[1 dismissal] Add lethal shotgun ammunition to the armory

[Nantei]

As is, the ammunition that comes in the armory for the shotgun often means it is left in its locker. Very few officers ever touch the shotgun, and the ones who do often go and get slugs or other lethal rounds for it. Why? Well, beanbags perform extremely poorly in my experience, and the stun shells generally only work on people you shouldn't be using shotguns on anyways. It actually sort of begs the question as to why the shotgun is there to start with. Security is pretty well equipped as is to handle any sort of riot, and the likelyhood of that happening as is is already extremely rare. 

 

If we are going to keep slugs where they are now, then we should at least give the lockers shells or some other lethal ammunition. With no lethal ammunition for shotguns in the armory, Security is ironically tacitly encouraged to go and get slugs printed, where they probably would do so fairly rarely if a decent lethal round was offered by default, simply because printing slugs is so tedious. Removing all lethal shotgun rounds from the armory makes people naturally gravitate towards the best ones.

[Mogelix]

this is true and good however let us not stray away from the light of slug rework. perhaps when slugs are reworked both shells and slugs may live in harmony

Edited September 3, 2019 by Mogelix

[AmoryBlaine]

Why not a modified vendor?

[MattAtlas]

There is no way to balance shotguns. They will either be too overpowered or too weak.

I completely disagree with shotguns even being in the armoury, since there's no solution to their problem, and there should be some other kind of weapon added to fill the gap.

Let's not go back to the days of 2017 where every ninja/wizard/whatever was shot once with a slug and had to die to shrapnel. Which they still will here, even if you nerf the shotgun, because they'll be paincrit by it. Not considering the ability to get bone breaks etc.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Datamatt

[Rushodan]

Instead of slugs, why not buckshot? It seems to be fairly well balanced and less effective against armored targets while still offering a lethal option for the more fleshy unarmored antags.

Its not the turbo doom that slugs are, but it at least gives security an option. In fact it will probably lead to less people using slugs because if you have a box of buck and there is an emergency situation no officer is going to turn down an average shell to wait for slugs to be printed one by one.

Edited September 3, 2019 by SHODAN

[MattAtlas]

2 minutes ago, SHODAN said:

while still offering a lethal option for the more fleshy unarmored anta

This is the problem.

[Rushodan]

Just now, Datamatt said:

This is the problem.

I don't really understand? At range a burst of laser rifle is going to be far more effective, in fact the carbine even might be with its rapid fire potential. Buckshot has limited range due to spread, is much slower to fire and requires reloading far before both other lethal security options listed. Not to mention if you are an antag with a laser of your own any window is just going to get the shotgun officer destroyed.

[MattAtlas]

Just now, SHODAN said:

I don't really understand? At range a burst of laser rifle is going to be far more effective, in fact the carbine even might be with its rapid fire potential. Buckshot has limited range due to spread, is much slower to fire and requires reloading far before both other lethal security options listed. Not to mention if you are an antag with a laser of your own any window is just going to get the shotgun officer destroyed.

No. Buckshot is a one and done deal. You have to keep firing with a laser rifle to kill. Buckshot is instant death if you're hit by a volley and you're not lucky with armor absorbs. IB, bone breaks, tons of shrapnel.

Sure, it's worse than slugs, but still stupid for antags.

[Rushodan]

2 minutes ago, Datamatt said:

No. Buckshot is a one and done deal. You have to keep firing with a laser rifle to kill. Buckshot is instant death if you're hit by a volley and you're not lucky with armor absorbs. IB, bone breaks, tons of shrapnel.

Sure, it's worse than slugs, but still stupid for antags.

I haven't seen this to be the case, but for actual data on that I guess some testing will need to be done against unarmored and armored targets at different ranges. Being shot with any kind of weapon sucks, that is kind of the point.

[MattAtlas]

Just now, SHODAN said:

I haven't seen this to be the case, but for actual data on that I guess some testing will need to be done against unarmored and armored targets at different ranges. Being shot with any kind of weapon sucks, that is kind of the point.

Some weapons suck more. Point is, no one weapon has a significant chance to one hit kill other than shotguns with lethal rounds or antag AMRs/revolvers.

[Nantei]

Well, let's look at some actual stats here. You say slugs one-hit, but slugs do a flat 60 damage. Painful, but not one-hitting. Shotguns meanwhile have a much worse fire rate, with laser rifles easily doubling it. That means the actual damage per second of the laser riffle is about 20 more than the shotgun with slugs. 

Shells meanwhile do 78 assuming every pellet hits (this will not happen once there are more than two tiles between you and your target). And with how armor works, are going to be absorbed much easier. Shrapnel is now much less absurdly stupid, so I am not really that concerned about it being as round ending as it once was. Meanwhile against armor, with how shrapnel works, anyone in decent armor will basically laugh off shells. Slugs will perform better, but have no actual armor penetration. 

Meanwhile: Traitors have easy access to the mercenary vest, which is far stronger than people give it credit. 60 resistance across the board, no slowdown. This makes the shell pretty much completely useless, and it costs 4tc. 

What I would like to see is: Slug damage is reduced to 30 or 40, but is given good armor penetration, then readded to the armory.

What I am fine with is: Having literally any lethal ammunition for the shotgun added to the armory. The current non/less-lethal variants are complete garbage and not worth the time. I would rather the shotgun was replaced entirely with something else like .45 autos than we keep it as is. Because all removing slugs from the armory has done is gate the problem behind how much time you are willing to spend printing slugs. It's an awful band-aid fix in my opinion.

Edited September 4, 2019 by Nantei

[Scheveningen]

Slugs do not have good armor penetration whatsoever. They are low velocity munitions and are large projectiles. The opposite of which, constitutes as excellent at penetrating through armor. 5.56AP for example.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Slugs kill very fast and the armory is already full of crazy amounts of lethals. bad power creep -1

[Brutishcrab51]

Armory has .45 lethals, two laser rifles, two energy carbines and an ion rifle. The shotguns don't really fit their own niche, if they're used it's because people want to "mix it up" a little. What is their supposed niche?

[MattAtlas]

5 hours ago, Nantei said:

What I would like to see is: Slug damage is reduced to 30 or 40, but is given good armor penetration, then readded to the armory.

30 or 40 damage with good AP is probably going to be instant bone break, if anything  they'll most likely get IB and shrapnel. No.

As I said, shotguns should be axed from the armory and replaced. There's just no good way to balance them.

Edited September 4, 2019 by Datamatt

[Dark1Star]

Problem is, armor doesn't have a proper... penetration calculation. EG: you can get shot in the chest while wearing an armor vest, and the vest doesn't even stop the bullet, it "absorbs" some of the damage.  But that is it. If armor had proper pen values. Slugs and buckshot would not be overpowered. I garuntee you buckshot is not going to go through a RIG. Same with Slugs. If armor had proper values I think we could be looking at bone breaking and a lot of pain. A slug hitting you while you're wearing an armor vest is still going to hurt. The entire gun/armor balance is... honestly just really bad. It is set values and RNG. When if someone is wearing a damn kevlar vest, that 9mm shouldn't do SHIT.

[Scheveningen]

bullets will never split into shrapnel if armor fully blocks the blow

the armor system is pretty simple. Rimworld uses a more complex version of it though it was based on dwarf fort's armor system.

if, we say 100 armor versus bullet:

50% chance to fullblock, 50% chance to halfblock, 0% chance to take full damage

likewise, 50 armor versus bullet

25% to fullblock, 25% to halfblock, 50% to take full damage

50 armor versus an AP bullet of 25 armorpen

12.5% fullblock, 12.5% halfblock, 75% full damage

[N8-Toe]

I say a hard no to this. non armored antags also need to be considered in the equation. slugs wreck anything, a sec officer with slugs, lethal 45, and ballistic armor could fight God himself. if security absolutely needs slugs to handle a situation, their friendly coworkers in cargo exist. 

[Nantei]

7 hours ago, N8-Toe said:

I say a hard no to this. non armored antags also need to be considered in the equation. slugs wreck anything, a sec officer with slugs, lethal 45, and ballistic armor could fight God himself. if security absolutely needs slugs to handle a situation, their friendly coworkers in cargo exist. 

The only antag that does not have extremely easy access to armor is Vampire and Changeling. Changeling is already basically a trash fire that spawns in solitary, so no real need to be concerned there. Vampire could not give less of a shit about anything but shrapnel, and shrapnel is no longer as serious an issue for them as it used to be. And even then they can always get armor.  If we are balancing around antags not having armor, the laser rifle is bonkers powerful.

Similarly, this wouldn't be an issue at all if beanbags actually worked well. Maybe I should make a separate suggestion for that, but beanbags often do... literally nothing in my experience against armored people. And not much more impressive results against unarmored. 60 agony damage is pretty pitiful for such a slow firing gun, especially since it respects Siemen's coefficients just like a taser/baton.

[IAmCrystalClear]

Shells. High damage, short ranged, low AP, shrapnel damage.

Slugs. High damage, long ranged, high AP, (This does less "AP" than more "you just got hit with a giant ass metal brick travelling at breakneck speeds"), breaks bones.

Beanbags. Low damage, long ranged, low AP, breaks bones.

Tasers. Low damage, short ranged, high AP, HALOS damage.

Shells are now an effective "street sweeper" for dealing with that vampire that's sucking your cadet to death. Slugs are now punch-packing single-shot rounds for nailing that RIG-suit merc. Beanbags are now an effective way to hurt rioting crew from the safety of your shield-wall. Tasers are now a non-lethal takedown on that asshole miner RIG charging you with his pickaxe.

The shotgun is now a versatile weapon that is deadly in the right hands, but has several glaring drawbacks, filling a specific niche in most situations.

@SHODAN @Nantei

[Rushodan]

I like the suggestion above, specifically shotgun tazer ammo being ap. It would actually give it a use and leave room for non-lethal escalation.

[Alberyk]

No, thanks. We had this before and it was really terrible.

Voting for dismissal.

[DronzTheWolf]

On 04/09/2019 at 21:23, SHODAN said:

I like the suggestion above, specifically shotgun tazer ammo being ap. It would actually give it a use and leave room for non-lethal escalation.

Tazer shells exist in-game but they're ass.