Shotgun Balance

[Warskull]

Right now the normal shot really seems sub-par. It uses the same shot as the assualt shotgun and has a lot of kick, but major ammo issues really hold it back. It will be running out of ammo halfway through a map making it pretty useless as a primary and and is plagued with constrant reloading. It could probably use some adjusting.

Shotgun:
3 shell/clip x 8+1(starting load) clips=27
3 shell/clip x 10 ammo bag clips=30
Total shots: 57

Assualt Shotgun:
14/clip x 5+1(starting load) clips=84
14/clip x 5 ammo bag clips=70
Total shots: 154

Even with an ammo bad the Shotgun doesn't come close to touching what the assualt shotgun can do. Thus there is breathing room to make improvement without threatening the assualt shotguns role. Additionally with a 3 round clip you waste a lot of ammo or are forced to go into battle with a single shot in the barrel. 5-6 of the Shotgun's precious 27 shots can easily be wasted. It is surpassed by pretty much every other weapon out there. Where the shotgun would shine is clusters of aliens, however the assualt rifle has rifle grenades that can be used against the occasional cluster without the incredible ammo issues of the shotgun.

The clip size of the shotgun can easily be increased to 5 or 6 (maybe take 1 clip away from the shotgun itself and 1 clip away from the ammo bag if this is done) Thiis would keep the shotgun with far less ammo than the assualt shotgun, but make it more of an option.

A second alternative would be to let the shotgun use up a secondary slot instead of a primary slot. Its major ammo issues make it more of a secondary weapon used only in dire emergencies. The attack is good, but it just doesn't have the ammo to carry its weight.

[PratizUnreal]

they should make normal shotty stronger, so it can frag 5 peep with 1 hit ^^, wait ... make it frag player even if it was shot in the opposite direction ^^

neway, yes yes i know, ASG is much better than Pump action, for 1 thing, shoots faster, more rounds, and a BOUNCY gernade!!! Pump is just... PUMP...

PS. shotgun 2ndary, not a soo good idea, i mean, then peep will go pump action crazy.

[[theDAN]]

I think introducing per-shell loading would solve some of these issues; like the guns using different ammo atm (because their mags are different sizes). I'm not sure why the normal shotgun is a 3rnd... simply raising it to 6-7 and using common shotgun shells would be fine, i think.

[PratizUnreal]

even then. ASG will still b better than Pump

[Knight]

shoot an alien from close by and you will only kill him since all the 'bullets' that come from 1 shot will impact on him
and when you are shooting groups from medium range you often still need 2-3 shots to kill em all.
compare that with the pistol: 12 x 6 = 60
wow look at that, the pistol has more ammo AND its bullets pierce the target so you can kill entire lines.
Getting 3-4 kills with 1 shot isnt rare if you encounter some big groups. ok you gotta aim better but still, pistol is a secondary weapon, shotgun not
i m not saying that shotgun should be a secondary cause then indeed like mentioned above ppl will go pump action crazy and we all have seen shotguns killing the entire team if used by a noob

imho the shotgun aint worth it
but then again its not bad that it has so little ammo cause the only class that would consider using it would be the medics
autogunners got their big cannon, explosive guys got their nifty ASG's and the techies got a nice rifle with autoaim.
so that leaves a medic and IF they really wanna take a big weapon they often take flamer or shotgun but hey ... they r medics, they dont gotta fight much if the team is playing good. so they only need their weapon for emergencies to help the team or to fight off an ambush that nobody else saw coming.
so even if you use shotgun instead of pistol, you wont ever need 57 shots ...
not to mention that nobody else will be dumb enough to carry a pump action shotgun so everyone with an ammo bag will be happy to throw their pump action shotgun ammo to you.

[jamus_se]

Believe you me, you'll want to bring a shottie to any mission when it's time to do hard/insane. While having 4-5 slug rounds hit a single alien is overkill in easy/normal, it'll definitely make a difference in insane, where you might as well bring your fist instead of the normal assult rifle.

Good improvement ideas are already mentioned: per-shell reload and slightly extended clip size. Or to do it the other way, reload per-shot and have the reload time short enough to be reasonable.

[Warskull]

Actually hard/insane hurts the shotgun even more. One well places shot kills one bug, but if you miss that shot you have to have another ready. Thus you end up wasting more ammo than normal.

The rifle still has usefulness on insane. It can very easily hop from target to target slowing down aliens.

[Brent Rivienne]

I generally use the shotgun as a secondary weapon, it's rather invaluable, taking out the hordes with the boomstick and switching over to my p-rifle when teammates are running about.

[{-o-} Monky]

It woudl be good if the shotgun was customizable like the assault rifle (has variations) perhaps searge could have one that turned it into a 3 round reloadable grenade launcher and the medic could get one that had friend or foe ID (wont fire if teammates in blast cone) etc. a 3 round mag extension might work for heavy and tech could use perhaps an electro-shock web for more bug slowing action.

[Dark]

Personally I never understood why the dev team made a shot gun only hold 3 rounds. this is really not a realistic load out for a shot gun. Ive never seen a shot gun anywhere on the planet that only hold 3 rounds so Yes this thing does need an over haul and it should hold at least 6 rounds. you might as well make a double barrel shot gun, there really wouldnt be much of a differance.

[inkblot]

It's possible for a shotgun to hold only three rounds. Obviously, you would most likely not take such a shotgun into a combat situation. What's more unusual is that's it's a magazine fed shotgun. Not many are around IRL.

[Sniper007]

Opposition

I have found the shotgun in it's current form to be quite UBER for killing enemies extremely quickly in tight quarters.

The only down side is that no matter how good you are, and how perfect you fire it at ultraclose range, you still only have a 98% chance of killing the enemy. This may seem like a strange statement, but when you need to kill 20+ enemies in a ROW with ZERO margin for error, you need 100%, not 98%. This unreliability is due to the fact that the shot is randomly spread. It's not always perfectly spread. Sometimes its almost ENTIRELY to the right edge of the fire cone, other times, the left, other times, evenly spread.

These pluses CANNOT be overlooked: Your movement speed does not decrease AT ALL while reloading. The damage is dealt INSTANTLY with extremely minimal slowdown time when the trigger is pulled. Reload times are SHORT.

Please note the above only applies on INSANE. On all other modes, see previous posts.

[Warskull]

Yet I don't see the normal shotgun competing with the other weapons due to ammo issues. 27 shots isn't very much and will run dry fast on insane mode. Plus the shotgun takes considerbly more skill to use than the rifle because each missed shot hurts a lot more. A minor increase in clip size could go a long way to making it a viable alternative.

[{-o-} Monky]

yeah if you need to blast through 20 enemies with 27 shots i'd be in trouble. i might land 18 out of 27 at my current skill level and i've beaten it on normal in single player. something tells me the gun isnt worth that much. if it had some nice custom features, things could be different, but currently it needs some beef.

[Stein]

Well, i understand the general want for a better shotgun. i agree, it could use a little modification concerning the loading system. Other than that, i'm happy with it on Insane. It serves me well (yep, i mostly med) even on point, but if a by-the-shell loading system was implemented, i'd have some trouble thereafter.

Say i will need 12 rounds in the next 20 seconds. i don't see time to stop and shove 6 more rounds in when a constant flow are pouring out at me. This is where clips become useful. Also, the shotgun kinda seems a bit more powerful than real-world kinds, so i really wonder if 3 shells in the barrel isn't well thought out. It can, afterall, breach foot-thick steel doors.