Factorio Forums

JimBarracus wrote: Dragon breath ammo

You mean Dragon exhaling ammo - http://maximumble.thebookofbiff.com/201 ... 43-exhale/

Breath and Breathe are slightly different things. Breath happens when you Exhale.

Dragon's breath ammo makes sense as a name, ammo that has an effect like an Exhaling dragon: Flamethrower breath.
Dragon exhaling ammo sounds more like ammo that exhales dragons.

Isn't a fire breathing shotgun just a flame thrower? I'm all for giving the shotty some love, but I don't think that emulating a superior weapon is the way to go. The most serious issues for the shotgun are related to the tech tree. It used to be in a good spot in early builds but over the patches the tech didn't get any love, got pushed later in the game and was ultimately drowned out by superior things.

bobucles wrote:Isn't a fire breathing shotgun just a flame thrower? I'm all for giving the shotty some love, but I don't think that emulating a superior weapon is the way to go. The most serious issues for the shotgun are related to the tech tree. It used to be in a good spot in early builds but over the patches the tech didn't get any love, got pushed later in the game and was ultimately drowned out by superior things.

Well, the regular Shotgun used to do 12 x 4 Physical damage back when the Firearm magazine still did 2 Physical damage, even with the SMG having 15 fire rate instead of 10, that meant that Shotgun raw DPS was almost 5/3 that of SMG (48 v 30), and it performed (much) better against spawners and their -2/0% Physical resistance. So it had a purpose early on.

Now the situation is 12 x 5 Physical for Shotgun versus 5 Physical damage for Firearm magazine, with SMG fire rate being 10. This works out to (60 v 50 for DPS), much closer, and the Shotgun no longer has an edge against Physical resistance like it used to. Back in those days, I prefered to use the SMG still for clearly Small biters unless they were coming at me in large numbers (making the Shotgun more effective), and then used the Shotgun to actually kill their spawners efficiently. Now the Shotgun feels completely inferior to the SMG right out of the game. Add to that, it's upgrades are their own line of research whereas bullet damage also affects Gun turrets. Once you get Military 2 researched, (and start making Piercing ammunition magazines) it's not even a comparison, the SMG is completely superior in every way (60 v 80 for base DPS, favoring the SMG).

Worse yet, even later on, things haven't really improved. The Combat shotgun is Military 3, and by then, you've long ago gotten into using Piercing ammunition and now presumably have Flamethrower and Rocket launcher as well (which are quite a useful pair tbh). Raw DPS of Combat shotgun with regular Shotgun shells is 2*1.2*(12*5)=1.2*120=144, which is respectably better than the SMG's base of 80 with Piercing ammo. (But by now you've likely invested into research for bullet damage and shooting speed, but have had less reason to do the same for shotguns). Uranium ammo and Piercing shotgun shells are roughly the same tech level, though the they represent slightly different paths. This means that the 'endgame' raw DPS comparison between Uranium ammo SMG and Piercing shotgun shells Combat shotgun is only other comparison that matters. Which we see works out to 240 for SMG versus 1.2*2*(16*6)=1.2*256=307.2 raw for Combat shotgun. Here again, shotgun raw DPS is ahead, but not by a very large proportion however, the shotgun is MUCH more severely affected by flat physical resistance, which is quite relevant because Big and Behemoth biters have a lot of flat physical resistance (ditto Big worms). So in practice, the SMG is still much better, at least until you've done some endgame damage researches and the DPS losses to flat resistances are getting to a reasonably low percentage.

It sounds to me like piercing shotgun shells should be moved to come in just after piercing ammo does (between military 2 & 3), and that a third type of ammo introduced lategame (military 4). This third type of ammo should also be able to overcome physical resistance and also have a base DPS better than piercing ammo. I would suggest that this means this new tier of ammo does some other form of damage in addition to physical, and I think acid damage is a good candidate for this. No enemy has resistance to acid, and it would be kind of poetic to use a combat shotgun to throw acid at the spitters/worms.

I think it could work quite well like this:

Move Piercing Ammo up one tier so it requires Military Science (Regular Ammo is now really good so piercing ammo doesn't need to come so early)
Move Combat Shotgun down one tier so it only requires Military Science (it is now the same tier as Flamethrower)
Move Piercing Shotgun Shells down one tier so they only require Military Science and SP3 (It is now the same tier as the Tank with its OP Machine Gun)

Actually, it doesn't terribly matter if shotguns ultimately become obsolete... if they are fun and effective early game. And realistically since shotguns ARE low-tech weapons, it is the early game when they should be relatively most effective.

@BlakeMW that would be circular. Military science requires piercing rounds as an ingredient. It would require a recipe overhaul and will invalidate all existing factories.

Hmm. Maybe I can mod up a shotgun that shoots capsules. It wouldn't really make the shotgun better so much as give a more convenient way to fire off a thousand capsules.

Caine wrote:@BlakeMW that would be circular. Military science requires piercing rounds as an ingredient. It would require a recipe overhaul and will invalidate all existing factories.

Recipe overhauls happen, i.e. recently with the removal of Assembler 1 from Production Science. Military science is already quite a hard recipe (for new players) due to the Turret, it could stand to be easier by i.e. using regular ammo, or even just being a 2 ingredient recipe. Anyway I feel it's be more logical that piercing bullets are a result of military science rather than a prerequisite for it.

I wrote a mod that gives each weapon their own identity, and tbh the Combat Shotgun is difficult to balance. It has a high rate of fire and many projectiles, but how to spread them? I find if they're too clustered, then it becomes a bit of a precision weapon that's difficult to hit with. If they're too spread out, it loses its effectiveness against individual targets. You could increase the number of pellets for the best of both worlds but then up-close it would deal too much damage.

I added nuclear shotgun shells, reduced the range and increased the pellet count. I toyed with the idea of a solid slug but I couldn't see any real reason for it, the AoE would be too narrow.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:I find if they're too clustered, then it becomes a bit of a precision weapon that's difficult to hit with.

That's exactly how it should be. Especially if you're shooting at a mob of biters it's not hard for most the pellets to find targets even with a tight spread and having to use some skill isn't exactly a bad trade-off for extra damage.

That's what I settled on too, though then it's competing with the SMG which has more uses, such as clearing out Biters from around equipment. I guess the best case scenario would be if I could get Shotgun Pellets to pierce, I might try again when I get a chance, that way the SMG remains a precision weapon and the Shotgun becomes an awesome tool for deleting waves of Biters where you don't need to worry about collateral.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:That's what I settled on too, though then it's competing with the SMG which has more uses, such as clearing out Biters from around equipment. I guess the best case scenario would be if I could get Shotgun Pellets to pierce, I might try again when I get a chance, that way the SMG remains a precision weapon and the Shotgun becomes an awesome tool for deleting waves of Biters where you don't need to worry about collateral.

I found there's no real need for pierce: say you shoot a biter and all the pellets are on course to hit: once it has been hit by enough pellets to kill it the other pellets just pass through the corpse and hit stuff behind it: this is a kind of quasi-piercing, the cluster of pellets keeps on killing and "piercing" through targets until the pellets have all hit something. This means the shotgun will never truly be a precision weapon because stuff behind a target will always be in danger.

And it's not really a problem if it's good for factory defense anyway: like at the moment, the two best weapons are the SMG because it is precise, and the Flamethrower - yep, that good old master of all trades the Flamethrower. If you hit a cluster of biters with a brief spurt of fire then you will get a short-lived burning patches which probably won't burn long enough to destroy even the weakest buildings because fire patches need to be intensified to really have bite (there's something like a 0.5s delay before a fresh fire patch can be intensified so a brief spurt will never result in intense fire patches). But even a brief spurt sets fire to all the biters sentencing them to death. So with the flamethrower you can inflict massive aoe damage on biters and only minimal damage on your own buildings. The point is that the shotgun isn't going to be better than the flamethrower in this regard even with a tighter spread.
(To be fair the Poison Capsule is also a pretty good factory defense weapon though you need to throw several to get the same dps as being on fire)

Hmm, looking at the definition of Piercing again and I can see why it didn't work, apparently the target has to die from the projectile - so only the one projectile that killed the enemy will pierce. The way that works really sucks, it hard caps the effectiveness of damage research and gives you a very slippery scale for balance. Projectiles go from injuring the first biter to killing a dozen of them. But I digress.

Yeah I'm not overly upset it doesn't work, it would just give me another tool to balance. Still, doesn't stop me making a slug shell with pierce.

I redid the Flamethrower a bit, shorter range but better AoE (what a flamethrower should be IMO) and spawns 4 fires I think instead of 2. It also takes a bit longer to kill Spitters, and is much less effective against Medium and Big Worms, the tradeoffs I decided on for being good against biters and spawners.

I didn't actually touch the Poison or Slowdown capsules, tbh I've never seen the need to use either. Maybe I'll merge them, the two effects synergise quite well, have an additional smaller AoE to make the middle a bit stronger...

+1 to buff the Shotgun currently I never ever use it.

Gating it behind oil kills it.
If you have oil, you have a tank. You have a flamethrower. It's over at that point.

The combat shotgun should be a super early weapon.
Around the time you get armor piercing ammo sounds about right.

PacifyerGrey wrote:The power of a shotgun as a weapon lays in a great burst damage.

In that case it needs to have its amount of pellets increase five fold at least, and reload time increased by the same factor. An actual hail of physical pain instead of a measily spread of about 5 pellets. Shotguns by their nature are designed to have a cone area of effect attack, to deal with groups of enemies. Specialized ammo could be an option as well - exploding projectiles come to mind, with the impact of a pellet triggering a small range explosion that wreaks havoc on tight clusters of biters, but isn't very effective versus bases or single targets. But that'd have a similar effect as the cluster 'nade I suppose...

Gating it behind oil kills it.
If you have oil, you have a tank. You have a flamethrower. It's over at that point.

Pretty much this. The shotgun was the meanest weapon in an old tech tree that only had SMG and shotguns. The shotgun has to compete with many stronger weapons now. Its current tech location is simply too deep to ever pay off.

You guys have lots of great ideas to balance the shotgun. I'll add one more: every upgrade to the shotgun should come side-by-side with every upgrade to the submachinegun.

Military 1: unlock submachinegun and shotgun, also let's buff shells from 12 to 15 pellets.
Submachinegun: 50 DPS, direct shot, burns through ammo rapidly
Shotgun: 75 DPS, collision shot, spreads, ammo-efficient

Military 2: unlock piercing ammo and combat shotgun
Submachinegun: 80 DPS, direct shot, better armor piercing vs. larger biters and worms
Shotgun: 180 DPS, collision shot, spreads, weak against physical resist, but high DPS = good against spawners and spitters

Military 4: unlock piercing shells and explosive magazines (explosive damage type, no radius), also remove gun turret damage research entirely
- piercing shells increased from 16 to 20 pellets, explosive magazine does 16 explosion damage and costs 1 explosive (plus other mats) to make
Submachinegun: 160 DPS, direct shot, explosion damage type is particularly good vs. big biters, and particularly bad vs. big worms, also gives type choices
Shotgun: 384 DPS, collision shot, spreads, very high DPS and doing okay against physical resist now
Gun Turret: new ammo type makes up for losing damage research, prevents gun turrets from becoming stronger than player submachinegun

Uranium Ammo: unlock uranium magazine and uranium shells (20x12)
Submachinegun: 240 DPS, direct shot, excellent physical resist penetration, burns through U-238 quickly
Shotgun: 576 DPS, collision shot, spreads, more efficient use of U-238 and good physical penetration
- shot spreads more than previous shells, both to enable better crowd control and prevent stepping on toes of uranium magazine
Gun Turret: uranium ammo turret heavily nerfed to put it in line with other turrets at the same research level
- there should be a research to increase gun turret range and health, so it can compete with other turrets in the late game


This way, the shotgun is a different weapon style from the submachinegun and fills a different role, but neither one gets more powerful overall than the other. The higher shotgun DPS is to make up for its spread-fire and lower resist penetration. It is good at crowd control while the submachinegun is good at precision shooting.

Even with max pre-space research a combat shotgun deals higher dps than a submachine gun, and it's most effective in a combined-arms assault where you've got bots and whatnot dealing additional damage. The shotgun weakens everything in an arc making the more focused damage-dealers take down individual enemies faster. Yes, you could spray the smg fire, but that still wouldn't make up for the worse total dps and you want to hit everything on the front lines, not punch deep holes in it, so the shotgun natively does the right thing there.

I don't think "everything has its time" is embarrassing for anything. I've found shotguns helpful for early-ish big-camp assaults when my main ride's a car and it's a bit too easy for that to get swarmed and destroyed.