Thunder

US$ "One of the most effective weapons at close range. What it lacks in accuracy it more than makes up in firepower."

Introduction
The Thunder is a close to mid-range (up to 500 meters, with a 200 meter optimal range) heavy kinetic weapon.

Strategy
This weapon is essentially a massive shotgun and is best used in close range combat. Despite a maximum range of 500 meters, an optimum range would be about 200 meters or less, due to the spread of the bullets. Below 200 meters a Thunder can quickly eliminate or at the least maim a heavy robot. The Thunder is especially effective against heavy robots due to their large hit area, which allows more of the shell fragments to hit.

Even at low levels, the Thunder is a force to be reckoned with, but when upgraded to higher levels it can do appreciable damage from even 300m. With a fire rate of 1 RPS and the ability to reload while firing, it can do very heavy damage in a brief amount of time. Due to its FWR system (Fire while reload), it can continuously fire significantly more rounds than its full magazine.

However, because the robot must get close to an enemy to do significant damage, it will be vulnerable to enemy fire at longer distances. Therefore, it is vital to take advantage of cover as much as possible to minimize damage while getting into a good engagement range (about 200 metres and under if possible.)

Mounting Options
Because the Thunder is a close-range gun, it is most commonly seen on fast moving medium robots since they can quickly close range. Commonly seen setups are the Thunder Schutze, Thunder/Orkan Boa, and Pinata/Thunder Vityaz. However, Carnage and Lancelot possibly are the best bots for Thunder, due to their power and rush abilities. Thunders can also be seen on Raijins, due to its Bastion ability and large health pool.

It is not uncommon to see Thunders equipped on heavy robots like the Leo or Natasha for use as heavily armored shotgun platforms which have the staying power to hold off multiple enemy robots. Even though heavier robots generally have more HP and power, they also tend to have much lower movement speeds. This makes closing distances to actually do damage a problem, although this is somewhat negated (in the case of the Leo) by their very high HP, and with more than one heavy slot, moderate damage.

The Thunder is also an effective shieldbreaker. This is because it can damage energy shields even at 400-500 metres due to bullet spread, and does double damage to physical shields as it is a kinetic weapon.

Mark I Statistics

 * This table shows the damage from all 16 particles fired from each shot.

Mark II Statistics

 * This table shows the damage from all 16 particles fired from each shot.

Trivia

 * This weapon can fire while reloading, similar to the Orkan, Gekko, Pinata, Pin and Tulumbas.
 * The name Thunder may refer to the booming noise it makes when fired.
 * Despite having a 5 round capacity, the Thunder can fire up to 9 rounds in succession when fully loaded without more than a 1 second delay. This is due to the Thunder's ability to fire while reloading.
 * There is a cylinder in the back of the Thunder that spins while reloading. This is probably a pan magazine.
 * The Thunder ejects in and out of its slot while firing- occasionally a robot will become destroyed in the middle of this phenomenon, leading to an entertaining robot corpse with a Thunder partially ejected.
 * The Thunder used to have a prefix 'ECC' until it was removed in Update 2.5
 * Some players have been angered by several damage nerfs to the Thunder in recent updates. Despite this, it has gained the ability (along with other kinetic weapons e.g Punisher) to do double damage to physical shields (e.g Ecu)
 * A single shot from Thunder consists of 16 individual projectiles. Unlike other weapons with multiple projectiles, they are not considered separately in the damage table.