What on earth is the point of the M4 Combat Shotgun

[David Davidson]

Am I missing something here? It costs 1100 (The AA12 costs only 400 more) it holds less ammo than the starting shotgun, loads rounds one at a time and has no alt fire (such as a choke, alternate ammo (flechettes would be nice, or slugs or Taser rounds) or even a laser sight. The only thing it has is a dot sight and that's relatively pointless because it's a shotgun

Using it instantly gets you surrounded and then "one round in, two rounds in, boom, boom, still surrounded, oh look I died; hopefully someone will lend me cash for an AA12 next round."

Seriously unless I'm missing something major I don't know why the devs put it in this game. There's a semi auto shotgun (the one from BF2, MEC) with a 10 round box mag, it would be much more useful.

As of right now you'd be better off emptying it (in 3 seconds flat) then using it to beat the zeds.

[NightHawk_]

i actually think, when used right.. conservative and for the appropriate ZEDS it can be very very handy.. packs a decent punch and penetration and with tac reload it can be used to rek sirens, husks, bloats really fast and quiet accurate short-medium range.. overall the difference form purchasing the m4 and the aa-12 clearly the aa-12 is better value but when you want to use something different the m4 shines

[ImHelping]

The Devs are aware that the Combat Shotgun is lackluster (they mentioned it alongside Zerker reworks in a previous announcment).

It's... super terrible for what it is. Even if you reduced it's weight (a commonly stated "solution", but only because those people want to bring it with their AA12), it's terrible for it's pricetag.

The Nailgun is superior to the Combat Shotgun in every way (Cost, damage, weight). Though I'm pretty sure it lacks bonus scaling from the support class, that's still sad that you need to work your way "up" to the combat shotgun being as good as a 650 nailgun.

The Medic shotgun holds more shots, deals more damage per clip, weighs less, and is clip fed instead of one at a time reloads.

Boomstick? It's literally twice as powerful as the combat shotgun. Three Boomstick shells deal about the same damage as 6 combat shotty shells. (Boomstick is 12 pellets, Combat and AA12 are 7). You can easily fire two, maybe three boomstick double barrel blasts by the time your combat shotgun finishes reloading.

So, that leaves the pump action. The only shotgun in the game that isn't semi auto. But it doesn't cost $1,110, holds 8 shots, and the damage difference is marginal, on top of not weighing a laughable 8.

I'm pretty sure the entire reason the combat shotty weighs so much, is so you can't take it with the AA12 without the weight talent, and so you can't take anything but Combat/AA12 (and a medic pistol) with the weight talent.

It needs to seriously ramp up the damage to make it worthwhile. Ramping it up to 40 damage (40x7) might sound crazy, but that's only half as much damage as emptying out your AA12 mag into something.

Then you would actually be rewarded for conservative shots. Right now, being conservative with the combat shotty means you may as well be using the pump action, even with that small damage difference (20x7 vs 25x7).

TL:DR; literally every "shotgun" in the game is better than the Combat Shotgun in one way or several. Even the generic pump action is arguabbly not worse.

[David Davidson]

Originally posted by MonsteR.:

i actually think, when used right.. conservative and for the appropriate ZEDS it can be very very handy.. packs a decent punch and penetration and with tac reload it can be used to rek sirens, husks, bloats really fast and quiet accurate short-medium range.. overall the difference form purchasing the m4 and the aa-12 clearly the aa-12 is better value but when you want to use something different the m4 shines

I just use the pump action until I can get an AA12, I've not levelled to tactical reload though (except the boomstick which makes a lovely combo with the AA12) it has the smallest mag of all and the penetration stats are identical to the AA12, the boomstick (I think) and the pump action.

As you've said, the M4 is just for when you want something different. Make it interesting and worth that £1100 pricetag, exploding flechettes, tracker rounds, extra penetration, a choke so you can headshot from miles away. Hell since it's a 'tactical shotgun' it should at least get a speedloader, rather than one round, two round, three round, floor.

Originally posted by I'm Helping!:

The Devs are aware that the Combat Shotgun is lackluster (they mentioned it alongside Zerker reworks in a previous announcment).

It's... super terrible for what it is. Even if you reduced it's weight (a commonly stated "solution", but only because those people want to bring it with their AA12), it's terrible for it's pricetag.

The Nailgun is superior to the Combat Shotgun in every way (Cost, damage, weight). Though I'm pretty sure it lacks bonus scaling from the support class, that's still sad that you need to work your way "up" to the combat shotgun being as good as a 650 nailgun.

The Medic shotgun holds more shots, deals more damage per clip, weighs less, and is clip fed instead of one at a time reloads.

Boomstick? It's literally twice as powerful as the combat shotgun. Three Boomstick shells deal about the same damage as 6 combat shotty shells. (Boomstick is 12 pellets, Combat and AA12 are 7). You can easily fire two, maybe three boomstick double barrel blasts by the time your combat shotgun finishes reloading.

So, that leaves the pump action. The only shotgun in the game that isn't semi auto. But it doesn't cost $1,110, holds 8 shots, and the damage difference is marginal, on top of not weighing a laughable 8.

I'm pretty sure the entire reason the combat shotty weighs so much, is so you can't take it with the AA12 without the weight talent, and so you can't take anything but Combat/AA12 (and a medic pistol) with the weight talent.

It needs to seriously ramp up the damage to make it worthwhile. Ramping it up to 40 damage (40x7) might sound crazy, but that's only half as much damage as emptying out your AA12 mag into something.

Then you would actually be rewarded for conservative shots. Right now, being conservative with the combat shotty means you may as well be using the pump action, even with that small damage difference (20x7 vs 25x7).

I'd say make it interesting, it still has no alt fire. Make that alt fire do something fun and interesting as for a damage increase, I'd say give it a damage increase 30 and a penetration increase (whatever the penetration is, add 1/3) so for those moments where you have a heap of gorefasts and other zeds in a line you can take them all out with one shot (level dependent).

Just make it do something interesting, or lower the price (300 less means a little search for a katana, crovel, varmint (speaking of that, why no medic pistol spawns?) and kevlar can easily get you the AA on the round you'd usually only have 1100.

[Feormor]

It seems to have a tighter spread, which is nice.

[NightHawk_]

Originally posted by PGC SeriousSam:

It seems to have a tighter spread, which is nice.

exactly

[jonnightsky]

I go aa12 and double barrel. played with the m4 2times and it sucks. single fire on aa12 is better and reloads faster. They need to make its range really long and make it slug ammo if they are going to keep the reload speed down. if they make it a clip gun then they need to make it situational better than aa12 for that price.

[ImHelping]

I would actually prefer keeping it to pellets over spread myself. You are more likely to get trash/mid grade enemy decapitations with pellets while hipfiring, or blowing through torsos of clots two across as it gets farther out instead of only enemies standing neatly in single file.

Even if you are a little off, most of your pellets will hit a scrake or fleshpound in the face.

Squishing it down to a single slug just means all or nothing hit or miss, and could potentiallly do you more harm than good on such an ammo limited weapon. A tighter spread, sure. Slugs? I just don't agree with that.

I do suppose Slugs would make a more satisfying trader screen listing to see. A pump action round (20x7) collected into a single slug would say something like "140 damage" on the trader screen. The boomstick (25x12) would say "300 damage".

[PaperBearBot]

M4 costs too much, could do a price swap in the trader with the Boomstick.

Originally posted by Schlomo Shekelshoahstein:

. Make it interesting and worth that £1100 pricetag, exploding flechettes, tracker rounds, extra penetration, a choke so you can headshot from miles away. Hell since it's a 'tactical shotgun' it should at least get a speedloader, rather than one round, two round, three round, floor.

I would prefer making it more unique too. Extra penetration would work wonderfully with it's tight spread.

[Spud the Spud]

They should scrap it and replace it with a Saiga-12.

[Freeman]

Originally posted by I'm Helping!:

The Nailgun is superior to the Combat Shotgun in every way (Cost, damage, weight). Though I'm pretty sure it lacks bonus scaling from the support class, that's still sad that you need to work your way "up" to the combat shotgun being as good as a 650 nailgun.

Need to be point blank to kill something with nailgun + no support's penetration.

Originally posted by I'm Helping!:

The Medic shotgun holds more shots, deals more damage per clip, weighs less, and is clip fed instead of one at a time reloads.

M4 is more damage per clip than medic shotgun and more total damage and has penetration.

Originally posted by I'm Helping!:

TL:DR; literally every "shotgun" in the game is better than the Combat Shotgun in one way or several. Even the generic pump action is arguabbly not worse.

Med shotgun is worse than M4.

[NightEvolved]

do you believe me when I say I never used it in kf1? nor in kf2, and I've played it quite a lot. it could make use of a re-design, or they could take it out of the game completely, it wouldn't make much of a difference, I'm sure you'll agree.

[Freeman]

If they make it 25x12 per shot with the same tight spread and 5 weith, it would be a pretty solid shotgun.

[NightEvolved]

Originally posted by Freeman:

If they make it 25x12 per shot with the same tight spread and 5 weith, it would be a pretty solid shotgun.

that would have to be one long shotgun

[jong]

Originally posted by NightEvolved:

do you believe me when I say I never used it in kf1? nor in kf2, and I've played it quite a lot. it could make use of a re-design, or they could take it out of the game completely, it wouldn't make much of a difference, I'm sure you'll agree.

Yep, I avoided it the moment I saw how slow the reload was in KF1, and the pump shotgun was better than it in almost every way.
Same problem with KF2's combat shotgun except the ammo capacity, weight, and cost to buy it is just inefficient to ever be worth buying over saving for an AA12.

[ImHelping]

In KF1 the combat shotgun was the most expensive base price shotgun by $1,000 or more, that wasn't the AA12. (2,500 for Combat. 750 for hunting shortun. 1,250 for HSG. 1,500 for nailgun. AA12 was 4,000 base price).

For that pricetag, you got: Pump action with semi auto, two less shots, and a slower reload speed. (Same damage and weight).

I mean, at least in KF2's case the combat shotgun deals slightly more damage than the pump action. But then they make it one of the heaviest weapons in the game and that outweighs (HAH) that small advantage.

Two more weight and 400 more dollars gets you the AA12. Which holds more ammo per mag, more max ammo, and has both semi and full auto. (For comparison, combat shotgun costs 450 more, and weighs 4 more than the boomstick. And the boomstick deals twice as much damage per shot).