of having a ground attack role.

** [[wikipedia:Old 666|Old 666]], a B-17 from the same era was also fitted with a forward facing machine gun that the pilot could use to fend off head-on attacks from enemy fighter planes.

* One version of the DeHavilland Mosquito carried a 57mm cannon for anti-submarine work, attacking them on the surface and holing their hulls so they could not dive. Its effect on enemy aircraft, when circumstances permitted its use (i.e. caught unawares, not dodging and weaving) was described as 'spectacular'.

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

* The [[wikipedia:Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II|A-10 Thunderbolt II]] is [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/A-10_Cross_Section.jpg built around] [[Gatling Good|a massive 30MM Gatling gun]].