Factorio Forums

I love the boost regular shotgun shells got in 2.0, they needed it, and shotguns are actually good now. But now Piercing shotgun shells are only barely better for about 5 times the material cost. Regular went from 12 x 5 to 12 x 8, Piercing has 4 more pellets, but the same 8 damage. It looks pretty underwhelming now, especially considering its place in the tech tree (typically unlocked after tanks!).

I agree with this idea. May be it should be moved to Balancing topic?

Shotgun shells and piercing Shotgun shells does same amout of damage per bullet : 8 base damage for each, who want to pay 6 times the price for only 25% more projectiles ?

I'm pretty sure that's a mistake, piercing shell should do more damage, maybe 12 dmg / bullet ?

Or maybe i am missing something ... ?

It's so bad I don't even know why it's exist in the game, the piercing shotgun shell are so bad it's insulting.

Edit: More shotgun is bad than ammo. But I did test late game, full tech, with legendary tech armor I craft a legendary combat shotgun, shotgun is actually better than uranium ammo with a legendary submachine to take big nest... better, not good.

Legendary weapon should have increased damage.

Shotgun is only useful againt the true enemies - THE TREES.
Until we get the 'nades ofc

I just tested the combat shotgun with piercing ammo against the submachine gun with uranium ammo. Full projectile attack speed research and level 7 on damage. Damage of the shotgun was slightly higher, but not enough higher to compensate the much harder way of fighting - for the submachine gun you just hold the mouse in the general direction of the enemy, while the shotgun has to be properly aimed from much closer.
Submachine gun: 10+15 /s times 24+28.8 damage = 1320 DPS (without resistance)
Shotgun: 2+3.2 /s times 16 bullets times 8+12.8 damage +20% damage bonus = 2076 DPS (without resistance)

Yeah, the shotgun with piercing shells is stronger, but so much more work and more risk, it's not really worth it. Also remember that the submachine gun does 53 damage per bullet, while the shotgun does 25 damage per bullet. That means armor is much more effective against the shotgun than the submachine gun... which makes the name "Piercing shotgun shells" quite ironic, as they do no extra damage at all, only fire more bullets. The piercing rounds magazine does more damage than the normal firearm magazine.

All in all, yes, the piercing shotgun shells should be buffed in my opinion.

+1

It might be a good idea to add the piercing property found on cannon shells (to a much lesser degree, of course) to piercing shotgun pellets, increase damage per pellet significantly, and decrease pellet count to be less than the normal shotgun shell. That way piercing shotgun shells are more effective against armored enemies than normal shotgun shells and can cleave through lighter enemies, living up to the whole "piercing" thing in their name.

This way uranium bullets and piercing shotgun shells will have their own niche.

Yeah, "piercing" shells could definitely use some armour piercing property. Makes me think of the shotgun perk in New Vegas that lets you ignore some DT (since each individual pellet is low damage and so your shot gets affected by threshold that much more).

Also, you need to get out to do combat with the shotgun vs using uranium ammo in your tank/car/turrets, so it should probably be a little more powerful.

I've thought for a long time that piercing shells should just be uranium based. Otherwise it's too hard to compete with the uranium based weapons. They aren't even really an alternative, on the way to getting piercing shells you get such joys as the personal flamethrower, and the tank anyway already rendering them pretty much obsolete.

If piercing shells were just uranium shotgun shells they could be cranked up to 24 damage or something and the game balance and progression would be all nice and clean and orderly.