Who uses shotguns?

[TemplarGFX]

And why? or more importantly why not?

Im a big shotty fan for games (you can blame doom for that) but I find the shotguns in STALKER to be useless, they are not even good at CQB or shooting dogs.

So I made a quick change, I switched from Buckshot 00 to Birdshot FF.
Buckshot 00 fires 8 pellets that do a fair amount of damage with a small amount of penetration.
Birdshot FF fires 35 pellets that do a tiny amount of damage and have almost no penetration.

The change makes shotguns, for me, useful. While they do only a small amount of damage, the large spread of pellets means you always hit your target, and usually cause some form of bleeding. Its enough to turn to the tide. And point blank is certainly a kill shot!


I live in Australia, and here we don't have guns in the home. Ive never fired a real shotgun and what I know is from games (IE I know nothing!). Can someone who has a shotgun tell me if they are as bad as this game makes out (with buckshot)

[WhiteSnake]

00 buckshot will get about 20 inches of penatration and doesn't spread as much as videogames make it seem, birdshot, idk....maybe about 3 inches of penatration according to all the ballistic gelatin tests I've seen online.

It's a compromise between power and number of pellets...I kept reading for home defense #1 buckshot was better since it had like 16 pellets that were still 0.30caliber. 00 Buckshot is only like 8 pellets and 0.33 caliber. They claimed #4 buckshot was 20+ pellets of .22 caliber like the popular 22 rifle people plink with.

I honestly never used shotguns in this game but I liked the Striker shotgun in Call of Pripyat with the buckshot or slugs which was good against the armored Mercs which would come after you sometimes.

I happen to live in the south USA where it's pretty common for nearly everyone to have guns >_>

[TemplarGFX]

Thankyou for the infromation! in stalker, the 8 pellets spread so much as to make the weapon useless, even at less than .5meters you can miss!

I might try reconfiguring it to #1 buckshot and 16 pellets and see how it feels.

[LagMan_PT]

I usually carry a pump action shotgun with me, its lovely to kill mutants, I use the common spread buckshot cause it makes lots of damage, you can kill dogs and bloodsuckers alike at first shot if you aim well. The thing about shottys in this game is you need to be pretty close for full effect, also duck and aim as much as you can. At close ranges its pretty deadly, a one or two shot kill weapon, also works to sneak out on human foes.

[JtDarth]

I've never had problems with shotguns in the stalker games, at least once you get past the sawed off. The sawn-off is only useful if you are pressing the barrel against them. The others are pretty good against anyone not wearing exos so long as you are aiming at their collarbone and within 25 meters or so.
I really would not recommend a shotgun as a full-time primary in any of the stalker games other than call of pripyat. There are going to be too many guys running around with rifles for you to be able to get to lethal range unless you know how the AI thinks and the layout of the area. With call of pripyat combat with humans is rare until you reach pripyat, but if you stockpile slugs the entire time you should be fine in pripyat as well.

[AvalancheOZ]

In vanilla SoC, the sawn-off shotgun is mostly trash. It can be useful for dealing with dogs and boars as long as you have decent aim and get in close, but that's about it. The real shotguns you run into later are much more functional, and I like keeping one on me if I'm going somewhere with lots of mutants. The problem with shotguns in general though is that they take up your rifle slot, and you run into so many human enemies that you really have to carry around a scoped shooter. And since most mutants are honestly easy to avoid, shotguns are kind of redundant. You'll get a lot more mileage out of them if you mod your configs to make shotguns fit into your pistol slot, like in CoP.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by AvalancheOZ:

In vanilla SoC, the sawn-off shotgun is mostly trash. It can be useful for dealing with dogs and boars as long as you have decent aim and get in close, but that's about it. The real shotguns you run into later are much more functional, and I like keeping one on me if I'm going somewhere with lots of mutants. The problem with shotguns in general though is that they take up your rifle slot, and you run into so many human enemies that you really have to carry around a scoped shooter. And since most mutants are honestly easy to avoid, shotguns are kind of redundant. You'll get a lot more mileage out of them if you mod your configs to make shotguns fit into your pistol slot, like in CoP.

I actually just knife the mutants. The only ones that truly pose a threat to a knife-armed stalker are chimeras, controllers, and psuedogiants

[TemplarGFX]

Perhaps its my lower framerate, or what LURK does to the game, but I have had quite a few situations where I am face-to-face with a bandit, unload 2 barrels of a long-shotty only for him to not die.
I feel its due to the small number of pellets only hitting armor. EI bad luck :P

The #1 buckshot mentioned earlier works much better in the game. I halved the damage, halfed the penetration and doubled the pellet count. Its actually likely to do less damage now, but much more likely to hit your target.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by TemplarGFX:

Perhaps its my lower framerate, or what LURK does to the game, but I have had quite a few situations where I am face-to-face with a bandit, unload 2 barrels of a long-shotty only for him to not die.
I feel its due to the small number of pellets only hitting armor. EI bad luck :P

The #1 buckshot mentioned earlier works much better in the game. I halved the damage, halfed the penetration and doubled the pellet count. Its actually likely to do less damage now, but much more likely to hit your target.

Oh, well that would be why. LURK is a total overhaul, and something you should have mentioned in the original post lol. In vanilla, and probably people soup as well, shotguns are quite effective, provided you are at a semi-reasonable range. They actually have more range than most video game shotguns.

[TemplarGFX]

Proabably LOL. But the question was not solely for LURK players. I remember playing the original and throwing away the shotguns due to their useless-ness

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by TemplarGFX:

Proabably LOL. But the question was not solely for LURK players. I remember playing the original and throwing away the shotguns due to their useless-ness

They kinda require you to rambo it, which isnt something the stalker games really encourage. I found that by running a high-capacity pistol and a sawn-off double barrel, I could make it all the way to the red forest before getting stopped in vanilla SHOC, and that was because monolith showed up. Their armour laughs at buckshot. It requires a good knowledge of where the chokepoints are, how many enemies there are, and a bit of knowledge on how the AI chooses it's route, although you could also sound-♥♥♥♥♥. By relying on my pistol and nades I was able to make it through, but I had found the limits. If I had been using a pump-shotgun, I wouldnt have gotten stopped there, becasue I could have simply used slugs and dart rounds. The sawn off wouldn't have been able to use them even remotely effectively, and although I would kill targets with one point-blank blast, at that point i would be better off pulling the knife and using its insta-kill altfire. It would also take a lot of slugs, which are heavy and somewhat rare. Dart rounds are only given out as quest rewards so I would definitely have ot farm them.

[WaxxFetish]

When it comes to real life shotties I only have birdshot experience. Whether it comes to hunting birds or fighting the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ muskrat vermin, birdshot is a no brainer.

When it comes to bigger game, we're supposed to use hunting rifles instead of buckshots where I live at.

When it comes to SoC :), I'm refreshing my experience with Autumn Aurora 2 atm. I think it's supposed to be rather close to vanilla ballistics and mechanics-wise. Shotguns are definitely a good option for defending oneself from mutants and work fine against unarmoured enemies.

Clear Sky's shotguns tho...these are bad.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by WaxxFetish:

When it comes to real life shotties I only have birdshot experience. Whether it comes to hunting birds or fighting the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ muskrat vermin, birdshot is a no brainer.

When it comes to bigger game, we're supposed to use hunting rifles instead of buckshots where I live at.

When it comes to SoC :), I'm refreshing my experience with Autumn Aurora 2 atm. I think it's supposed to be rather close to vanilla ballistics and mechanics-wise. Shotguns are definitely a good option for defending oneself from mutants and work fine against unarmoured enemies.

Clear Sky's shotguns tho...these are bad.

I don't have much experience with anything larger than a .410 as far as shotguns IRL go, but I do recreational shooting, and I can tell you that slugs and buckshot can be very scary, even with a .410, let alone a 12 guage like what the shotguns in stalker are.
Yeah, clear sky's shotguns suck, but that is more due to the more rng affected gunplay in clear sky. As far as armoured targets go, dart rounds and slugs are pretty good for that, although darts are extremely limited in shoc, and absent in COP, atlthough slugs play pretty much the same role as darts in COP.

[WhiteSnake]

yeah even a 410 shotgun is equal to getting hit 2-3 times at once with a 44magnum I've read. In real life they say a 20gauge shotgun with #3 buckshot is very nice in terms of balance because it has decent power and not much recoil at all, they recommend them to ladies

[LagMan_PT]

In Soc vanilla a mint contition pump shotgun (the 2nd best in the game) can blast most mutants in one shot or two as long as your close (20 meters) and not running around too much using buckshot ammo, also aiming for the head helps XP. But its kinda rare to find one, mine was bought at the bar, and ive only found another in a dead stalker somewhere, im already in my way to pripyat. I use it almost exclusively to kill mutants

[WaxxFetish]

Originally posted by DarthNachoz:

I don't have much experience with anything larger than a .410 as far as shotguns IRL go, but I do recreational shooting, and I can tell you that slugs and buckshot can be very scary, even with a .410, let alone a 12 guage like what the shotguns in stalker are.
Yeah, clear sky's shotguns suck, but that is more due to the more rng affected gunplay in clear sky. As far as armoured targets go, dart rounds and slugs are pretty good for that, although darts are extremely limited in shoc, and absent in COP, atlthough slugs play pretty much the same role as darts in COP.

I know about RNG in CS, I'm pretty sure that it's present in all stalker games, but it's substantially reduced/removed on master difficulties in SoC and CoP.

In CS however, master difficulty doesn't make enemies less bulletspongy and gun accuracy is still all over the place, it ruins CS for me.

I have a MP310 Baikal (20ga) and i really like it, but I only used it with birdshot. The scariest thing about 12ga is the 12/20 burst :)

Now I want to get me some slugs :D