Vehicle Features/Mounted Weapons

Ever since the Grand Theft Auto series introduced armed vehicles, these also introduced Vehicle mounted Weapons. These act similarly to most regular Weapons, except that are usually stronger, easier to use and posseses infinite ammunition. Although many of these lack a HUD, it doesn't apply to Grand Theft Auto 2 and Grand Theft Auto V, where vehicle weapons can be selected like any conventional weapons and even appears on-screen (receiving a name).

Certain vehicle weapons that appears in most cases are Tank Cannons, Machine Guns and Mounted Rockets. The Water Cannon isn't considered normally as a mounted weapon, but it's included because it's still an extra feature, still does damage (albeit very low) and can sometimes attract police attention. There are also weapons that are equipped by civilian vehicles, but the later ones are scripted only in missions (except GTA 2).

As vehicles are added over the course of various games, more weapons are available either for land, air or sea vehicles in order to cover various purposes where it needs.

Description
These weapons are available at the player only in a specified vehicle and can save a large amount of ammo during prolongued combat situations. In general, there are light firepower weapons suited for accuracy, close combat and small groups of enemies; and heavy firepower weapons, best suited for serious combat, numerous groups of enemies and vehicular destruction, where is usually important in the arsenal and, at the same time, the dangerous ones.

These weapons will disable basic weapons for Drive-By Shooting, yet is not necesary in these cases. If the vehicle is destroyed, these weapons becomes unusable afterwards. On some vehicles, older GTA games requires extra commands for aiming (left or right), while recent GTA games can aim with the camera, as if the weapon is the camera. The Rhino tank is an example of this.

Certain mission will involve armed vehicles for a brief moment to make excellent demonstrations (The Rhino on Sir, Yes Sir!), and after being seen, these can be unlocked by certain methods and achievements. The usual ones are collecting Pickups, completing side missions, among others. The Rhino can be seen and obtained at full Wanted Level in the GTA 3D era.

During the 3D Universe, aiming are a bit difficult due to the lack of crosshairs on them, especially in earlier games. All is left to the player' skills, except in GTA: SA (the Hunter and the Hydra posseses a crosshair when selected to first-person view).

For the HD Universe, in Grand Theft Auto IV there are no few changes. Instead, this feature was removed permanently, even despite there are two vehicles (only one intended as a combat vehicle), being left again to the player' skills. The same happens to EFLC, despite an exclusive vehicle is armed. For Grand Theft Auto V, crosshairs are implemented permanently for armed vehicles, being even improved with the aiming settings and updates. For the Heists Update in Grand Theft Auto Online, vehicle-mounted turrets were added as part of the Technical, the Insurgent and the Valkyrie. These are quite useful during Heists, since these can be controlled separately and possess infinite ammunition. While these doesn't offer much protection against enemies, these weapons becomes an excellent choice for team-oriented tactics.

Vehicle Machine Gun
Vehicle Machine Guns are, as the name suggests, machine guns mounted on a vehicle. The weapon is only available in Grand Theft Auto 2 and they are available at Smith and Heston's scattered around Anywhere City for $25,000. The weapon is effective in Multiplayer Mode, as the other player is unable to jump over the vehicle while they are being fired at.

Standard Vehicles

 * Annihilator
 * Armed Land Roamer
 * APC
 * Buzzard
 * Coast Guard Launch
 * Destroyer
 * Fire Truck
 * Hunter
 * Hydra
 * Insurgent (Pick-up)
 * Little Willie
 * P-996 LAZER
 * Predator
 * Rhino
 * Royal Pain
 * Rustler
 * Savage
 * Sea Sparrow
 * S.W.A.T.
 * Tank
 * Technical
 * Tiger Tank
 * Valkyrie

Mission Exclusives

 * Cuban 800
 * JB 700
 * RC Baron

Trivia

 * Along with these weapons, there are at least 5 unusable weapons:
 * The ICBM's missile on the back (London 1969).
 * The Hunter's Anti-tank missiles next to the operative rocket pods (Vice City-Vice City Stories)
 * The Launch's Rear MG on the rear end (San Andreas).
 * The Rhino's roof mounted MG and a Co-axial MG (GTA V).
 * AI-controlled Police Mavericks (GTA III Era) use an invisible Machine Gun that can even destroy a Rhino.
 * In an early development for the Annihilator, instead of having four miniguns, there are only one minigun and the four stub wings are loaded with some sort of fuel tanks.
 * In GTA V, the Buzzard and the P-996 Lazer can select guided and un-guided rockets after the patch 1.16.