Shotgun
A standard close combat weapon, the Shotgun is available to purchase from the start of the conflict.
The shotgun is a unique weapon intended for close range combat. The shotgun is capable of putting out a significant amount of damage at targets within close range, it fires multiple pellets per attack, 6 pellets with regular ammo and 5 with alloy ammo. This weapon is very effective in contending with high health enemy forces in the early game, such as Terror units.
The weapon struggles significantly against targets at mid to long range, it suffers significant aim penalties past 6 to 10 tiles (dependent on firing mode), which makes reliably hitting targets difficult.
Once researched, the shotgun can be loaded with alloy ammunition. Unique to the shotgun is that this upgrade increases the per pellet damage by +20, however it reduces the amount of pellets the gun fires from 6 to 5. If all pellets strike this still represents a major damage increase potential from 150 to 225, and uniquely means each individual pellet has a higher damage range than an alloy ammo enchanced rifle, albeit with major accuracy penalties.
Upgrading this weapon to use alloy ammo should be considered a high priority, the ammo allows X-COM to have an effective method of contending with enemy terror forces such as Reapers or Cyberdiscs, which are a major obstacle during the mandatory early game base assault.
Statistics
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Ammo
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Firing Time Unit Notes
The following lists how many times a soldier can fire the gun by shot type continuously in any given round and the remaining percentage of any left over TUs that cannot be spent as a shot.
- Aimed 3 shots, 1% remaining TUs
- Snap: 4 shots, 0% remaining TUs
