Burst fire is non-functional,
They do measly damage.
Suggestions!
Make burst-fire functional. At the very least do so for fast-firing shotties like the Saiga, or if the AA-12 ever comes into existence.
-For pump-actions, Slamfire is neat. Or at least a mod to enable it?
Increase the damage! 00 buck is firing 8 .33 cal projectiles. Some mitigation is to be expected to account for spread & missed shots, but compared against 8 9mm bullets, (.35 projectiles that pierce better), the 9mm damage would be 144. Compared against the current 50 shotty damage…
What’s worse are the other options out there. Per-turn the most damage you can do with a shotgun is 50. A single round of .45 ACP does 32 damage. A mac-10 has a 30-round burst. That’s 960 damage in one turn.
Shotguns too weak- I’d say double their base damage.
-Edit
Also, concerning burst fire: Burst size for the mac-10 is 30 rounds. IRL the rate of fire is 1145. Slow that down to the AA-12’s 300/minute, and said shotgun would have a 7-round burst.
Food for thought.
Slam fire is interesting but the damage I have to point out isn’t just with the shell. The weapon firing it also determines how much damage a shot does, admittedly it’s not much but…
How does one account for shotgun spread in a top-down turn based game…
The shotguns, at least accord to the help text, are supposed to be strong weapons.
Well, say each projectile does about 17 damage, (contrasted to the 9mm’s 18), 100 dmg would be roughly equivalent to hitting with 6 of the 8 rounds, (when you do hit with the one projectile the shotgun fires- or rather, don’t completely miss).
That sounds like a lot at it’s max range, but it’s also the cap for a monster standing right next to you. Criticals sort of accounted for this previously, but that means that shotguns cannot benefit from headshots, (which is what criticals are for handguns & rifles).
So, as someone who’s never fired a shotgun, how big is shotgun spread, and how damaging is it? A while ago I was considering adding a “cone” aoe to weapons fire but never got around to it. Could a shotgun reasonably do damage to everything in, say, a 10ft (long) x 5ft (wide) cone?
Depends on the choke at the end of the barrel I think. More spread means less damage- If you want lots of damage it has to be a narrow cone. Bigger cone, less damage.
I’m no expert on actual viability, (only ever used shotguns recreationally, few & far between), but technically they can penetrate at 50 yards. Probably half that for usefulness.
I’d say 10x2- by 50 feet the spread would be about 10 feet wide and you’re not likely to hit with more than one pellet.
I’d say a smaller cone of ‘lethal’ fire, and definitely longer, but that’s the general idea. Buck goes a long way, and lead doesn’t just disappear after flying an arbitrary distance
Ideally buckshot would do exactly what you describe: up to 8/9 ticks of medium-low damage with no armor penetration. Then they’d be good at murderizing soft targets, but weak against heavily armored enemies, like they’re supposed to be.
Whether that’s implementable in the current system or not, I’m not sure.
Cone fire would be silly. Shotgun fire “spreads” to the extent that the pellets are a few inches apart as the target approaches the weapon’s maximum effective range. The shotguns you see in some video games that spread out like a flashlight beam and are useless beyond “lean over and kiss them” range haven’t existed since the middle ages, because people are afraid of cooties bullets and prefer to kill people before they can kiss stab, bludgeon, tackle, or shoot them to death.
Courtesy of the intertubes, here’s a Mossberg 500 firing 9-pellet 00 buck at 15 meters.
Spread on a shotgun is determined by the chokes and size of the shot, also stuff like putting spreaders in shells and obviously sawing off the barrel can kick a pattern out. Most new sporting shotguns come with a set of easy to screw in chokes for differnt sized patterns.
At about a meter you are looking at something about the size of a fist, depending on the gun, by 25m out the pattern is usually about 2-3m across.
At point blank, a shotgun can cut down trees, even with light loads, taking off a limb or most of a head with a shotgun from very close range with birdshot isnt a crazy idea. At 25m birdshot would be very nasty to a human though you might live (birdshot is usually ranked as 8s) you could have literally 100s of wounds (8s have 410 pellets per standard 1oz load), but each tiny, probably no broken bones, so not so good against zombies. At 50m facing away wearing heavy clothes you would probably be totally fine with birdshot.
4s (135 pellets) are next usual size up, for rabbits and the like, still probably not breaking human bones at 25m but very nasty and probably has a fair chance of breaking the skin at 50m
BBs (0s, 50 pellets) are used for foxes, dogs, maybe kangaroo sized stuff. Pellets are about 4.5mm across, could probably break bones at 25m and a bit beyond. Getting towards the size when being hit by them at any range isnt a good idea.
Buckshot is actually a whole group of its own with about 10 differnt types ranging from 30 pellets in a standard 1oz shell to 2 huge balls in a shell. Normal ‘people’ shot has about 9 pellets and will probably mess you up out to 50 yards, though by 50 you probably wont catch too many pellets. With this sort of shot each pellet is considered to be as powerful as a .38.
Slugs are exactly how you would think, a lump of lead about the size of the top joint of you finger. You need to be good or lucky to hit something beyond about 50m, rifling and a scope help. That said they will knock down small trees and can be used to hunt tigers and elephants, so freakish powerful.
Shells come in 1 oz, 1 1/8 oz and 1 1/4 oz sizes, you can get bigger and smaller though its not usual. More shot obviously means more powder and more kick. Magnum shotgun shells are also definitely a thing, though a gun has to be specially chambered for them.
.410 (kids shotgun, shells as thick as thick pens) and 20 gauge shotguns (between .410 and 12 gauge, everything with shotties is backwards) arent uncommon, big 10 gauge shotguns are occasionally used by civis but like a magnum shotgun you need to be a bear of a man to fire often with one.
10ft x 5ft is probably too much for realism, maybe 50x5? Though you could probably get that with a sawnoff I think. What works in a game sense is more important than realism though.
[quote=“jimboblordofeskimos, post:8, topic:4318”]Shotgun info dump ahoy
At about a meter you are looking at something about the size of a fist, depending on the gun, by 25m out the pattern is usually about 2-3m across.
Normal ‘people’ shot has about 9 pellets and will probably mess you up out to 50 yards, though by 50 you probably wont catch too many pellets.
10ft x 5ft is probably too much for realism, maybe 50x5? Though you could probably get that with a sawnoff I think. What works in a game sense is more important than realism though.[/quote]
Okay so maybe no spread (since there seems to be some disagreement over that), some inaccuracy, and some kind of “armor mult” flag where it’s worse against armor? That could be a general thing where armor_mult: 2 means that armor is used at double its actual strength and armor_mult: 0 means armor isn’t counted at all, etc. Would be a good way to simulate multiple small impacts without actually having to make it fire multiple small bullets. Then crank up the base damage and call it a day?
DoomRL-esque spread is a little silly and game-y. Spread is already accounted for by shotguns bypassing the HARD_TO_SHOOT penalty associated with certain monsters.
I think shot is also already worse against armor, to the point where I’ve seen inexpert shots at close range bounce off of skeletons from not doing enough damage, and zombie soldiers go down faster to FMJ than 00 shot.
Each pellet doesn’t do the same as a 9mm bullet, but each pellet isn’t carefully aimed and slotted towards the point where it will do the most damage. I’d go so far as to say the average hit doesn’t land all the pellets in a good place, calling any hit with higher than listed damage one where the full shell connects and hits some vulnerable spots.
I’m not particularly against raising the damage - the shotgun is functional, albeit a little more so as a special-cases firearm and less as a primary weapon - but a boost as significant as has been discussed in this thread turns every shotgun into an instant death cannon, especially at close range (even with low skill), and downplays its supposed penalties at worst.
Assuming I’m understanding the code correctly, ammo with the SHOT flag seems to bounce off if its damage is less than double the opponent’s armor, and has a 50% chance of bouncing off if it does less than three times the target’s armor. Skeletons have 16 armor, so if the average shot would need to do 32 damage to hurt it (only doable within a very short range because shotguns seem to lose damage at a distance).
Also, the extremely low dispersion of most shotguns is apparently meant to represent the gun’s spread.
[quote=“GrizzlyAdamz, post:9, topic:4318”]So anyone agree/disagree on shotgun ROF/damage?
Also, jimbob you totally contradicted yourself:
[quote=“jimboblordofeskimos, post:8, topic:4318”]Shotgun info dump ahoy
At about a meter you are looking at something about the size of a fist, depending on the gun, by 25m out the pattern is usually about 2-3m across.
Normal ‘people’ shot has about 9 pellets and will probably mess you up out to 50 yards, though by 50 you probably wont catch too many pellets.
10ft x 5ft is probably too much for realism, maybe 50x5? Though you could probably get that with a sawnoff I think. What works in a game sense is more important than realism though.[/quote][/quote]
[quote=“Murphy, post:16, topic:4318”]What is not functional about burst fire?
It totally works. My character can routinely kill three zeds per burst at close range.[/quote]
are you still running the stable?
From what I understand, the experimental addressed shotgun burstfire as a bug, ‘fixed’ it and caused us to question if it was a bug or a feature
RE: burst fire: the way it’s handled in CDDA strikes me as odd, and I’d rather there be different settings instead of simple burst caps… because it’s silly that only the MAC-10 can discharge its clip at max speed, while an AK-47 forces paced shots.
Consider this thread on-hold till I’ve finished some testing for it- You can help if you’d like, just message me, (PLEEEASE!). Also, the save I’m using & the data sheets I’ve collected are in my sig.
In the meantime, move burst-fire discussion over here!
Note that shotgun mechanics will be changed once the new combat system goes in, dependent on the new monster system (which is in progress now).
Most guns will be given a single hit point, while shotguns (loaded with shot) will hit at every number along a small range. This means they will be more accurate, and better at hitting small weak points, although you’ll never be doing maximum damage to a small weakpoint. It will be especially useful for small animals like rats and birds or robots with sensitive sensors, but each damage step doing less damage individually means it will be less effective against (for example) armor.
Hopefully that will give them as much of a buff as they need.
