Designation: HKT-010 Burrowing Sniper Mk II
Zoid(s) For: Heldigunner
Equipment Added: 144mm Shield-breaker Sniper Rifle
Equipment Removed: Long Range Assault Beam Cannon, Surface to Air 72mm Machinegun Turret Emplacement
Special Abilities Added: Zoomfinder, Targeting Computer, Longshot Mode

A long time ago, Chris Hawkstar once decided to make a burrowing Gunsniper to make up for the lack of defences on the Zoid. Now, the Falkestern twins have decided to make a burrowing Zoid that snipes. So, they took an underused Zoid and added a sniper rifle to it. Blame Silberner for her not so smart ideas. It's better than her idea about the CPG Heldi of d00m.
The Burrowing Sniper Mk II is a shell-based sniper rifle that is placed on the back in a streamlined, armored casing that takes up the entire back and takes a second or two to deploy. The Heldigunner cannot move while firing the rifle and goes into it's own version of Longshot Mode where it just digs its little lizard legs into the ground and shoots. It works on land, underwater, and underground thanks to the chrome plating and hybridized unconventional firing mechanism.
The rifle is a high-caliber model that, rather than using conventional chemical charges, uses a pair of pressurized water tanks inside the armor casing to fire. They are heated directly by the core, though the pressure is too great for the water to convert to steam. When they are unplugged, the water rushes out and the steam explosion in the breech propels the shell forwards, assisting a weak gauss system in the barrel to allow the bullet to achieve half again the speed of sound.
The bullet is long and pointed, with a slight taper at the back. It can fly roughly ten kilometers before losing effectiveness, though the electromagnetic field generated inside the cone only lasts for a kilometer and a half of this flight. The electromagnetic field can counteract shields, though they do little actual damage to the shield generators and the holes are most often resealed within moments. The shell has superb penetration, capable of penetrating ten meters into rock before losing effectiveness.

Rather than the Snipe Master's slow-acting Longshot mode, this rifle makes use of a zoomfinder and a targeting computer to speed the process along. The zoomfinder allows the pilot to magnify something up to six hundred times, allowing it to reliably make use of its ten-kilometer range. The targeting computer can predict the movement of an observed target, acquiring a lock and maintaining it after two seconds of manual tracking. However, this only handles the targeting aspect; the zoid must still engage its claws to handle the rifle's recoil.

The mod does remove most of the Heldi's weaponry, slows the Zoid down by 10km/h when deployed, takes three seconds as the tanks reheat and refill while the barrel recharges before it can fire again, and it has to go into Longshot Mode, but it's a big ass sniper rifle. Who can go wrong with that?

My take on recoilless weapons: Basically, it's rather like trying to get something for nothing. Typically, as is explained here, recoilless weaponry works by venting a portion of the propellant gases the opposite direction to counteract the recoil of the propellant actually moving the shell. To truly counteract it, you'd need to vent an equal portion out the back as is propelling the shell. On a sniper shell, which needs a whole lot of propellant to achive those high, shield-busting velocities, the entire cartridge would be so big that you wouldn't be able to carry many rounds.

Solution 1:
~Make the cartridges big, and only carry five or ten of them, like a real sniper's clip.

Solution 2:
~Change it to energy-based, include a long charge time, and a long cooldown time. Reptile cores aren't very good at handling lots of energy-intensive weaponry or activity at once.

Solution 3:
~Drop the caliber substantially.

Solution 4 (simplest):
~Have the Heldigunner dig them powerful legs into the ground first, hunker down, forget the recoilless part and weather the immense recoil of firing that big old cannon.

Explain how it's a shield-breaker and get into a little more detail with those special abilities. These things have to be as unambiguous as possible.

Customs Rewriting Bandit strikes!

Approved at 41,500 credits.