[piratez] Buffing suggestions

[Meridian]

To each their own Might you find attack dogs or Superheroes useful! If all of them suck, then I will cover my head in ash

Yes, I just switched to doggies... they make excellent suicide bombers, love it.

[Boltgun]

Doggies are awesome, heroes sucking are their own reward.

I sent green lighter out and my sides are still in pilgrimage in Tibet.

Edit: Many shotguns are not very good because armored targets resist them easily and in the situations were they would help, a machine gun or a rifle will work equally well without its drawbacks. It shows in Meridian's LP and myself I only favor the blunderbuss.

Knowing that irl shotguns are the most damaging firearm besides a rocket how about making them apply a small damage to health no matter what? If 10% of damage means 1-3 damage, multiplied by 6 pellets on average means 6-18 damage a point blank shot.

If it's not possible perhaps simply raising their damage to be at least as good as a pistol bullet would make them desirable close range weapons.

[Dioxine]

If it's not possible perhaps simply raising their damage to be at least as good as a pistol bullet would make them desirable close range weapons.

That's the cheaty way out of this. Nope.

[Boltgun]

That's the cheaty way out of this. Nope.

Indeed, simply changing the damage number is the way to mod.

[Dioxine]

Well you can always do a Warboy and increase the damage per pellet to 50 or 60, I'm sure everyone will love this, but that's not how I do things

[yrizoud]

Shotguns would be more interesting if the armor was applied once on the total of pellets.
For example When a "power 63" shell made of 7 pellets hits, if 4 pellets hit a target, that's 36 damage (4/7 of 63) minus armor.
However this would seriously conflict(compte) with the role of the melee weapons.

[Dioxine]

The peculiarity of the shotgun lies in its ability to do great damage to an unarmored target (eg 18x7 = 126 average damage if all pellets hit, as opposed to the rifle which does 30; even aganist armor = 10, twice as much as an unarmored enemy has, that's 8x7 = 56, while rifle = 20), while being awfully ineffective versus armored ones. I won't be changing shotguns. As an added bonus, your chance to hit from close-mid range is substantially higher.
(maaaybe I'll add a lil' bit of armor damage lol)
The high-end models have enough power per pellet to satisfy your needs. Why not buy the Arena Flak Cannon?

[Arthanor]

Maybe we just need more tough but unarmoured ennemies where shotguns pellets would be great. Or even just unarmoured enemies. I really like shotguns in vanilla against sections and floaters when breaching UFOs. On weaker enemies, you don't even need all the pellets to hit in order to kill, making the shotgun the most reliable weapon by far.

Also, some shotguns (military, I think and CAWS, of course) have good solid slugs that are way better than rifles close in, with good accuracy and better damage.

[DracoGriffin]

I'd love to jump in this conversation but all my knowledge is horribly out of date and trying to focus on my mid-terms.

Soon, Piratez, I shall return for the summer!

[Boltgun]

Yes military shotgun and CAWS are reliable for breaching ships, other shotguns should have the slug option so at least you can go in with both type of ammo and load up accordingly. But as there is many, many armored enemies, and pellets only shine against one, maybe two enemies afaik.

Armor damage is a good idea, repeated shots will shred the enemy and you'd want to hide from a guy with a sawed off.

[Eddie]

How is the damage on shotgun pellets calculated? Does each pellet get a seperate damage roll? If that is the case, the damage on pellets need not be increased dramatically to have an effect on armored enemies. The damage only needs to be high enough that a 200% damage roll can penetrate the armor. With the high number of pellets, you get a decent chance one of them gets a high roll and you do a little bit of damage.

Example calculation:
The shotgun shells for the light and military shotgun do 18 damage per pellet, so a maximum of 36. Warrior armor has 80% piercing and 30 armor. 36*0.8 = 28.8, so in warrior armor you are compleately immune to these shotgun shells. Bumping the damage to 20 per pellet would mean you can take at least a little bit of damage.

[yrizoud]

Does each pellet get a seperate damage roll?

Yes. This is why shotguns are so hard to balance : If there are 10 pellets, adding 1 to power increases average damage by 10, and 1 point of armor reduces average damage by 10.

The peculiarity of the shotgun lies in its ability to do great damage to an unarmored target

No matter how better they can kill these units, it's a hard bargain for being powerless against some enemies which you find unexpectedly and in many missions (*). Especially for a short-range, line-of-sight weapon... When you discover the problem, you're in very bad position, typically in close quarters indoors where no long-range fire can assist, and too close to take cover or retreat.

(*) I know randomness is very random, but my own experience had "thougher-than-the-others" enemies in one ship out of three.

[The Think Tank]

The peculiarity of the shotgun lies in its ability to do great damage to an unarmored target (eg 18x7 = 126 average damage if all pellets hit, as opposed to the rifle which does 30; even aganist armor = 10, twice as much as an unarmored enemy has, that's 8x7 = 56, while rifle = 20), while being awfully ineffective versus armored ones. I won't be changing shotguns. As an added bonus, your chance to hit from close-mid range is substantially higher.
(maaaybe I'll add a lil' bit of armor damage lol)
The high-end models have enough power per pellet to satisfy your needs. Why not buy the Arena Flak Cannon?

Personally I find most Shotguns fantastic, especially in the early game where most enemies aren't seriously well-armored. The Sawed-off Double-Barreled Shotgun makes a fantastic sidearm, and the Combat Shotgun and Blunderbuss have an excellent amount of damage output. I do think, however, that Shotguns in general should get a small range buff, because right now you need to get in really close, so close that a sword is almost always the more effective method. Just my thoughts on the matter.

[Dioxine]

Is the snap/auto range buff on the Combat Shotgun enough to be used for other shotguns? Or should I add 1-2 tiles more to Snap/Auto ranges?

[Eddie]

Did some shotgun testing... Targets were government military police and pilot.

The good:
Sawed off and double barrel are good enough. The sawed off is a nice sidearm for the belt, Some acid ammo for it would be nice. Blunderbus kills well enough. CAWS with scatter ammo also does good damage. Combat shotgun also has sufficient damage output because of auto, but it is a bit on the weak side.

The bad:
Heavy shotgun... just too weak compared to the good ones. I can shoot a double barrel/sawed off in auto and reload as fast as two shots from the heavy. And the double barrel/sawed off do more damage. The military and domestic shotgun shoot a bit faster but do even less damage with pellets.

Heavy with slugs: test is point blank to the back of the military police. Two shots are not enough most of the time. Problem is, the sawed off has a good chance to kill with two shots in the same situation and is faster even with reload. As slugs are supposed to be better than buckshot vs a (medium) armored enemy, I would rate the slugs as not doing their intended job. I cranked up the damage of the slugs to 35 and that was enough to get a better performance than the sawed off. The CAWS with scatter had about the same performance. Problem is, the 35 damage slugs were too good vs unarmored targets. Not sure how to find a sweet spot here.

So the heavy is compleately useless. With pellets, the military and the domestic are useless as well. Useless meaning the cheap double barrel and sawed off are better.
The military is not bad with AP ammo though as that is very accurate and bad shooters can hit with it. The domestic is the only shotgun that has (weak) rubber ammo but stun damage is always useful.

My suggestion would be to make the military and domestic pellets the same as the double barrel buckshot. The heavy should have a bit more damage than these to justify it's existance. Combat shoutgun pellets could use one more damage point.