Tinyboss wrote: Wed Dec 11, 2024 4:53 pm
I think a buff would be appropriate. Does anyone use the shotgun?
Ever since the Flamethrower was introduced, I have felt that the Flamethrower has rendered the Shotgun and Combat Shotgun entirely redundant except for cleanly carving paths through forests, as the Flamethrower:
1. Does more direct damage to spawners when used appropriately.
2. Sets fire to enemies which is a death sentence to even the strongest enemies (Biters, anyway, Stompers can shrug it off).
3. Does less collateral damage thanks to setting fire to enemy units with only a light touch.
4. Has a far smaller movement speed penalty, as the movement speed penalty is applied for the cooldown of the weapon after firing: as the flamethrower has a very short cooldown you regain your full movement speed almost instantly after stopping firing making it much easier to shoot and scoot vs spitters without getting tagged by the acid slow debuff.
5. Is easily cheap enough to use freely, the shotgun is probably a bit cheaper to use for destroying spawners, but for either weapon the ammo cost is a rounding error on a rounding error (e.g. zero).
What would it take for the Shotgun and Combat Shotgun to be worth using? Divorce the duration of the movement speed penalty from the firing cooldown, every weapon gets a similar duration as a baseline, 0.2 seconds or something, this doesn't apply an "unfair" disadvantage to slow firing weapons. If it does seem a weapon needs a stronger penalty, railgun or something, that baseline can be deliberately changed.
Next, apply a "fun" effect to shotgun shells: stun, knockback, piercing, bleeding wounds, incendiary or explosive, like, there are tons of possibilities. Even if it doesn't end up perfectly balanced with the Flamethrower, at least it can be fun. I think a good start would be adding stun to the basic shotgun shells and true piercing to the piercing shotgun shells.
Also I'd just go ahead and move the piercing shotgun shells to uranium ammo and make them require uranium. Yeah, it's a little less "diverse", but it can be used to justify massively increasing their damage to more in line with the difference between piercing and uranium magazine, even with a massive increase in damage AND piercing ability it still wouldn't really be a no-brainer to use the Combat Shotgun vs the Flamethrower, but maybe just maybe a Behemoth Biter would actually notice if you used the Shotgun on it. And yes, a Behemoth Biter would "absorb" the piercing ability, because projectiles only pierce if they actually kill the enemy they hit.
On the other hand, piercing could be reimagined as bleeding wounds, that is after shooting a behemoth biter its lifeforce starts leaking out, honestly a lot of overlap with the fire sticker from the flamethrower but maybe the wounds could stack, like maybe each wounds does 12 dps, but if you hit with 10 fragments it takes 120 dps.
