Quad cannon (Generals 1)

"I'll puncture the next thing that moves."

- Quad cannon assembled from the Arms dealer.

The quad cannon was a Soviet-era (ZSU-23-4) weapon recycled by the GLA by the time of the War against the GLA. It was the organization's prime choice as an economical anti-infantry and anti-aircraft vehicle.

Background
A half-track vehicle equipped with four heavy machine guns on a rotating turret, the quad cannon can tear through soft and lightly-armoured targets. Especially effective in groups, the quad cannon is cheap and easy to acquire through an Arms dealer. Quad cannon crews can upgrade their weapon sets by salvaging parts from destroyed enemy vehicles.

Salvage
As previously mentioned, the Quad cannon can also be upgraded by salvaging parts from the battlefield, resulting in better performance.
 * Its first salvage upgrade decreases its damage slightly (from 10 to 8), but doubles the firing rate.
 * Its second salvage again doubles its firing rate, but reduces the damage per bullet from 8 to 5.

''Note: Due to a bug, quad cannons upgraded with scrap actually become less effective than unscrapped quads once they gain veterancy. The reason for this is that the weapon maxes out its firing rate but continues to reduce the damage per bullet per level of veterancy.''

Campaign
A unique quad cannon version used by Prince Kassad in the campaign has an exclusive upgrade.

Game unit
Inexpensive to acquire, the quad cannon can quickly be deployed in divisions of a considerable size, and provides very adequate protection to units lacking in anti-infantry and anti-aircraft protection. Quad cannons are by no means weakly armoured, especially for a light vehicle.

Nevertheless, quad cannons are rather ineffective against heavy armour. Although they have average range, artillery and rogue rocket buggies can destroy them without exposing themselves to the quad cannons. Despite its anti-air specialty, it is unable to fully counter Aurora and Aurora Alpha bombers.

Changelog

 * Zero Hour patch 1.03:
 * now 50% more resistant to fire damage.
 * damage with the AP upgrade is now sequentially higher after each weapon crate upgrade - previously, damage was slightly reduced after the second upgrade

Trivia

 * Most modern AA unit uses flak (explosive cannon rounds) to puncture holes in aircraft. The quad cannon, however, uses solid rounds to destory their targets, similar to the M45 Quadmount heavy machine gun.