What is the difference between the three shotguns?

The fact that currently you can miss a ton of pellet shots and still 2-hit kill makes the semi-autos good. If the pump actions are one-hit kills, they will likely only be so when firing perfectly dead center. A perfect accuracy one-hit kill would be fairly hard to do, masked by current shotguns doing so much damage that you don't need perfect accuracy.

Essentially, pumps can either be 167x6 where they wouldn't even one-shot a shielded heavy and a single pellet missing means the target is still alive, or they can end up 200x6 where you can afford to miss a single pellet and headshots will one-hit kill anyone. In either case they would require a lot more user accuracy than the current shotguns do with such a slow refire rate that you're dead if you miss.

Shredthewolf,

I personally use the Mauler and Piston (== Barrage and Nighthawk), and I've been leaning toward the former. The 1 degree tighter pellet spread between them is very noticeable and I do get kills at longer 'ranges' (though we're still talking shotguns here). The Piston is monstrous in terms of TTK, but I end up spraying a lot when I get surprised and wasting ammo. The Mauler on the other hand encourages me to aim my shots even in CQC and I have no ammo problems with it. The Sweeper ( == Haymaker) has two more rounds with Ext. Mag and is good for room-clearing, but as a LA I just take advantage of my Mauler's 2s fast reload to pop out somewhere and then come back to the fight.

The auto shotguns did recently get a huge buff in terms of recoil and cone of fire increase per shot. The improved control affected all shotguns, but because you don't always fire semi-autos at their full firing rate the full-auto shotguns seem to benefit much more. I'd trial them and see what you think.

I'm also not looking forward to you with a shotgun. You're pretty fierce competition as a Light Assault.

Completely off-topic (maybe), but your sig is well, rather bad.

Back on topic, I don't see the usefulness of a pump-action shotgun in this game. All the pump does is chamber a next round, so you'd be looking with a longer TTK due to the time between shots. Changing how a shotgun reloads does not automatically make it capable of one-shotting a shielded heavy if you land a headshot with all the pellets, that should either be not allowed at all or something all shotguns are capable of.

Just had this idea. Allow the pump-action to reload 1 round at a time and fire or a longer "full reload". They already have different "cycle" times for clips that have rounds left and an empty one, just allow the pump action to reload 1 shell, pump, and shoot if the player interrupts the reload animation by firing. This way you can have a better response time to someone showing up when you are reloading, or allow you to fire 1 round at a time with a much longer time between shots but with the ability to continuous fire until you are out of ammo.

Does anyone know if the Laser attachment reduces the spread angle (ie size of the pattern) or just the COF (where the center of the pattern will be) or both?

Know how people quote hilariously stupid statements from other forum users and immortalize it in their signature? It's the same thing.

Increased damage is how shotguns are balanced against autoshotguns in virtually every FPS game. Reality doesn't make a difference here. Pumps are usually one-hit kills because they'd be too weak otherwise due to the delay between shots.

I'd say the biggest issue with them being a OHKO in CQC is that it would take away any and all tactics and just boil down to who spots who first. At least if I'm near cover/a corner and I'm getting shot at and taking damage, I have a chance at surviving, but if someone just up and killed me with one shot (not even double Hacksaws can do a OHKO), I'd be pretty quick to hit the uninstall button. Plus, give a pump action slug with the same OHKO capacity as the shot ammo and suddenly Vanu LAs can be better head-shot snipers than Infiltrators thanks to no bullet drop and essentially sniper-file grade accuracy, further diminishing what Infils can do to LAs. Giving Infils that kind of weapon, while something I'd be completely behind, would just drive the average player to whine like unholy mothers for the Infils to be nerfed, or the pump-action slug to be nerfed, affecting everyone else who uses it.

The biggest issue with them NOT being OHKO is that semi and auto shotguns can 2-hit kill already. The disadvantage to pumps are that if you miss, you're most likely dead. It's like the difference between bolt-action sniper rifles and semi-autos. Shotguns are just the CQC version.

Oh yes they can. All depends on how many pellets hit from each arm.