Elixir Field misnamed.

[Viridiana]

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.

Except that "suffix" literally means it goes at the end of a word.

Besides, there are plenty of Chinese/Japanese/Korean words that all use the character to mean artillery without 大 ever going in front of it, which was my point in bringing up 砲兵. The latter means "artillery forces," because 砲 is read to mean cannon/artillery there despite the lack of the 大 character.