I don't believe anyone has tested this either, but most won't invest that many certs into something that will reduce their damage overall in a scat max.
As I said in another thread. Low pellet damage outside of CQC and high CoF bloom means that sustained slug damage ends up fairly low at any kind of range. However, it does provide NC MAXes with an adequate weapon for medium range combat. (15-16s TTK at 60m, vs 10-11s for Mercies). You can also reduce the gap a bit by taking cover while reloading. Against infantry at medium range, I think Scat slugs and Mercies should be fairly even. The mercies have the higher sustained damage, but sustained damage is not as useful of a measure vs low-hp infantry. CoF bloom matters less when you get a free reset every time you need to aim at a new target. Also, we can not forget that slugs allows for instant kills on infantry if both arms hits.
Not as good at range. Slugs still suffer from the magazine size of the actual shotgun, as well as the reload time. Sure, the VS/TR AI weapons do less damage. But using slugs won't allow an NC MAX to perform better than the other 2 at range. A) the only NC AI weapon that has over 400 bullet velocity is the Mattock, which is the best for slugs. Everything else is at 325. Not too bad so far. B) fully certed AI slug guns will have 12 to 14 shots per arm. Fully certed Mercies (what I use) and Quasars (as Blueshifts are bad) have 75 bullets each. Misses with the NC variants are more punishing than with the others. Assuming all bullets hit in a 1-1 duel, the NC MAX will come out on top. But every miss will drop the chances quite a bit. Come reload time, the NC slugs have a fraction of a second longer to reload, not that important. But the fact that the others will still have at least half their magazine (so no DPS for 2 seconds for the NCM) combined with the inherent inaccuracy of AI weapons in general, means that in practice (unless you know a super secret strategy to make AI weapons hit exactly at the centerpoint) slugs aren't as good as the others. More damaging, sure. As accurate, sure. But all the MAXes accuracies are terrible, fit for laying down fields of fire.
