Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

In the order that you asked

Yes, the Armsel Striker is a good example of a shotgun with a drum magazine. The AA 12 can also mount a drum magazine. Most shotguns don't use drum magazines because they use integrated tube magazines.

12 gauge (18.53mm) is considered standard. 10 gauge (19.69mm) is considered overpowered. 8 Gauge (21.21mm) is what they used in Halo and everyone agrees that should dislocate shoulders.

No idea, I'm not up to date on the latest muzzle brakes.

Depends on what you're doing. Buckshot gets more accurate with range up until about 40-50 feet when the spread gets so big that it's unlikely any pellets will hit the target. Slugs work like typical bullets but their large size means they tend to punch through things like steel plate. Due to the fact that shotguns are smoothbore, most slugs are only good up to 100 feet.

edited 2nd May '16 7:39:39 AM by Belisaurius

What about the Saiga-12? Where does that count with drum magazine shotguns?

If a shotgun can be magazine fed then it can be fed by a drum magazine.◊

The Armsel Striker isn't a drum fed shotgun it is a revolver type shotgun, but there are also conversions to make Remington shotguns to accept magazines but at the cost of making the tube magazine useless/◊ so you'd be probably better off with getting a shotgun that already accepts a magazine.

• Is a drum feed feasible? Yes, just Google "Shotgun Drum Feed"
• What is a decent gauge size? 12. They come in regular and "magnum" variations.
• What's a good recoil compensator? No idea. If you are doing this for a story, I have found lurking in online gun forums an excellent source of information. Googling "forum shotgun best compensator" yeilded this page and this page. Based on some of the comments in those two forums, it seems that the defining what makes a "good" compensator is highly subjective. They are intended to reduce perceived recoil, so what works for one shooter might not for another.
• Is a buckshot round or slug round better? "Better" for what? I am myself very partial toward slug guns- IMHO they are the "Swiss Army Knife" of firearms- very useful for an incredibly wide range of tasks, from hunting deer to backwoods survival to home defense to manning a roadblock to defending a spaceship. But they are not ideal for everything. If you are writing this for a story then you need to give us more information about what your character needs a firearm for. Then we can answer the question.

BTW- you should know that there are two different types of "slug-guns". There are shotguns with smooth, straight barrels (so called "open choke" or "cylinder bore") in which the slugs are rifled (see here). Then there are shotguns with actual rifled barrels (see here). Rifled barrels are more expensive but fire more accurately. You can shoot pellets out of an open choke, and get a wide but useable pattern, but it isn't advisable to shoot anything out of a rifled barrel except the slugs designed for that, so in my opinion the open choke is more flexible.

I hope that answers some of your questions.

edited 2nd May '16 10:03:28 AM by DeMarquis

@ Beli: I have no idea what kind of shotguns you are using, but I get the feeling there sawed off if there only good that far out.

Shotguns are actualy more accurate then pistols, and those have about the ranges you mentioned.

edited 2nd May '16 10:33:23 AM by Imca

It's a quirk of the scattering. Shotguns are more accurate than pistols but past 50 feet or so the pellets are so widely scattered that there's something like a one in three chance of you hitting a man sized target with ANY of the pellets.

The pistol comparison is actually pretty apt as 00 buck is effectively shooting 6 9mm rounds at once.

It seems like your using feet where you should be using meters or yards though.

Shot should be good for about 50 meters.... Slugs about 150.

Entirely possible. It's been years since I last looked up the stats.

Personally I'd go with the FBI report over ballistic performance and just roll with #1 buckshot.

You can fire a 4 gauge(~24mm) from the shoulder. Pressure was probably lower than with military shotgun shells, but it still managed 400 m/s... I think these low muzzle velocities(or maybe what causes them) make the recoil of a shotgun inherently easier to handle than that of a similarly-powered typical military rifle.

At the farther part of the spectrum you have grenade launchers; Even bigger calibers and lower speeds, and often still usable from the shoulder.

The website "Box o' Truth" is a good place to get range and penetration data.

Here someone test 00 size Buck in a standard 12 guage shotgun (looks like a 24 inch barrel. He doesnt specify the choke). Basically, the size pattern he got rougly corresponded to the range in yards (ie, a 3 inch spread at 3 yards, a ten inch spread at 10 yards, and so on- this is a very rough summary of the actual results, however). Basically it was devastating at 3 yards, effectively all the pellets hit the same spot. Fewer and fewer pellets were on target past 20 yards.

This guy used a 12 gauge shotgun, open choke, barrel length unspecified. He tried various loads, including some designed for "low recoil". At 20 yards he got patterns ranging from 10 to 17 inches, depending on the specific load. He got a 27 inch spread at 45 yards, resulting in only 3 pellets hitting the torso sized target. Had he used a full choke instead of an open one, we can assume the patterns would have been tighter at farther ranges.

Shotgun performance is a function of gauge, choke, barrel length, pellet size, and load (regular or magnum). As you can see, there are lots of variables to consider.

Bear in mind that even if a pellet hits the target, there is no guarantee it will have enough penetration to get through heavy clothing, light cover, bone, etc. All firearms have that problem.

Just about everyone else has covered what you need. Shotguns are a very diverse weapon type and have been around since the earliest guns in one way or another. They literally have been made in just about every kind of action and feed option ever used. This includes lever action, bolt action, electrical ignition, semi-auto, auto, break action, pump, and even hybrid actions like pump/semi-auto. They have been fed by tube, muzzle loaded, internal magazine, revolver, drum, magazine, and even home made belt fed varieties have been made.

A few things to remember about a shotgun. It can load a surprisingly wide variety of projectiles. Everything from coins, to nails, salt, incendiary shots, slugs, shot, "chained shot", shot and slug, "Waxers", flechettes, taser slugs, mini-grenades, and a whole host of other things can and have been fired out of a shotgun. It can also fire a huge variety of less then lethal rounds like bean bag shot, baton shot, and even tear gas and rubber bullet/pellet cartridges. They have also been used with adapters with blanks to fire things like grenades and other projectiles.

As for gauge, hands down the most common gauge for shotguns for combat and hunting is 12 gauge. Other gauges have been made and used for both hunting and combat but 12 is the most common. The largest practical combat shotgun in use for people to carry is the Russian KS-23 family of shotguns. They were initially made from barrels deemed unsuitable for use in 23mm auto cannons but deemed strong enough for the shotgun. The latest iteration is the KS-23K a magazine fed bull pup shotgun but it is one the magazine fed varieties that can't fit a drum magazine because of the bull pup design. It's gauge would be equivalent to a 6 gauge.

On shot shells aside from pellet size the pellets come in three general flavors. Lead shot which is the most common found for hunting.Plated shot which is used for both hunting and military applications. There is also all copper or even steel shot. Lead tends to rapidly deform and expand especially in soft tissue but doesn't perform well in terms of penetrating bones or hard cover. Plated shot typically uses copper but can be found with other metals such as nickel. The plated shot can be fired out of more powerful cartridges and has better penetration such as through bone or cover. The solid shot obviously has the best penetration of the three.

Slugs have a huge amount of variety in design. They include plated, lead, plastic, plastic/lead, steel, and other materials. They basically share a range of designs similar to normal bullets. The most common ones are basically rifled cylinders with flat noses. A popular alternative to rifled slugs is saboted finned slugs. They can be used for everything from breaching doors, shooting engine blocks, big game, defeating soft body armor, etc. Basically whenever you need to hit something hard. Accuracy and range can vary widely depending on the type of round used.

Others have mentioned some of the popular shotguns you will find that can be drum fed like the AA-12 and Saiga 12. There are a couple other options as well in the Ak-12 which is basically an assault rifle platform converted into a shotgun and there are a few kits that convert pump actions into drum fed pump actions such as the Mossberg 870. Then there are weapons like the M26 MASS which is a underbarrel manually operated magazine fed shotgun. A few like the Pancor Jackhammer and Armasel Striker shotguns look like they have drums but are actually revolver like cylinders.

Somewhere in my profile is a link to a conversion chart for shotgun gauges to mm and inches.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I really appreciate it.

As for the "which is better for what" I was asking which was better for a more predictable and controlled shot without risk to others outside of the intended target.

BTW there have been tons of debates on Halo nation as to why the M90 has such a massive gauge and yet no one is ever shown suffering from the recoil. No one has come up with a definitive answer.

If you want minimal deviation slugs are usually the go to choice. Shot and buck spreads as it travels. Slugs though will over penetrate a lot more.

The Halo Shotgun is just an 8 gauge. The Russians are firing a 6 gauge without it destroying shoulders. It depends a lot on muzzle velocity. Keep in mind old coots like Jerry Miculek can speed fire a .50 cal Barret Semi-Auto rifle without destroying their shoulders the 8 gauge shouldn't be too hard to handle. Keep in mind professional military snipers have described the Barret Rifles as rather uncomfortable to fire because of the muzzle blast and recoil despite built in features to mitigate such issues.

edited 2nd May '16 7:20:04 PM by TuefelHundenIV

^^ There is an answer mentioned on the halopedia pages. Specifically the M45 varieties. (Which are from Halo Reach and onward.) It's called a magnetorheological recoil dampening system.

Its ammo also offers why it's 8 gauge. (Basically, it has to be owing to the prevalence of advanced body armor and energy shielding on the part of UNSC forces, Insurrectionists and the Covenant.)

edited 2nd May '16 7:26:17 PM by MajorTom

Humans in Halo tend to be either augmented soldiers or downright super soldiers.

It is possible that the M80 in Halo uses a large bore but low pressure load making its recoil fairly manageable.

"As for the "which is better for what" I was asking which was better for a more predictable and controlled shot without risk to others outside of the intended target."

A rifle.

Angelus: My thoughts exactly. You would need a fairly powerful cartridge to cause injury. As has been shown in a few videos here it is possible to fire some fairly large calibers without hurting yourself provided the muzzle velocity paired with projectile mass isn't excessive. Like that black powder large bore posted a while back.

Slugs? Thanks!

As for Halo shotguns, I always liked the M90 more than the M45. :)

If you're talking about recoil, you can pretty much ignore anything in the modern era because there is no real frame of reference. Why would you assume that a 4-guage shotgun in the 26th century is built with the exact same mechanisms as a shotgun in the 20th and early 21st centuries? Really, aside from the basics - "a barrel with a trigger that a projectile goes through" - I think the insides of a space rifle would be incredibly different from what we've been using for the last couple centuries.

Someone a few posts above mentioned the AA-12, which is a good start, but certainly not the end-all in terms of half a millennium's worth of recoil reduction technology.

To that end, if I see a work of science fiction set several hundred years in the future, I would expect someone shooting the space equivalent of a 50 cal with virtually no recoil to be the rule, rather than the exception.

edited 2nd May '16 9:21:36 PM by nman

Ya you do make a good point about recoil.

Is breach loaded when you "crack" a gun in two to reload?

No, thats break action.

Which is a type of breach loading, but by far not the only one.

Nman: Because Halo guns are based directly off of real life weapons and cartridges right down to muzzle velocities and cartridge types for a lot of human weapons. The 8 gauge they describe has muzzle velocities that are comparable to modern shotguns now.

This would not be a shoulder breaker and from the lore is the follow on from the verses M-45 family of weapons. It would be similar to firing slugs out of a Military Mossberg 500 series combat shotgun. Right down to parallel shotguns that are effectively the same like the Winchester 1897 Trench Gun and the Winchester Model 21 Trench gun both were used side by side for some time. In Halo it is the M-45 andthe M-90.

In short these guns wouldn't be shoulder breakers and the addition of the recoil system that Tom linked to would only make them easier to handle in the first place. Basically the Halo Human guns are actually pretty realistic if anachronistic weapons.

edited 2nd May '16 10:14:50 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The bigest issue they have is how many lack iron sights.

I mean linked optics are great and all, but aiming them without having to wear a helmet would be a nice plus.

Oh ok! Break action! Gotcha!

I assume the anachronism of Halo weapons is perhaps due to technological setbacks in the preceding 500 years or (out of universe) to show just how large the technological gap is between Humanity and the Covenant.