Shotgun Quick Fix

[Valiant70]

1. Tighten the spread. A lot. Real life shotguns frequently shoot fist-size groups many yards away. First-person shooter styled shotguns don't work on ships or in space. The idea is not to have a few shots in a wide area in hopes that one will hit something, but to have many shots in a small area in hopes that all of them will hit something.
2. Just make the spread uniform. For anyone late to the shotgun party, they may look random, but the spread on Starmade shotgun weapons is not truly random (or pseudorandom) and favors one corner.

Being able to adjust the spread by the weapon linking ratio would be nice, but not needed to make the weapon system usable. Next time our favorite cat-programmer gets a little bored, please ask him to fix the shotguns.

 

[Raisinbat]

I'd like to see a damage boost as well; double damage would make them stronger up close, break even when half your bullets are hitting and inferior at ranges greater than that.

For reference i have a 320k dps rapid-fire shotgun ship and it can't even kill isanths reliably. The spread is currently so bad you do around half damage to a 500k mass ship at 500m range, where any non-spread weapon would easily hit every shot.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

1. Tighten the spread. A lot. Real life shotguns frequently shoot fist-size groups many yards away. First-person shooter styled shotguns don't work on ships or in space. The idea is not to have a few shots in a wide area in hopes that one will hit something, but to have many shots in a small area in hopes that all of them will hit something.
2. Just make the spread uniform. For anyone late to the shotgun party, they may look random, but the spread on Starmade shotgun weapons is not truly random (or pseudorandom) and favors one corner.

Being able to adjust the spread by the weapon linking ratio would be nice, but not needed to make the weapon system usable. Next time our favorite cat-programmer gets a little bored, please ask him to fix the shotguns.

For real world reference, a real shotgun with an 18" barrel (cylinder bore/no choke) will expand its spread of pellets approximately 1 inch in diameter for every yard traveled. 10 yards typically yields 10-11 inch spread patterns. Space has almost no friction so any shotgun pellet spread would continue at that rate indefinitely.

With that having been said, I agree; the spread needs to be tightened and its pattern made either regular or more randomized. It is currently easy to predict where each individual shot will go and the patterning simply doesn't make sense. I'd also like to see unguided shotgun missiles; similar to swarmers but dumbfire.

 

[BDLS]

I'd like to see a damage boost as well; double damage would make them stronger up close, break even when half your bullets are hitting and inferior at ranges greater than that.

For reference i have a 320k dps rapid-fire shotgun ship and it can't even kill isanths reliably. The spread is currently so bad you do around half damage to a 500k mass ship at 500m range, where any non-spread weapon would easily hit every shot.

I agree. Double damage, no additional energy cost. When LCB was running we had double damage on AMC and Beam shotty combos, but they still weren't super good. Maybe with double damage and the spread tightening that everyone wants people will use them as viable weapons.

 

[Az14el]

pulse primary is double damage for its energy cost for precisely this reason iirc, like it even has a note in the xmls saying something like "this weapon is bullshit to hit things with, so it gets double"

Ya know what, i really can hit more reliably with a pulse than a cannon-missile. For real.

But then like BDLS has said the edit is there to be made (it just might need to be a bit stronger by default ey?)