CROSS-CONTENT DISCUSSION: Shotgun Shell

[dandys]

What should shotgun shells be replaced with?

What gauge should Combat Shogun use?

Older merge mods used 20, I guess that's all right, but any ideas?

[JaxFirehart]

The combat shotgun makes sense as a 12ga, I always fought with Kuroitsune about that. He made it 20ga, but the military would never use a small gauge shell like the 20ga (could be wrong, someone tell me if I am). My solution for differentiating between the Comabt and Riot shotguns was to make the Riot Shotgun put out more DPS, but the Combat shotgun does the most damage per pellet and has slightly better range. It had its flaws, the combat shotgun was rediculously accurate with the right perks, and I ended up still using the riot shotgun more often.

But I digress, I would make all shells 12ga for now, later on I would like to place more weapons and variety in the world, in which case the gauge of the shells would change based on context.

[yukichigai]

I will say that the 12ga ammo box shape is the same as the old "Shotgun Shell" shape, so there's that.

The only reason I'd lean towards using 20ga as the standard is because of the aforementioned similarity between the Riot Shotgun and Combat Shotgun.  This does mean we'd need to make a special "20 gauge Sawed-Off" to compliment it, but FO3 has a slightly different Sawed-off shape and dramatically different skin than what is used in FNV; we should preserve that if we can.  Using 20ga would also give players more incentive to use the Combat Shotgun I think, since ammo for it would be more plentiful, and it would serve a dramatically different "role" in the weapon lineup (i.e. "rapid fire 20ga shotgun") rather than a slightly different one (i.e. "oh look, yet another rapid-fire 12ga shotgun")

I'm not particularly committed either way, I just think that using 20ga as the standard would be a nice bonus.  Oh, and in NV 12 gauge ammo isn't available to much later in the game, whereas in the CW sawed-off shotguns and Combat Shotguns are available from the start of the game.

[thermador]

If it's 20 gauge you could make it really fast (shots per second) to make up for the weaker damage.

If it's 12 gauge you could definitely alter the weapon stats a lot so the two 12 gauge rapid for shotguns behave very differently, even if they're the same gauge.

[Copper Hamster]

I'm not sure how the item id's line up, but if the FO3 shotgun shells (and shotguns) are all different from the types of shells in FNV, you could always take the middle road, and call the FO3 weapons 16 gauge. It's just a thought though. Otoh having everything be different means your 16 gauge stuff is ammo scarce in FNV if you drag it over there (and the other way as well). 20 gauge makes sense if you don't want a third gauge, and 'classically' the lighter gauges have been more popular in the northeast.

Military and Police have been known to use 12, 16, and 20 gauge shotguns for various purposes Jax, I own a 16 gauge 'trench gun' from WW1. A 20" barreled pump shotgun with a bayonet (I don't have the bayonet), go figure. My father told me that some of the shipboard security Marines were issued 20 gauge pump actions on board the USS New Jersey during Korea, the idea being that the less powerful rounds are less likely to penetrate through interior walls (water tight bulkheads would stop any small arms, but not everything was bulkheads) if they have to be fired inside the ship. Also short 20s are much easier to rapidly fire, a short 12 gauge has a lot more 'rise' when firing buckshot.

I will say that today I don't think any police department issues 20 gauge's that I'm aware of, but police have gotten a bit big caliber happy in the last few decades (not that it's unwarranted). Though I recall seeing a website selling (to verified law enforcement only) breaching rounds and rubber 'less lethal' rounds in 20 gauge, so they certainly could still be out there.

As an aside, to assuage my gun-nuttiness, when cut down below roughly 24", shotguns actually get a little  less powerful, due to lack of barrel to carry the charge and push the pellets. Spread doesn't increase noticably either. The reason they get cut down that much is concealablity and close confines manuverability; I had a State Trooper for a neighbor a few years ago. His in car shotgun was a 24" barrel with a full stock. When he was deployed in semi-swat situations, he was issued an 18" with pistol grips. They were for two different purposes, one for better effective range than the pistol gave him, the other for going indoors. (In that case both were 12-magnums)

[JaxFirehart]

Now that is the kind of stuff I like to know. Especially the point about 20 gauge penetrating less through walls. Currently the combat shotgun will remain 12 gauge, but the 20 gauge does make more sense now. Thanks for the useful input.

[LT Albrecht]

Making the Combat shotgun a rapid-fire 20Ga could be interesting, the weapon always was about raw DPS rather than things like 'accuracy' or 'sanity' so it'd fit if it were less accurate, but more powerful and faster firing than the other 20Ga weapons. Usually this'd run into issues with it being useless in the face of any and all armour, but what with 20Ga slugs being cheaper and easier to find than their 12Ga cousins it'd negate that without ruining the uniqueness of the weapon. It'd even provide a way to deal with their wide range of users - some of whom are supposed to be more challenging - by giving the more 'dangerous' users slug rounds (Obsidian have shown they're ok with giving out non-standard ammo to NPCs in lonesome road).

[pucque]

• 
  The "combat shotgun" now uses 20 guage rounds (most military shotguns use 20 guage).

They actually don't. Door breaching and tactical light loads are 12 gauge. The double-barreled shotgun should be a 20 gauge weapon, so to allow lower powered characters like raiders to have it and to have a burst weapon alternative to the sawed-off shotgun. 20 gauge is intended to be a low-level caliber. There aren't many 75-100 skill guns using 9mm and 10mm for example :V

I think the combat shotgun should have stayed 12 gauge, as it seems like a mass-produced alternative to the original City-Killer combat shotgun that's easier to manufacture due to waning resource supplies. At skill 75, its main drawbacks compared to the hunting shotgun should have been far less accuracy (3.0, compared to the riot shotgun's 2.5 and the hunting shotgun's 1.5) with the exchange of being able to fire faster (1.2 multiplier * (30/14) (AttackLeft animation frequency, about 2.14 attacks per second) = 2.57142857143.

[charwo]

The Combat Shotgun is a terrible weapon and should be taken out entirely. It's design is awful: the port is AHEAD of the barrel grip, wasting half the gun's barrel length. The only way to save the turkey is to take the basic design of the gun and remesh it to be a bullpup and full auto outside vats. Other than that, the gun should be replaced with Hunting shotguns, either by changing the spawnlists, or maybe just making the Combat Shotgun into a dilapidated Hunting shotgun, with lots of chicken wire rust and duct-tape. The Combat Shotgun in Anchorage should be changed to either a Riot Shotgun or a Pancor Jackhammer, roughly in line with it's Fallout 2 stats:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Pancor_Jackhammer_%28Fallout_2%29

[JaxFirehart]

Pucque: The mention of most military shotguns being 20ga was based on information from copper hamster, literally 3 posts above you. If you read the entire thread you will see that there was much discussion on it and I was originally leaning 12ga. Please read the thread and respond.

Charwo: We aren't in the habit of removing vanilla content because we don't like it.