Shotgun buff? Proposed Zdoom mod.

I always felt that the normal shotgun was a bit underpowered knowing that it shoots only 7 pellets, which is less than half of the double shotgun damage. This makes anything with revenant health or more a bit tedious to kill. It's been bugging me quite a bit during my D2Reload run.

I messed around with slade last night and worked out an idea for a quick mod. The shotgun would do extra damage (up to 40%) if the weapon was fired closer to the enemy. The offset would be the introduction of a small amount of vertical spread.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mtdlczwmm3xqi05/buffshotgun.wad?dl=0

SHTG A 0 A_FireBullets (5.6, 3, 7, 5, "BulletPuff") // The original shot
SHTG A 0 A_FireBullets(5.6, 3, 7, 2, "BulletPuff", 0, 192) // Extra pellets, but only functional up to 192 units from the player.

The immediate result is that the shotgun damage now scales better with the SSG in closer range, shaving off the need for a shell or two while killing higher health monsters. I might want to reduce the amount of extra pellets since it appears to be clearing more zombies at once. But I would like a second opinion.

I figure just changing 7 bullets to 8, 9 or 10 in the original shot, combined with increase spread slightly to compensate, should be enough. It's a trade-off between precision and extra firepower.

Examples:

A_FireBullets (8.4, 3.5, 10, 5, "BulletPuff")
A_FireBullets (7.3, 2.8, 9, 5, "BulletPuff")
A_FireBullets (6.2, 2.1, 8, 5, "BulletPuff")

BlackFish said:

I might want to reduce the amount of extra pellets since it appears to be clearing more zombies at once. But I would like a second opinion.

This sounds almost inevitable. We'd have to dabble into tinkering with the health of zombies, for "everything" to sit right.

That's my two cents. I haven't tried the mod.... Too much work for too little kick! :)

IMO it's not the shotgun that needs a buff, it's the SSG that is overpowered and needs a nerf in the amount of bullets it fires. But sadly, the health of the new enemies in doom 2 is balanced for the SSG IMO, so nerfing it would make the gameplay worse.

overpowered as it is (3 shells dmg for 2 used), the ssg is fine. i remember how badly nerfed the ssg was in quake and it's doom2's staple weapon.

rather buff the less used weapons as proposed. those are mainly shotgun + chaingun. i find the more powerful chaingun in valiant wonderful.

as for the shotgun, 140% sounds good. especially if it kills those lost souls in 1 shot, or pinkies reliably in 2.

Pirx said:

as for the shotgun, 140% sounds good. especially if it kills those lost souls in 1 shot, or pinkies reliably in 2.

Agreed.

Won't the shotgun be way too good as a sniper weapon, then? And very ammo-efficient, too?

VGA said:

Won't the shotgun be way too good as a sniper weapon, then? And very ammo-efficient, too?

you could always buff the bullet weaponry, too. the chaingun is good for stunning enemies, but ammo is not as abundant as shotgun shells, and it does less damage compared to 50 bullets versus 20 shells.

I agree. The only problem with the Chaingun is the inefficiency of the ammo, like you mentioned. The gun itself is fine, but meeting a monster like a Mancubus or a Baron means you will expend SO much ammo that it makes it inefficient.

The solution I believe is to increase the bullet max capacity and the ammo increase on clip, weapon and ammobox pickups.

the chaingun's still rather weak, though. even if you increased the amount of ammo a clipbox gives you to 100, that's still gonna do less damage than 20 shells. it either needs a damage boost, or a firerate boost. i mean, for god's sake, it's in slot 4 while the shotgun and SSG are both in slot 3. it should be an upgrade of some kind.

IMO the Chaingun is fine at what it does and that's clearing crowds of weak enemies while minimizing player damage. If you're trying to kill Barons or Mancubi with the chaingun you're doing it wrong.

U.O.D. said:

IMO the Chaingun is fine at what it does and that's clearing crowds of weak enemies while minimizing player damage. If you're trying to kill Barons or Mancubi with the chaingun you're doing it wrong.

Well, when you're out of ammo, and all you have left is 200 chaingun bullets, i think that's what you'll be using :P

Killing lonely mid-tier here and there with the chaingun is pretty solid, especially arachnotron or a mancubi.

Revenants have the annoying habit of retaliating to attacks by throwing one of their maybe-homing rockets, but when you make the bonedaddy dance the chaingun cha-cha, there's no rocket to be seen. Hurray for pain chances and rapid fire! Arachnotrons are also extremely susceptible to pain chance. Hell knights go away reasonably quickly, too. And of course the chaingun's a good sniping weapon.

Replacing damage 5d3 by 6d3 or 7d3 would give it a 20% to 40% increase in firepower; should be small enough not to upset balance too much but still noticeable enough to make the chaingun a viable weapon.

Make the shotgun shoot 9 pellets and increase the spread slightly so it isn't OP as a sniper, and you have the perfect shotgun buff, in my opinion.

The chaingun becomes pretty insane if you increase its rate of fire, but it is very fun to use and more practical for deathmatch.

While we're at it, rockets are pretty darn slow as-is, I'd suggest an ever so slight speed boost.. Though this is only really necessary for DM, as the monsters move quite slow.

Chaingun's pretty fine to me when you consider that you can burst fire it like a rifle and get really good accuracy with it.

I increased the shotgun attack pellet count to 10 without messing with anything else in a recent minimod of mine, and it's pretty darn great that way. It damage-balances it with the SSG and makes it function all the same.