There was this really long thread already about boosting Shotgun mechanics that talked about Pancor comparisons, Solar's maths, knockdown perks, and a bunch of other stuff.
@Nice_Boat: shotguns actually have huge spread, especially for sawn-off shotguns and hunting shotguns. You might wanna say that hunting shotguns (the ones with double-barrel) don't have spread, but you are wrong, because mostly slug rounds are used instead of shells.
Shotgun spread is a hollywood/computer game myth. In real life if it spreads enough to damage more than a man-sized target it's simply ineffective because of low velocity and not enough pellets striking a single target. Moreover, too much spread causes lower shock to the nervous system (which in the case of a buckshot is the primary cause of fatalities from shotgun hits) and should decrease raw damage in game terms. Yeah, you could follow the computer game logic and make them spread like in Doom, but with their current stats that wouldn't mean they'd become more useful for anything aside from PvE anyway.The problem with shotguns is their laughable ammo stats and a curious lack of ammo selection. Since increasing ammo selection to what we have in FT seems to be out of the question for the devs, just like messing with their basic stats, why don't we change ammo stats? I've always thought that shotgun ammo was really a ball round with lack of DR/DA mods, why can't we raise DA to the highest level in game (like 3/1 or 2.5/1) while giving them DR 50 or something equally high (arbitrary values)? This would make shotguns insanely effective against unarmored folks while retaining their low effectiveness against people wearing metal armor and better. This could prove way more useful than spread while hunting brahmins or having a low-level shootout without making the game more gamey
because games are perfect representations of real life, this is why we play them in order to escape real life.