The chance is small, but still. I just find it sad that nobody uses Mercy shotgun - I've even watched some playthroughs and people at best just build one to see what it is and that's it. Personally I just skip it entirely, which is rather sad, since I even use independant gear at the start sometimes. Like how Slamstrike was changed and now it's a pretty viable weapon that I always have with me.

Maybe it's worth it to make it avaliable from the start (and add 1 to the starting inventory) but with reduced by ~30% damage? And the research that'd unlock it would just add these 30% back, with the lore about something that needed to be done to pellets to be effective. Or something else to make it an option to use at all.

This way it'd at least be an alternative to the starting rifles, until eventually it's replaced by Iconoclast and other actual shotguns.

I know about the mods that let you change how it behaves, but it still needs unlocking and at the start there are much more important research projects, so it's obsolete whenever one gets to it. Plus it's just weird that nobody in a scientific organization knows how to create shotguns - I get grenade lauchers, they look different enough from real-life ones and that makes you think that maybe they indeed needed some thought about it. But ordinary looking shotguns, cmon.