Shock Rifle

The Shock Rifle is a weapon in Unreal, Unreal Tournament, UT2003, UT2004, and UT3 as well as UC and UC2.

The Shock Rifle is also known as the ASMD in early games. It is an energy-based weapon that fires either a hitscan bolt or a core (an "orb" of energy which travels across the map until it strikes a solid mass). In addition, you can shoot a bolt at a core to cause a "shock combo", a massive explosion which does considerable damage to anything within its blast radius.

Unreal
If the compressed energy in the core of this weapon was released all at once, the resulting force would be enough to bring down a large building. The comparatively small energy bursts released with each squeeze of the ASMD's trigger are still more than enough to put a world of hurt on most targets.


 * Primary Fire
 * Lightning-fast burst of focused energy.


 * Secondary Fire
 * Unstable energy projectile, expands radially. Rumors of a combination attack persist...

The ASMD fires a bolt or a core (orb projectile). The core in Unreal was very small, making it hard to hit with a bolt when moving, but this was rewarded by huge amount damage done by a combo - with Damage Amplifier enabled one could inflict 1200+ damage with one shock combo.

Unreal Tournament
Classification: Energy Rifle


 * Primary Fire
 * Instant hit laser beam.


 * Secondary Fire
 * Large, slow moving plasma core.


 * Shock Combo
 * Shooting the secondary fire's core with a primary beam will cause a massive explosion.

Unreal Tournament 2003
The Shock Rifle in UT2003 sports a pretty rapid-fire primary and shoots a large, slow core on the alt-fire, making it easy to shoot but more difficult to properly place for maximum-damage combos.

Unreal Tournament 2004

 * Primary Fire
 * Fires a beam.


 * Secondary fire
 * Fires a projectile core.

''The ASMD Shock Rifle has changed little since its incorporation into the Tournaments. The ASMD sports two firing modes capable of acting in concert to neutralize opponents in a devastating shockwave. This combination attack is achieved when the weapon operator utilizes the secondary fire mode to deliver a charge of seeded plasma to the target. Once the slow-moving plasma charge is within range of the target, the weapon operator may fire the photon beam into the plasma core, releasing the explosive energy of the anti-photons contained within the plasma’s EM field.''
 * Game Description

Unreal Tournament 3
This incarnation of the Shock Rifle retains its original functions. It fires a laser beam and fires a shock core. Developers have stated that the Shock Rifles rate of fire has been slightly decreased and damage increased to recreate the imposing feel of the Unreal Tournament version of the shock rifle. It has been observed in coverage of UT3 that the Shock combo not only causes explosion damage but causes a vortex effect which sucks up ragdolls and gibs them and appropriately spits the gibs out into any direction.

Unreal Championship
The Shock Rifle shoots a bolt or a Shock Core.

Unreal Championship 2
Classification: Energy Rifle


 * Description

The natural evolution of the ASMD Shock Rifle adds new damage-causing potential to an aging tournament favorite while retaining it's essential primary functions.


 * Primary Fire


 * Primary Fire for the Shock Rifle has remained the same. It fires an instant hit energy beam at a moderate rate of fire that causes moderate damage.


 * Secondary Fire


 * The alternate fire has also remained much the same. The Shock rifle shoots smaller cores which fire at the same rate as the Primary fire and do moderate splash damage.


 * Shock Combo


 * Shock Combos are no different then they were originally in the Unreal series. When you fire a Shock bolt into a Shock core, It creates a large explosion which heavily damages energy but at the same time drains additional power from your Shock Rifle ammo supply.


 * UC2 Combo Fire Mode (Core Freezing)


 * New to the Shock Rifles bag of tricks is the ability to freeze the position of a Shock core in mid air to create traps. Much like the Hellbender Sky Mines of UT2004. Multiple cores within proximity of each other will all chain detonate when comboed. The difference however is that more then one combo at a time can initiate causing 2 to 3 combo explosions to happen at once, Creating one massive explosive radius. Shock cores that are isolated in mid air can also be enlarged by firing additional cores into the frozen core, Up to 5 cores can be added to create a giant core with a devastating damage radius which is guaranteed to absolutely annihilate most of your competitors or severely cripple the few actually far enough to survive the combo. This addition makes the once already deadly shock rifle into the weapon with the most uses within the game.

Derivatives
There are a number of weapons that are based on ASMD technology.

The Energy Rifle or Shock Lance is a weapon used by the Izarians in Unreal 2. It was created by the Skaarj who based its design on ASMD technology. Unlike the Shock Rifle it fires dual energy bolts which can bounce of surfaces. The alternate mode fires a more powerful bolt which creates an EMP field, a feature not found in regular ASMD technology.

The Hellbender has a turret that can launch sky mines into the air, which are similar to Shock Rifle cores. If the turret operator launches multiple sky mines and fires a beam into any of the cores, the Shock Combo will almost immediately connect to the closest core, causing it to combo and connect to a nearby core as well, and so on, causing a big explosion in a connect-the-dots fashion, similar to how UC2's Shock Rifle functions.

The Leviathan in Unreal Tournament 3 has a secondary turret which uses ASMD technology.

Trivia
As revealed to the public by David Münnich, T. Elliot Cannon (Myscha the Sled dog) stated in a conversation with him that the name "ASMD" is derived from a movie phrase saying And Suck My Dick. Although the full phrase never features in any of the games, this can be considered the official meaning. Funnier, less provocative names thought of by fans include: Anyone Seen My Dog, Automatic Spectrum Matching Device, Atomic Shock Mechanism Device.