Explain Shotgun Spread

[andz]

Hi, I am confused about shotgun spread.
I am a sniper and I want to shoot enemies in meele range in the face. But no matter long or short barrel or the ammo type I always have the feeling so many pellets are missing. There is a gigantic gap, like 10% of the damage I do otherwise, from my shotgun barrel stare damage to my "full auto commando assault rifle concentrated fire"-burst.
How is the spread calculated? Why is it possible to have pellets missing at shot blank range?

[cypherusuh]

I'm not Epeli or dev team that knows actual mechanic, but it seems that each pellet has their own accuracy. If it missed the main target, it'll choose random target on its cone radius, calculate the accuracy based off New range percentage, and the rest is as usual.
Shotgun has really bad accuracy and it's capped at 80%. Leading shot will gives you much better accuracy on 2-tile range or more, while barrel stare requires you to shoot on 1 tile range (melee), which removes Leading Shot bonus and makes the accuracy, usually, a lot worse.
You can help the accuracy a bit by taze, flashbang, or trapping enemies, which reduced their evasion
As for lower damage, makes sure you choose the correct bullet. Check on the Combat Log on how many damage resisted each pellets. Imo don't use 12p, it offers nothing much compared to 6p or 20p. Only use 3p on bosses, since it's quite heavy and expensive.
The general rule of thumb for armor is, most animal other than closed psi beetle, and leather armor bandits / stalkers / lurker : 20p, while the rest is 6p. 3p is good against anything, but recommended for very heavy armor guys, such as protectorate or end-game robots

[andz]

Ohh so EVERY pellet has a chance to hit the target it has been fireat at and only pellets who MISS the target get another chance to hit witin spread radius? Nice.
I thought every pellet FIRST spreads and then hits within it's trajectory based on gun skill ( I thought so becuase so many pellets were missing in my initial tries ).

Basically my sniper get's wrecked by meele guys so I figured a shotgun would be a nice counter for meele. But it's seemingly not working for a evasion heavy knife figher-style enemy, although full auto assault rifle works.

[cypherusuh]

If you have 7 or more STR, AR works quite well. Although AR actually much more powerful than sniper in most case. due to Commando feat' free burst attack, it's better to use 2 AR.
If you have less than 7,SMG works well, same with pistols. You could use Chemical pistol + Cooked Shot feat to deal AoE attack with a chance to entangle/freeze/ignite enemies, or energy pistol + Practical Physicists to deal really high critical damage
If you still want to dabble with shotgun, just pick Leading Shot and Sixth Shell at the very least. Although Pellet Mayhem and Fragmented Chaos is also good