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, a distinction that was dropped starting with UT2003. 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). Even though cores can be dodged, they can also be "parried" with another core. In addition, you can shoot a bolt at a core to cause a "shock combo", a massive explosion which does devastating and usually lethal damage to anything within its considerable blast radius; frags will be credited to the one who launched the core, even if he wasn't the one who triggered the combo. In other words, if your enemy is also armed with a Shock Rifle and is a crack shot, launching cores is a massive safety hazard since if he/she shoots one of your cores right when you launch it, the resulting combo can kill you, which in Unreal and UT counts as suicide. (UT200x and UT3 count it as kill for the one who set off the combo.)

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."

- Unreal Manual


 * Primary Fire
 * Lightning-fast burst of focused energy that is extremely accurate.


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

The ASMD fires a bolt or a ball (orb projectile). The ball 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 ASMD combo.

Ammunition
The ammunition pickup for the ASMD is called an ASMD core. It is a long blue energy core with steam flowing through the side of it. In the single-player campaign, ASMD cores first appeared in Rrajigar Mine. In multiplayer, they are prized pickups, especially in maps such as DmDeathFan.

Unreal Tournament
"Emitting searing bursts of pure energy, the devastating Shockrifle is an ideal weapon for medium or long range attacks. The primary fire delivers an instant concussion with pinpoint precision; the secondary fire launches a slower energy projectile."

- UT Manual


 * Classification
 * Energy Rifle


 * Primary Fire
 * Instant energy beam.


 * Secondary Fire
 * Slower energy projectile.


 * Combo Attack
 * Hit the secondary fire projectile with the primary fire for a more powerful 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
"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."

- UT2004 Manual


 * Primary Fire
 * Fires a purple hitscan energy beam that slightly pushes the target away from the enemy. This also works on lightweight vehicles, such as Mantas and Scorpions, protecting the owner of the Shock Rifle and making it very hard for the driver to navigate.


 * Secondary fire
 * Fires a slow moving Shock Ball. When it's hit by the Shock Beam, a Shock Combo with a huge blast radius and a vortex-like effect is created.

Unreal Tournament 3
"The ASMD Shock Rifle has changed little since its first incorporation into the Liandri Tournament. The ASMD sports two firing modes: a thin photon beam, and a sphere of unstable plasma energy. These modes are each deadly in their own right, but used together they can neutralize opponents in a devastating shockwave.  The energy spheres can be detonated with the photon beam, releasing the explosive energy of the anti-photons in the plasma's EM containment field."

- UT3 Manual

Shoots an instant-hit beam. If shot at a shock core, it will create a shock combo. Shoots a shock core out. If shot at by a shock beam, it will create a shock combo. Any bodies near the explosion will be sucked in and gibbed by a negativity vortex.
 * Primary Fire
 * Secondary Fire

Unreal Championship
The Shock Rifle of Unreal Championship is supposed to be identical to the Unreal Tournament 2003 version of the Shock Rifle. Only the mesh and sound of the rifle is different. This version of the Shock Rifle looks more of a machinegun than an energy rifle.

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 and SPMA in UT2004 and UT3 have 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 UT3 has a secondary turret which uses ASMD technology.
 * The Shock Turret in UT3 fires shock cores which always blow up combo-style.
 * The weapon used in InstaGib is a modified Shock Rifle without the projectile alt-fire mode.

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 phrase saying And Suck My Dick, from the movie Fear of a Black Hat. 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, and Atomic Shock Mechanism Device.