Elixir Field misnamed.

[VanilleFang]

Except that 砲 is not strictly a suffix, and can start words just fine. 砲兵 being "artillery forces" and not "gun forces," unless my Korean knowledge and Google confirmation are both misleading me here. So while it's safe to say that 砲 means "something that shoots things," it's not accurate to say that it's only a suffix or that it can only mean cannon/artillery if combined with 大.

I have no right to get in on this conversation, because I can literally not read Japanese at all, but...

Raine stated in their post that "砲" can be read as "jyuu" or "hou", and means "gun". In the case of "大砲" it is read as "hou", and is a suffix in this word. I think you were mistaken by their post. They were not saying "砲" is only ever a suffix, but that it is a suffix in "大砲", and thus cannot be used by itself to refer to a word such as "cannon" because a "cannon" is a "big" (大) "gun" (砲).

I may be way off, but that's how I read their post.