Shotgun is embarrassingly bad right now

[BlakeMW]

Shotgun is sad

Once the golden child of personal weaponry, the Shotgun has been left behind by buffs to other weapons and buffs to enemy resists.

At the start of the game the shotgun deals 60dps @ 5 damage/pellet, while the SMG deals 50dps @ 5 damage/bullet with perfect accuracy. Very quickly you get piercing ammo bringing the SMG to 80dps @ 8 damage/bullet and you mass produce it for military science. So the shotgun is quickly outclassed by the SMG, whether up close or at range or soft vs hard targets, the SMG is always better.

A little later you can largely replace the SMG with the Car MG, which has +50% firing rate and longer range - now mobile bullet weapons are up to 120dps - the shotgun is still at 60dps.

We can also mention the flamethrower: which inflicts a 100dps, -20% movement speed debuff to all units splashed (along with other effects). At this time the shotgun is still inflicting 60dps which is spread over targets (and misses!) and suffers badly from physical resists. Also the Rocket Launcher inflicts 200dps and cuts through resists.

With blue science, finally the Combat Shotgun brings the shotgun up to 144 dps @ 6 damage/pellet - rivaling the car! (except against physical resists), still lame compared with the flamethrower and rocket launcher. The very next tech the Tank MG brings mobile bullet weapons up to a whopping 240dps at 16 damage/bullet, enough damage to cut through physical resists like a hot knife through butter.

It takes a very long time to get the Piercing Shells upgrades as they are High Tech science, even then it only brings the shotgun up to 307dps @ 9.6 damage/pellet - the raw damage might be higher than the Tank MG but the ability to deal with physical resists is much less.

Finally comes the Uranium Ammo, bringing the SMG up to 240dps @ 24/damage bullet, and the Tank up to 720 dps at 48 damage/bullet. Oh yeah and the Atomic Bomb, bringing the rocket launcher to like over 9000 damage.

Summary

The Shotgun is spending most the game dealing somewhere between half as much and slightly less damage than mobile bullet weapons. It is dramatically and disgustingly outclassed by the Flamethrower, which is basically walking godmode vs units. It is also outclassed by the Rocket Launcher in an "anti-material" role as the shotgun is pretty much stopped cold by Big Worm's physical resist not to mention running up close to worm-defended nests is kind of suicidal for most the game.

As well as being gimped in the damage department the Shotgun has a host of disadvantages: it requires getting close to enemies, it can miss, it can inflict accidental friendly-fire, it spreads rather than concentrates damage, it inflicts an unusually large movement speed penalty on the character and the upgrades aren't shared with other weapons unlike bullet and flame weapons.

Really the only pro of the shotgun is cheap ammo: however the Flamethrower is disgustingly cheap to use vs units (though not structures), and the Rocket Launcher is very cheap vs structures (but not units), and altough piercing ammo isn't cheap you have to mass produce it anyway. What's worse, the shotgun is entirely reliant on upgrades to remain relevant, unlike the Flamethrower and Rocket Launcher both of which only need modest upgrades (for Flamethrower +70% damage makes it a death sentence to Behemoth Biters, for Rocket Launcher you don't need damage upgrades because you get nukes and you have to research up to lvl5 shooting speed anyway to unlock rocket silo). A reliance on upgrades negates any benefit of cheap ammo: what you save on ammo, you'll more than spend on upgrades. And cheap ammo isn't really a good pro anyway: personal ammo will never be more than a tiny fraction of a factory's production.

Make the Shotgun great again

Possibilities:

• Increase the pellet damage and shotgun dps, to be competitive with bullet weapons and deal with resists better, I'd say at least +50% damage for pellets maybe as much as +100%.
• Lower the upgrade costs since the upgrades aren't shared with a defensive turret (or add a shotgun turret? probably not). If the upgrades cost, say, half as much, it'd go along with the cheap ammo thing.
• Add a third kind of shell, SMG gets two "weapon upgrades" (the Car and Tank) and 3 ammo types. Shotgun has just one weapon upgrade (Combat Shotgun) and only two ammo types. A middle tier of shotgun shell could help even out the progression and help ensure the shotgun isn't get badly left behind.
• Add shell effects, like a stun/stagger effect, or explosive/incendiary shell. Adding a bit of "true aoe" would help compete with the flamethrower.

Or "meet in the middle": possibly some of the best weapons are genuinely overpowered in that they do everything too well.

• Nerf Tank MG. atm it is +50% firing speed +100% damage, maybe something like +150% firing speed +20% damage: same dps but physical resists would still relevant at least before uranium ammo and it would seriously have the munchies for ammo. You'd still have ramming and the tank cannon and poison capsules to take out physical resist targets before uranium ammo.
• Nerf flamethrower. The fact that the barest splash is a death sentence to every unit in the game (and applies a slow debuff!) is kind of hard to compete against. Maybe a less potent but stacking debuff would be more balanced so you'd have to give a behemoth a bit of a hosing to make it burn to death and it'd make damage upgrades beyond the third more relevant as with more upgrades less hosing would be required.

[QGamer]

I think a good solution would be to move the Piercing Shotgun Shells to mid-game, and add Acid Shotgun Shells (soaked in Sulfuric Acid) as a late-game ammo that does both physical and acid damage. Perfect for destroying enemies with physical resistance.

[sicklag]

.

[golfmiketango]

+1... pretty sure it's technically the same as it ever was but as OP says, once you've experienced the newer OP weapons it really ruins the shotgun experience forever. It feels like that useless pistol now; speaking of which, holy crap that pistol just seems like a cap gun.

[Koub]

Back before the flamethrower was introduced, combat shotgun with piercing ammo was THE biter-burger paradise.
But only we old players wise ancients remember these days.

[BlakeMW]

One of the things that has always bothered my about the shotgun, even when it was embarrassingly strong compared with every other weapon, is the lack of clarity of purpose.

IRL shotguns are used in two main roles:

• Firing a spread of pellets, with the idea that a few will hit and mortally wound/cripple the target - good against small or moving targets.
• Firing a single, large slug with a lot of penetration or stopping power.

Factorio engineer might think the first one is a good idea against small biters since they are fast and unarmored, but as the armored biters evolve he would be an idiot to not think of the latter role, a single slug with enough penetration / stopping power to mortally wound a Big Biter in one shot. The very idea of a spread of armor-piercing projectiles is not a very good one unless they have some way of crippling the target or you have A LOT of overkill.

Since it always bothers me when Factorio engineer doesn't do what I'd do, I decided to try playing around with modded ammunition. The one I like best so far works like this:

Armour-piercing discarding sabot: Fires a single heavy projectile that deals 80 damage with a piercing power of 400 and inflicts a bleed debuff that deals 40 dps for 2 minutes.

Because it has piercing power it can punch through multiple low HP units (or trees), killing several in a row. A high HP unit (one which isn't instantly killed by the 80 damage) will "catch" the projectile, but regret doing so as it suffers a movement-reducing bleed debuff which is not survivable. The shell is decent for clearing trash and overpowering physical resists. Ultimately, putting aside resists, pierce and bleed, it only does 2/3rds as much dps as piercing shotgun shells but without the hard reliance on upgrades to be effective. It's also a good deal weaker in terms of dps than the rocket launcher or flamethrower but a bit more of a jack of all trades.

[bobingabout]

Yes... I remember the days where shotgun was king.

Then:
SMG: Even with piercing ammo, it only tickles the big biters (the days before behemoth was even introduced)
Flamethrower: completely useless weapon.
Rocket Launcher: It did the job, but being slow to fire without any upgrades available, it was expensive.
Shotgun: Pew pew, the enemies died like fodder.
There was no tank, and you could use any weapon to shoot out of the car.

Now:
SMG: Still tickles the enemy, but has been improved, especially with neclear ammo.
Flamethrower: Overpowered map destroyer.
Rocker Launcher: Now you have nukes.
Shotgun: Not much has changed, maybe with he had neclear ammo too?
Tank: Has a nice weapon, but you can still use the flamethrower and SMG, which have the same stats as the normal.
Car: Same as SMG.


I think part of why the shotgun seems to weak is because everything else has had a buff, though neclear shotgun shells that deal increased damage where each slug is on par with the SMG would definitely be a benefit to the game.

[bobucles]

Clearly the shotgun suffers from being an okay weapon in a sea of great weapons. Some options:
- Nerf the other weapons. Makes the shotgun great but nerfs always make people mad
- buff the shotgun. Stronger pellets are cool but I'd like to see explosive pellets. Because reasons.
- merge research. Maybe every weapon doesn't need it's own research line. Instead use a more generic projectile/explosive tech. That way the shotgun is always on par with SMG.

[Engimage]

I think introducing uranium pellets will be pretty ok solution to this.

[BlakeMW]

I think introducing uranium pellets will be pretty ok solution to this.

It might be part of the solution but in itself would not be a solution.

Once upon a time the basic shotgun fired pellets doing 5 damage, and the SMG fired bullets doing 2 damage, this meant the basic shotgun was *much* better at overpowering the physical resist of spawners and a few other things. After the regular bullets were buffed to 5 damage this left the basic shotgun with no role to play (and this isn't even wrong, pellets are NOT good armor piercing projectiles). With the SMG being the go-to weapon, this meant no incentive to get shotgun upgrades which hurt the combat shotgun - although not as much as the +100% damage Tank MG.

The basic shotgun either should have a role, OR, it should be removed from the game. I'd be fine with having the entire shotgun line removed entirely as I think it's an inappropriate weapon, you're not hunting small game or engaging in urban warfare, the wide open battlefield against large targets is the domain of rifles and machine guns not shotguns.

If the Shotgun was removed it could be replaced, and I think there would be two good potential replacements:

• A large bore weapon, like a "Hand Cannon" or Elephant Gun that fires large heavy slugs with enough damage to overpower physical resists, or specialized munitions like explosive rounds. (fun idea: shares upgrades with Tank Cannon)
• Or a Railgun / Gauss rifle style weapon that fires hypervelocity metal rods - basically a replacement for the uber-shotgun of old, but only available in the late game. Comes out of the box able to inflict heavy damage and gets even better with upgrades.

Either weapon would be a sensible development for Factorio Engineer and could use the piercing damage mechanic to kill multiple low hp units in a row - the basic dps should be high enough to not rely on piercing, piercing would just make the weapon less hampered by overkill. It could inherit the shotgun's weakness of being capable of missing and readily brutalizing your own stuff (i.e. not a good factory defense weapon).

[Engimage]

The power of a shotgun as a weapon lays in a great burst damage. It can have larger spread but total dps should be huch higher compared to SMG. SMG never misses and should have moderate dps. And in close combat nothing should be better than shotgun.

Basic shotgun is totally useless weapon like the pistol is. However it could have a niche use of destroying biter nests or something like that. Also given the stopping power it should have it might have a pushback effect from hits preventing biters from approaching player. This would make it unique at least.

[bobucles]

The power of a shotgun as a weapon lays in a great burst damage

"Burst damage" doesn't really apply to a weapon that fires up to 5 times a second. What you have is a sustained damage output, delivered by a fireworks sparkle sprayer.

A lot of the cool traits of the shotgun are simply beat out by newer, better weapons. Fire is so much better at dealing AoE, and fire/explosions are vastly superior for clearing forests. The +100% damage SMG is so much better at dealing sustained damage. The direct expense of ammo isn't as important compared to the huge importance of weapon research. When it comes to choosing research, one really strong weapon is better to use than 3 poorly upgraded weapons. Can't use shotgun ammo in turrets, in any items, and there aren't any vehicle turrets or armor slots that can take advantage of the shotgun's traits at all.

The SMG is great. Combat drones are a bit too optional but are fun. Rocket launcher has a bit of a sniping niche, and cannon shells make the tank great at its job. Grenades struggle late game but are unmatched against trees. The player has lots of great options as is and I think if the shotgun were to disappear tomorrow, it wouldn't leave any hole in the player's arsenal and wouldn't be missed.

[BlakeMW]

I played around with some modding of the basic shotgun and basic shells to get some idea of what would make it a fun and effective weapon. I've determined that what make the basic Shotgun un-fun is primarly 3 things:

• The pellet spread on the shotgun is *absurd*, many video games are guilty of this but Factorio must be one of the worst offenders ever. If the pellet spread is made reasonable (say 0.3 -> 0.1) it becomes significantly more usable, since targets you aim at generally die and the way enemies cluster when they chase you also favors a tighter spread - the majority of pellets will hit what you're aiming at or stuff behind it if it dies. A realistic shotgun has a fairly tight spread, it's designed to reliably hit the target you're aiming at, not scatter shot all over the place.
• The slowdown is extremely punishing, the obvious strategy with a "burst" weapon on an open battlefield is "shoot and scoot", but the extreme movement penalty means this doesn't work at all, the biters just catch up and bite you as you hobble away like a broken old man. If the movement penalty is made more reasonably (say 40% instead of 60%) the amount of time you can shoot at biters before they catch you is significantly extended.
• The range is very limiting against spitters specifically. Because the Shotgun and Spitters have the same range, this means if you try to kite spitters with the shotgun the pellets will often fall short. To reliably hit spitters you have to let them be in spitting range of you! This comes back to the problem of having no way to mitigate incoming damage (until energy shields). A range increase of even 1 or 2 makes a huge difference in effectiveness against spitters. Realistically a shotgun firing buckshot will have an effective range at least as good as an SMG and possibly better.

In essence, if you use the shotgun you're expected to just tank bites and spits because you can't run from biters or out-range spitters. Yet before Energy Shield you have little effective way to tank damage, other than fish-tanking which is kind of cheesy.

After I buffed the shotgun to have usability compared with the SMG I found it to be quite an effective weapon. Now, IRL the Shotgun and SMG both share a similiar niche, both are designed to spray lead and get hits through burst fire rather than accuracy, they actually should be quite comparable - so maybe one of them should be removed. Doesn't have to be the shotgun!

This would be my 3-step program to fix everything:

• Buff the pistol slightly
• Buff the Shotgun to be as functionally usable and fun as the SMG as long as you aim skillfully
• Remove the SMG and replace it with a slightly more powerful Assault Rifle on Military 3

This change would be logical: a shotgun and shells are relatively easy to craft so it makes sense at a low tech level. An Assault Rifle is a genre-appropriate weapon, you're fighting fast armored alien bugs not gangsters - you want an accurate, high velocity, high penetration and rapid firing weapon, and in the context of the game it especially makes sense to develop this weapon when Spitters and Medium Biters enter the fray which is typically around about Military 3.

As well as being a logical progression, it brings back an interesting choice between bullets and shotgun shells: The bullet weapon is the default, it shares upgrades with tons of things, you have to make the ammo anyway, it works well enough for defensive purposes especially if you're mostly hiding behind your turrets, you can use it offensively in a pinch. In contrast the shotgun is the offensive powerhouse but it doesn't share upgrades, inflicts collateral damage and is harder to use.
Once you get to military 3, you have the choice between the Combat Shotgun and Assault Rifle, with comparable stats on both of them (with AR having more range and penetration, and CS higher DPS) - so if you've been focusing on upgrades for one or the other your choice is not invalidated.
Also by moving the advanced bullet weapon to Military 3, it reduces the power jump when the Tank Machine Gun is unleashed.

[Koub]

Maybe adding a strong knockback effect would be a nice way to help the shotgun get some usefulness. Keeping the enemies you're shooting at away from you could be nice, and it wouldn't just be a race to DPS.

[Engimage]

SMG (or assault rifle) is a nice weapon to shoot many weak targets at moderate range.
Shotgun should just obliterate enemies in close combat and also have knockback effect.
I do think that adding nice knockback would really help even if not narrowing its spread cause you kinda get a way to actually mitigate damage by pushing enemies out of their attack range.

[ManaUser]

I do like the idea of giving you a choice between solid slugs and scatter shot. (Or some exotic ammo like acid, explosive or incendiary as later options.) But even with that addition, the current (scatter) ammo needs some kind of improvement, because I just haven't encountered a situation where it was a good solution. Unless you count clearing a path through trees I guess, but that's fairly silly.

[bobucles]

There is some merit in shuffling around the tech curve to shove the shotgun into the spot light, but I don't think it would pan out very well in practice. If the SMG gets pushed into later tech, the player already has automated SMGs in the form of turrets, which are a super low tech option. Pulling SMG tech doesn't mean anything when you can turret creep, so it's more of a petty annoyance than a meaningful balance change.

The shotgun had a legitimate place in early builds when yellow bullets were SUPER weak, basic shells were pretty strong, and uranium ammo didn't exist. The gap between yellow and red bullets was a viable slot for the shotgun, and the spot after red bullets was a good home for the combat shotgun. Now, bullets are strong at every stage of the game. Yellow bullets can hold their own all the way to red ammo and you won't hit any kind of progression wall that says "well golly gee you better stop using bullets or you'z gonna get rolled son". Even if the current shotgun has some unusual cases where it's pretty good or slightly better than bullets, it's not enough value to beat the jack of all trades SMG whose weakest value is "good enough".

More damage can probably help the shotgun, but it may not save it from the scrap bin. By the time the combat shotgun is available, tank research is a trivial next step. In fact there is a huge gap in between unlocking military 2 and getting any new gun for quite a long time, and this is mostly due to the tech overhaul in .15. The flame thrower and rocket launcher exist at military2, but are actually much further off than you might think because the oil refining is quite a large step.

I'd rather not jump directly into adding more magic effects for the shotgun. I think it needs to be a better weapon before going into uncharted waters.

Some takeaways:
- I think that pushing uranium beyond Military 4 was an obvious move and making it harder to get indirectly helps the shotgun. Uranium bullets are probably still too OP against other weapons and a nerf wouldn't be out of the question.
- Combat shotgun is simply too deep in the tech tree; demanding blue AND black tech is too much. Give it a dedicated research after military 2 as a Red/green/black science.
- Piercing shells are WAY TOO deep in the tech tree. By the time high tech science is available, yellow bullets are totally non viable. Shotgun pellets do the same damage as yellow bullets, so if basic ammo can't work then shotgun pellets sure as hell won't be effective. Unlock piercing shells automatically at military 3.
- - This places the tech curve at Red/Green for shotgun, +Military for combat shotgun (before tank), and +blue for piercing ammo(after tank).
- The Shotgun is only a foot soldier weapon (no other places to use it) which means if the player doesn't want to fight on foot it'll NEVER get used. That also means when the player fights on foot, the shotgun should be good enough that it's well worth using.
- beware of power creep! Every new weapon the devs added is way better than the last. A good weapon can not compete against super weapons.

[BlakeMW]

The flame thrower and rocket launcher exist at military2, but are actually much further off than you might think because the oil refining is quite a large step.

This is true for the Rocket Launcher, but really not for the Flamethrower, the complexity of setting up ad-hoc flamethrower ammo production is very low. Basic Oil Processing even produces heavy and light oil in the proper ratio and with the proper alignment (no need to cross pipes) so in principle you could just plug the chemical plant into the front of a refinery that is plugged into an oil well, and add a storage tank for the petroleum. There's no need to bring in water, you just have to bring some stacks of steel. Sometimes on Deathworlds I've set up flamethrower fuel production at a refinery built at the oil wells (the primary incentive to get the refinery being Flamethrower Turrets, but the handheld version being a nice bonus). If all you want to do is burn shit with oil it's a lot simpler than setting up actual production with oil.

Ironically the cost of flamethrower fuel is mostly steel - you'll have to deliver 5 stacks of steel to make 1 stack of flamethrower fuel - for 500 steel you could make the (iron/steel component) of 20 Laser Turrets or 83 steel furnaces. For me that's the main reason I limit flamethrower usage early game, logistically the oil is usually a piece of piss and it's not like you can do anything with the heavy/light at that stage of the game (unlike rocket launcher, which consumes petroleum), but there is significant opportunity cost to the steel. I still get flamethrower ammo because who doesn't like to be invincible vs units, but if the fuel was a lot cheaper I'd probably hose spawners a lot more in the early game. Incidentally I think this demonstrates that if ammo is expensive enough, the player might moderate its use - but the same logic doesn't work in reverse, dirt cheap ammo won't tempt a player unless it's also good. With a buffed shotgun (mainly in terms of range, spread and movement penalty, not so much damage) I found a shotgun + flamethrower combo works well, flamethrower for burning biters and shotgun for blasting away structures and spitters.

Give it a dedicated research after military 2

It does kind of feel like the progression would be smoother with another intermediate weapon technology. Atm the Flamethrower is such an intermediate technology, requiring a trifling investment in military science (but an investment nevertheless) - but it's basically dramatically better than the stuff that comes on Military 3.

Example of things that could go on a "Military 2.5" would be Piercing Ammunition (now the basic stuff is VERY capable) and the Combat Shotgun, moving piecing ammo onto a military tech would mess with the military science packs: altough perhaps piercing ammo should be a result of military science rather than prerequisite. This would be another way of evening out the progression: you can get the SMG early but only fire basic ammo. Then when you get piercing ammo you also get an upgraded shotgun - and it could be roughly parallel with the Flamethrower. Military 3 would be worth getting just as a prerequisite for the Tank, but I guess it could also unlock Piercing Shotgun Shells - in truth they aren't that good without the shotgun upgrades backing them (basic shells with lots of upgrades are way better than piercing shells without upgrades). That wouldn't leave much on Military 4 (just Cluster Grenades), but perhaps Military 4 doesn't even need to exist in its current form, that is to say move Military 3 to just military science, move Military 4 to just blue+military science (make it prerequisite of Tank, Rocket Silo) and Uranium Ammo unlocks all the end game stuff.

[Caine]

It's obvious. Shotguns should be removed :p

[JimBarracus]

It's obvious. Shotguns should be removed :p

That's the new politics here with features.

Another new ammo type could be nice.
Dragon breath ammo, it basically turns your shotgun into a flamethrower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_breath
It uses magnesium to create fire which could be replaced with iron ingame.
As an early midgame option to have ammo with fire damage without the need for oil production.
Especially with the new map creation and the chance to have no oil in sight.