Shotgun vs. Hand Cannon: Doesn't behave like the description numbers say

[japp_02]

Here are the damage numbers per shot:
Hand Cannon: 170
Shotgun: 100

Now the thing is, I'm in a crashed capital vessel full of spiders, I need 1 single shot with the Shotgun to kill one, whereas I need 3 shots with the hand cannon. Doesn't make sense, unless the Recoil and Weapon Spread numbers lead to a different result.

Recoil Hand Cannon: 1.2
Weapon Spread Hand Cannon: 0.15

Recoil Shotgun: 2.1
Weapon Spread Shotgun: 0.55

Is it just one of the many unbalanced things in the game or does it make any sense?

[CursedXistence]

well a hand cannon is a single bullet where as with a shotgun it's a spread shot so maybe it's 100 x how ever many virtual pellets are in a single shot?

[The Big Brzezinski]

Shotguns shoot 8 pellets per shell. The spread of these pellets basically makes them melee weapons, though.

[japp_02]

Thanks, what you both say indeed makes a lot of sense. Am I wrong or is the shotgun one of the best weapons close range? (Except Epic of course). Even against raptors or golems I need only few shots.

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by japp_02:

Thanks, what you both say indeed makes a lot of sense. Am I wrong or is the shotgun one of the best weapons close range? (Except Epic of course). Even against raptors or golems I need only few shots.

I use a shotgun and a sniper rifle. Whenever I try something else, I just end up going back to those two.

[Pembroke]

Originally posted by japp_02:

Am I wrong or is the shotgun one of the best weapons close range?

You are not. The shotgun is way overpowered, or the other weapons are way under-powered. The relative damage of shotgun vs. other guns is off-balance. If you don't have an epic weapon then it's like XLjedi said: you don't need anything else than the shotgun (close range) and the sniper rifle (long range). The shotgun dominates everything in close range.

Heck, it's not even restricted to personal weapons. The shotgun kills better than the 15 mm machine gun bullets from your gatling or mini-gun turret. Let me repeat that: 15 mm bullets. From a heavy machine gun. Versus your basic shotgun. I think some re-balancing is needed there...

[chaney]

I would love to see a detailed (and accurate) description of the Spread mechanic. I get the basic notion but if anyone knows where I can find the actual model, or at least a careful description, thank you. In the case of spiders being discussed, another stat that may be important is the Headshot Multiplier (or Multiplayer as the wiki calls it?!?) With the large spread of a shotgun, maybe it is more likely some of the damage is distributed to the head with the multiplier.

[The Big Brzezinski]

The best close range weapon is the minigun. It can pin down foes before they get close enough to stab you. A shotgun stops being effective passed two meters or so and has no crowd control ability. A shotgun will kill one guy before you're mobbed and eaten. A minigun will hold back and kill a swarm.

15 mm bullets can be fired six at a time at a high fire rate for much longer than any shotgun. They reload faster, too.

[Midas]

shotguns are good, but the real pros use sniper rifles at close range.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Standard sniper rifle is basically a scoped battle rifle.

[cwsumner]

I just found an Epic Heavy sniper rifle and it uses 15mm gatling turret rounds. One shot stops, if you can hit them. Unfortunately, I took the old smaller ammo with me, oops...

By the way, the portable minigun rounds are 7.62mm not 15mm.

The shotgun seems to be effective out about 4 to 6 meters. But less effective when the range is longer, as though not all of the projectiles were hitting the target. This is not by specs but by usage.

[japp_02]

Originally posted by Midas:

shotguns are good, but the real pros use sniper rifles at close range.

Yes in fact I see Spanj in his excellent videos using the sniper all the time, and with great success :)
But I somehow feel that it shouldn't be like that, the sniper should be used for high-precision long range shots, having a very high initial output speed making it not very suitable at short range, but then...I'm obviously not a weapon expert.

Thank you all for your kind inputs, I must figure out (google) what 'recoil' is all about, but the Spread must be the factor for what I'm experiencing here with spiders, a bigger area is covered by the damage hitpoints causing less shots necessary for the kill I imagine.
Also I didn't consider head shots (or not) in my scenario.

[chaney]

By "having a very high initial output speed" do you mean how fast the shot moves as it leaves the gun? (muzzle velocity) If so, why would high speed make it not suitable for short range? True low velocity won't be suitable for long range.

Recoil is how hard the gun pushes back when fired, kickback. Because of the geometry it often will push the barrel of the gun up, which seems to be how it is set to work in the game - notice how high recoil weapons need to keep being pushed down as they are used.

[japp_02]

Originally posted by chaney:

By "having a very high initial output speed" do you mean how fast the shot moves as it leaves the gun? (muzzle velocity) If so, why would high speed make it not suitable for short range? True low velocity won't be suitable for long range.

Recoil is how hard the gun pushes back when fired, kickback. Because of the geometry it often will push the barrel of the gun up, which seems to be how it is set to work in the game - notice how high recoil weapons need to keep being pushed down as they are used.

Thanks for giving me the points about Recoil, appreciated.
My 'purely amateurish' view of a sniper is: the high initial speed needed for going long range will produce a high energy output that should largely overpower the result at close range and also make it dangerous because of this and thus not practicable although surely possible. But again, this is my amateurish view only, a weapon pro will probably take a good laugh reading this...Although I know from military exercices that ammo speed is supersonic for long range...First you see the impact being 1-2 km away, then you hear the weapon sound...Well, in the game the sniper range is 300m, but I'm sure you get the 'energy' idea.

[whitevalfore]

Had no idea an epic sniper existed :o

[japp_02]

Originally posted by whitevalfore:

Had no idea an epic sniper existed :o

There are a lot of epic weapons, you get a list of them in Creative by hitting H.