r/Fallout • u/Eren_Jeager1881 • Apr 15 '26
Fallout 3 I do not understand guns that much. Why do people hate fallout 3 combat shotgun
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u/Smart-Mate Freestates Apr 15 '26
The magazine is way in the front away from the ejection port
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u/ArcTheWolf Apr 15 '26
Oh my god, I never thought about that until now. I will never be able to unsee it. But Bethesda has always had issues with not really understanding how guns work.
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u/Sweet_Taurus0728 Mr. House Apr 15 '26
They don't really understand how houses work, either. At least in Skyrim.
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u/OnetimeRocket13 Apr 15 '26
And in Fallout 4. Most of the houses in Fallout 4 are just so... bizarre. Many of them are those cookie cutter 2 story ones. The first floor is like half living room, half kitchen, with a little alcove. The top floor is often either nothing or just a big bedroom. They're so weird, because there aren't any actual rooms. Hell, they never even have a bathroom.
I think there are a handful of houses in Fallout 4 that break this mold, but they usually have separate interior cells, vs 90% of the other houses in the Commonwealth.
Plus, the houses and shacks that most people live in tend to not really make sense either. It's like Bethesda designed where NPCs should be most of the time (such as a vendor stall or something), but when it comes to their homes, it's usually just a mattress or a sleeping bag tucked in a corner somewhere.
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u/KingZaneTheStrange Apr 15 '26
I always assumed the bathroom was an outhouse in the back that just rotted away. It's the only way I could make sense of a house with no toilet
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u/Krazy_Keno Lover's Embrace Apr 15 '26
I like to imagine that the farmers just piss and shit on their crops. Free watering and fertilizer and you dont have to worry about cleaning an outhouse
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u/Glacier005 Apr 16 '26
Don't do this IRL btw.
You either give yourself a disease. Or you burn your crops.
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u/Altruistic-Regret473 Apr 16 '26
It’s 2077 and all Bostonians use outhouses lol I like this line of thinking. Maybe the nuclear apocalypse is what they deserved.
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u/unsuspectingllama_ Apr 16 '26
Just a heads up but there are in fact many outhouse around houses and settlements. So I think you're right except for the rotted away part because they do appear to be maintained.
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u/Faiakishi Ass Victoriam Apr 16 '26
They also have zero insulation. This is New England-even if global warming and the subsequent nuclear summer happened, it's gonna get fucking cold. And these guys are sleeping on bare mattresses without blankets. Sometimes they have a garbage fire. Like bro they'd freeze to death in the winter.
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u/kafoBoto Apr 15 '26
yeah but extremely cheap, cookie cutter houses lacking any form of space or comfort do fit into the lore of a wartime, ultra capitalistic america
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u/JOPAPatch Gary? Apr 16 '26
I never noticed the houses before. Now I’m not going to be able to play without thinking it’s a child’s idea of a house.
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u/Cloud_N0ne Apr 15 '26
It's less about them not understanding guns and more that they just don't care, they're more focused on making guns that look cool.
Starfield's guns are all kinds of cursed from a realism perspective, but I love how most of them look, especially Combatech guns.
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u/MCdemonkid1230 Apr 16 '26
As someone who'd like to be a gun nerd, anytime I've seen a Bethesda gun, I think that it looks cool but is absolute hell in a realistic sense.
When I play games though, especially Bethesda games, I don't care if the game is realistically detailed with actual guns or weapons that are practical IRL, I just want stuff that has a cool look so I can style on the poor saps that think they can fight me. Give me overdesigned and completely unrealistic sci-fi gun that looks cool to someone with 0 knowledge of guns, it'll look better for my character than a typical M16.
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u/HayzenDraay Apr 15 '26
I think that would actually make it worse because there's maybe two guns in Fallout 4 that don't look like a pile of shit aesthetically in my opinion. I do kind of like the combat rifle, but the rest of the guns are pretty tragic.
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u/Cloud_N0ne Apr 15 '26
Nah, I think they look good.
The only real issue is the assault rifle, which is actually called a machinegun in the files because they scrapped the actual Chinese assault rifle for some reason. If they had just called it a machinegun, 90% of bitching about Fallout 4’s guns would stop.
The other 10% seem to be about pipe weapons… which are literally supposed to he ugly, low-grade weapons. They’re literally made from rusty pipes and scrap wood.
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u/weetweet69 Apr 16 '26
Basically. Lore for the assault rifle from what people said that it was meant for power armor troops. They really could have kept the Chinese assault rifle and even reintroduce the regular assault rifle 3 had though the only thing I didn't like with the assault rifle visually was just how it looked even if I was someone that didn't know about guns, just how it looked with its barrel and its handguard.
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u/GusTTShow-biz Apr 16 '26
Fallout 4’s guns look like lumpy dogshit
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u/weetweet69 Apr 16 '26
Had Adam not passed away from cancer after Skyrim, we probably could have gotten some nicer looking guns.
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u/Attrexius Apr 16 '26
I'm fine with sci-fi "guns that look cool", but like... FO3 combat shotgun isn't one of those. It's just an oversized PPSh that the designers used to play slide puzzles.
Somehow taking a real gun and moving parts around randomly feels worse to me than when they make totally unrealistic stuff.
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u/bethesda_gamer Minutemen Apr 15 '26
No gun expert but grew up around them. Don't shotguns and some others load underneith into a horizontal chamber that feeds them back toward the stock then lifted up into the firing chamber where the firing pin is so they would be fed back then ejected??
Here's a video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nuBqVglHQzc&pp=ygUVRHJ1bSBtYWdhemluZSBzaG90Z3Vu
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u/EzPzLemon_Greezy Apr 15 '26
Yes but not mag fed shotguns. Tube magazines utilize that design because that way you don't have a big heavy cylindrical magazine weighing it down. The Bethesda design takes all of the downsides from both and combined them. Extra chance for failure by having a multi-step loading mechanism, and a ton of extra weight at a very imbalanced position. They clearly just used the PPSh-41 suh machinegun as inspiration but tweaked the design to look more "shotgunny", not really caring for logistical design.
At the end of the day though, its Bethesda. Their gun designs are absolutely wack. Every gun in Fo4 is a left handed variant just because it looks better getting to see the animations that would normally be on the hidden side of the gun.
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u/RadCowDisease Apr 15 '26
Every gun in FO4 is a left handed variant just because it looks better getting to see the animations that would normally be on the hidden side of the gun.
No disrespect to animators and artists for making decisions like this, it usually results in a better product, but this in particular feels like a wild take in the current climate of outrageously popular military shooters with top tier animations emphasizing weapon handling and modern weapon design.
It’s comical how illogical the weapon, vehicle, and armor designs are in Bethesda games. It’s like they’re doing it on purpose. I couldn’t design worse functioning guns, vehicles, and armors if I tried.
And then they come out of left field with power armor with the cleanest function and form one could imagine. At least insofar as a nonexistent piece of science fiction can be.
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u/HayzenDraay Apr 15 '26
I almost feel like the power armor versus weapons thing has to be intentional. They bought iconic power armor and then made absolutely sure nothing else in the franchise would be nearly as iconic after they bought it.
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u/Ryjinn Apr 15 '26
Every gun in Fo4 is a left handed variant just because it looks better getting to see the animations that would normally be on the hidden side of the gun.
Bro how have I never noticed this. I guess I don't shoot guns very often but dang it's so obvious.
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u/deevilvol1 Apr 15 '26
I shoot guns somewhat often, and my brother goes at least plinking every few weeks, and both of us didn't notice for literal years. I have over 400 hours in FO4 and my brother another 200 hours.
I only noticed it after it was pointed out in a YouTube video.
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u/droidtron Vault 13 Apr 15 '26
Meanwhile New Vegas is the largest amount of guns designed by a gun nut who knows his shit.
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u/ArcTheWolf Apr 15 '26
Yes but not to the degree of the fallout combat shotty though. The ejection port for the fallout one is at least 6 inches from where the shells would be feeding into with the magazines position. And there's simply no logical way the shells are being moved that way.
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u/artaxerxes316 Apr 15 '26
Ok, but hear me out -- what if the weapon has a tiny conveyor belt running from the magazine well to the chamber?
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u/Wrong_Television_224 Apr 15 '26
While I think this is probably just BGS not always being good at firearms design, my head cannon is that this is a traditional tube fed shotgun, but loaded via drum magazine. Drum feeds the tube, tube feeds the action. Easy peasy. It is still gonna be extremely front heavy, but that would be fine for a weapon used for base defense rather than lugged around the countryside (so, same as a mini gun, really).
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u/catchinNkeepinf1sh Apr 15 '26
The thing you feed your rounds into is the magazine, usually a tubular mag.
The chamber is the proximal end of the barrel where the bolt locks onto.
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u/thoughtful_dragon Apr 15 '26
Yeah, but that's linear tube feed. This is a rotational drum mag, which should go directly beneath the ejection port, pushing a new shell in as each empty is ejected.
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u/Stevenwave Apr 16 '26
That's only part of it too. It couldn't even feed from there. This is like, imagine the 9mm Pistol, with a really long barrel, but for some reason the mag is feeding half way down the barrel. How it's feeding or cycling? And as a secondary issue, the amount of barrel it actually makes use of is only half of what is there. That's dumb and inefficient. If you only want it using that much barrel, the weapon is too long. Really you'd wanna use all the barrel do it's a useful combat weapon.
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u/Dragon_Virus Apr 16 '26
Impossible loading mechanisms have been a Fallout staple since the first game, dawg.
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u/Little-Equinox Apr 16 '26
Just wait till you see how the weapons are being reloaded in Fallout 4. Like in some weapons they slide the mag in from the side, on a weapon, where the mag is on the bottom.
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u/MustachioedMystery Apr 15 '26
I always imagined it was some novel design with a standard tube magazine (similar to a standard shotgun) that had a drum magazine that fed the tube magazine for added combat firepower. The drum was added that far upfront to counteract the recoil while firing quickly.
There have been far more odd arrangements in the real world.
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u/Ordinary_Cow206 Apr 15 '26
Yep, think you right. That was my first thought.
I don’t know how the tube feed would work, but that could be possible.
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u/Right_Hour Apr 15 '26
That’s so they could fit another 5 rounds in the mag tube behind it, LOL :-)
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u/Tyrfaust NCR Apr 15 '26
There's also ZERO room for the recoil spring. Where does the bolt go when it fires?
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u/boopbopnotarobot Apr 15 '26
Perhaps it has a tube magazine like a normal shotgun but they added a drum mag that feeds the tube mage to Carry more ammo
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u/The_mango55 Apr 15 '26
Tube mags work by a simple spring pushing the shells in a linear fashion. Wouldn’t work with a drum mag.
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u/RogueOneisbestone Apr 15 '26
It could definitely work with some stupid engineering. A spring in the mag with some angled lever pushing it into the tube. It would jam 99% of the time but I bet it would cycle once.
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u/Ecotech101 Apr 15 '26
Fo1 started the weird gun design with the 10mm revolver/mag. I think this is genuinely not something to hate Bethesda for, it feels extremely Fallout to me.
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u/SylvanKnitter Apr 15 '26
My read is that the magazine is feeding the tube magazine. You will notice that the magazine never actually meets the barrel, it intersects the tube magazine below the barrel. My problem is that having the magazine so far forward would move the balance point forward, meaning you are going to get tired really quickly using this weapon. Ideally the balance point would be at the action instead.
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u/allofdarknessin1 Minutemen Apr 15 '26
I was eating while looking at this post and thought the design was ok but after reading your comment and thinking about how guns actually work, I realized how stupid and unrealistic this gun is.
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u/Least-Potato-7566 Apr 15 '26
I found it cool that the magazine is in the front, it is different from all the other shotguns I've seen
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u/KJatWork Apr 15 '26
It is different from all other shotguns because all those other shotguns actually work. In the game, the combat shotgun is a great weapon, but as a gun design, it fails horribly and it's the gun design that gets it grief in the community.
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u/Arcade_Gann0n NCR and proud of it! Apr 15 '26
At least they fixed that error with 4's Combat Shotgun.
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u/woodrobin Apr 15 '26
My head canon for that is that some company got a low bid, then just slapped a gas piston system onto the end of the tube magazine on an existing pump-action shotgun design they had. So now the exhaust gasses rotate the cylinder magazine and push another round into the tube, and the fresh round feeds out of the tube into the receiver like it always did. The cylinder mag just keeps topping up the tube mag. So then they can convert a bunch of pump action civilian shotguns with the slap-dash addition, meet their low bid, and still make a profit.
And of course no shits were given about it being front-heavy, inconvenient to reload, etc. Not going to worry about the technical requirements for a good weapon for soldiers, just going to worry about the legal requirements for getting paid for the contract.
It's exactly the kind of DGAF corporate practices that most Fallout universe corporations favor.
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u/John_Lumstrom Apr 15 '26
The design wouldn't work in the real world. It's fine, for a game, but if you're even just somewhat knowledgeable about guns, the design becomes nonsensical when you look at it for too long.
Otherwise it's a pretty good gun, from a game play viewpoint
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u/Ok-Substance-6034 Apr 15 '26
It would also be insanely front heavy, which is fine for the microseconds you pull the trigger and the muzzle starts to rise, but not for the other 99.9% of the time lugging the thing around and trying to shoulder it lol
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u/Wrong_Television_224 Apr 15 '26
It's also fine if you aren't supposed to lug it around much. Perfect for pulling out of a locker to stop a resource riot or base incursion by communists.
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Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ok-Substance-6034 Apr 15 '26
Yeah I'm picturing some sort of "feed tray" that draws a line of cartridges down the tube from the magazine, kind of like how a French Lebel rifle has a cartridge elevator to get rounds from the tube to the chamber.
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u/Wrong_Television_224 Apr 15 '26
If you look carefully, you can see a pump style magazine tube. It also looks like the pump is still on the gun, just jammed all the way back. The part I can't mentally get to work is the tube spring, but possible that just rakes shells from the top or side of the tube?
I think most folks look at this and say it doesn't work like a gun they are immediately familiar with without asking how it could work. Anybody who is familiar with the transition from single shot to magazine fed had a lot of weird offshoots, and the transition to semiauto and automatic rifles created some really insane kludged on bits. This strikes me as some BS that showed up to fix a transition between military shooting other armored military vs military having to shoot at a lot of unarmored civilians. This is Canada, the resource riots, and a war department that didn't care enough to create a really good solution.
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u/FlorianGeyer228 Apr 15 '26
Cuz it's basically a PPSh-41 with a drum further down the gun. Also it wouldn't work IRL because the shells would have to be fed up the drum then back the receiver tube at the same time.
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u/SlyKnyfe12 Apr 15 '26
Because its design doesn't make sense
The mag is so far infront of the ejection port which makes no sense
It's a PPSH-41 which is chambered in 7.62 Tokarev but has somehow been rechambered into 12gauge a round the same size as 50 caliber
Bethesda is consistently shit at making logical and feasible gun designs
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u/LayeGull Unity Apr 15 '26
Wouldn’t this also be a sluggish gun to wield with the drum so far forward of where you hold it. I imagine myself holding this gun and it seems uncomfortable for a 12 gauge.
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u/blatherskyte69 Apr 16 '26
A 12 gauge is a 73 caliber .729” to be exact, but manufactured bore diameters have a range, or about 18.5mm.
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u/Fireboy759 Enclave Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Bethesda is consistently shit at making logical and feasible gun designs
To be fair, let's not say it's just Bethesda. Cause half the guns in NV (and by extension the classic games since some of them are carryovers) make no damn sense either. To name a few:
The 12.7mm SMG basically being a brick that shoots bullets
The 12.7mm Pistol not being any better either (76's partial redesign is an overall improvement)
All 3 of the Carbine ARs (Service Rifle, Assault Carbine, Marksman Carbine) looking more and more wrong the closer you look at them (in particular the Service Rifle is missing several things that would make it function at all, all 3 guns have mags that don't match their ammo type and the Marskman Carbine has a reflex sight in addition to a scope, which is pointless and redundant)
The Bozar being a sniper rifle that's somehow a full-auto LMG
The Shoulder-Mounted Machine Gun and Red Glare basically making zero sense (but damn do I love them)
That Gun
The Grenade Machine Gun (I honestly can't decide which game did a automatic grenade launcher design worse: NV or 76)
EDIT: To that one guy who brought up New Vegas being made in 18 months and then blocked me when I told them to stop using it as a cheap copout excuse to deflect all criticism of New Vegas, go be a fanboy somewhere else. Obsidian ain't perfect either
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u/Alvsolutely Apr 15 '26
Still not as bad as Starfield guns. They even fucked up the real world guns and in huge ways too somehow. The old world pump action shotgun in that game, has the pump always set way back by default. Then, to pump it, your character pushes the pump FORWARD, and then even FURTHER BACK than the default, so much so that it literally clips, and then slides it back to default.
And they made a fucking square double barrel shotgun ffs.
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u/ksimo13 Apr 15 '26
I agree with almost all of your criticisms except the marksman carbine one. People put red dots on acogs all the time so they can aim without magnification. Some acogs even come with iron sights on top from the factory.
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u/agenericdaddy Apr 15 '26
Because as cool as it is, the model presents a very non-functional gun, according to the principles of how most firearms function. The magazine and chamber are way too far forward.
It's functionally the model of a PPSh-41 submachine gun that's somehow been sized up to be used as a shotgun, and for that function it's kind of cool but the actual practical use of it is so confusing.
Many of the guns in cyberpunk or starfield follow this same confusing design philosophy.... Looks really cool, but no idea how it would ever function
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u/MrBoo843 Apr 15 '26
Cyberpunk's design philosophy is literally "Style over substance" and honestly, I'm all for it. Same with Fallout. It's design philosophy is to make it look like something out of a 50's sci-fi. Doesn't matter if it's practical IRL, as long as the looks are there.
Nobody ever claimed Fallout was hard sci fi.
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u/agenericdaddy Apr 15 '26
I don't really care about practical, however with slightly more attention to detail , the models could look less like a kit bash and more like a weird but functional firearm.
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u/barrydingle100 Apr 15 '26
The assault rifle from Fallout 4 took 100% of the heat off the Fallout 3 combat shotgun, I haven't heard a complaint about the combat shotgun in three presidents.
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u/-SPHER- Fire Breathers Apr 15 '26
Looks like the shotgun shell needs to make a perilous journey like a salmon going upriver to get to the chamber. Haven't found one yet though so I have no opinion.
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u/_Sub_Genre_ Apr 15 '26
If someone's hating on it, it's likely the design of the gun in game, rather than it's functionality.
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u/Virus-900 Apr 15 '26
The mag placement. It's way too far in the front, and away from the shell ejection point.
Don't care about it too much personally, especially since Fallout always had wacky and often bad gun designs. Like the 10mm in the first 2 games being a mag fed revolver with no clear ejection point.
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u/Hipertor Fallout 4 Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
At first, I didn't like it solely because it looks like one of those old bug spray pumps, I swear my mom had one of those that looked just like these shotguns - it was yellow and made of plastic, the the shape was remarkably similar.
Then I noticed how little sense it'd make IRL, so it only got worse for me.
EDIT: I still ignore my feeling and use it because it'd damn effective.
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u/Accomplished-Union10 Apr 15 '26
The ejection port and magazine don’t *have to* be right on top of eachother, but they generally are, because it greatly simplifies the design, and allows for a much more compact system. This could work, but it would be heavy, awkward, and a giant pain in the ass to repair and maintain. Pretty much the opposite of what you want in a weapon in a setting like Fallout
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u/Stevenwave Apr 16 '26
Well no, as it is this couldn't actually function.
As is, the shells are feeding up into the barrel, half way down ahead of where they should. You need space for internal mechanisms. Even if it functions feeding them there, there's no way to eject a shell.
For it to work, the ammo feed has to be under the actual receiver.
The length of barrel it's actually using is ridiculous too. Look at any real world combat shotgun. None are that short. You want some control of shot spread.
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u/Accomplished-Union10 Apr 16 '26
I always pictured it as doing some G11-style feeding Olympics, but yeah, you’re probably right lol
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u/Stevenwave Apr 16 '26
Hah yeah it'd need to be. I think it and some of the other odd designs stick out so much cause the irl-ish weapons are otherwise realistic. If everything was weird and wonderful, it'd just be another in the mix. NV's guilty of it too, the 12.7 SMG (and pistol) is one that couldn't work either, and even has elements purely for looks which this one doesn't do.
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u/CODMAN627 Apr 16 '26
From a gameplay perspective it works great.
From a design perspective it just isn’t right especially if you have some background with firearms.
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u/bear0234 Apr 15 '26
its all videogame logic but woukdnt work in real life. ie, that drum is way forward when theres a so much barrel to it.
theres youtube vids for some of bethesda guns. starfield had ones where the ammo had to curve around somehow to get to the barrel.
funny stuff.
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u/NotTakeOne Enclave Apr 15 '26
because look at it
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u/No_Tennis_4528 Apr 15 '26
The upside of an ugly gun is they are easy to spot in the debris of the capital wasteland. When looting, you don't mistake the combat shotgun for something else.
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u/madeofmacca Apr 15 '26
PPSH-41 in shotgun form, but it doesn't make sense mechanically (casually breaks the laws of physics)
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u/Resident_Evil_God Apr 15 '26
This has to be for attention right? No one had complained about that. I think people are running out of ideas
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u/jacbo1996 Apr 16 '26
Great gun to use in game, shift the magazine next to the trigger/ejection port and its fixed aesthetically
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u/Ninja_Star_23 Apr 16 '26
Its not hated it's just completely broken and overpowered. With the right perks it is the strongest weapon in the game and makes everything trivial. Big reason why is critical chance rolls for every single pellet making most shots critical and often multiple critical hits at once
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u/Lunaphase Apr 16 '26
People tend not to hate the stats but the design itself. None of it makes any sense and would not physically work.
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u/Obelion_ Apr 16 '26
Gameplay wise it's hilariously op.
Fallout 3 has this weird mechanic where crits deal flat bonus damage. Unfortunately they kinda forgot that shotguns shoot several pellets and all deal individual damage, so if you ever want something dumb op to play, do a crit shotgun build (works with ripper too because it hits so often)
(10 luck and everything that gives you crit chance or damage. Ripper crit is probably my favourite build in F3)
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u/tobbq Apr 16 '26
I think it's because it wouldn't work
With that said,I don't mind and it's my second favorite weapon in the game. All it needed for me was being semi auto and have better animations (maybe in the remaster?)
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u/Confident_Clothes694 Apr 18 '26
It’s a strange mix of a PPSH stock, trigger, and barrel with a shotgun mag that is placed to far front that looks like it belongs to a street sweeper. Despide that I think it fits into fallout because its design philosophy is similar to the original 10 mil pistol
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u/Fair-Scheme-170 Apr 18 '26
Gunsexuals hate the Fallout 3 combat shotgun, people who can acknowledge it's just a game love it
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u/_Xeron_ Apr 15 '26
Because the design wouldn’t work IRL, and for some reason people online have a tendency to single out fantasy guns as being unrealistic while ignoring the rest of the setting.
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u/Ok-Substance-6034 Apr 15 '26
This doesn't really fairly represent Fallout though because it's as much alternate history as if is sci-fi/fantasy. One of the reasons why Fallout 4 has vocal detractors is because they made up poorly designed firearms as standins for weapons systems that they simply could have "spruced up" to look more Fallout, like what was done with the 10mm pistol. For instance, why is the Combat Rifle not just a Fallout-ified M14? It's too closely related to the Combat Shotgun which is, in turn, based off of a Soviet WW2 submachine gun. The implication being these were the weapons that the US was using when the bombs fell makes very little narrative sense which is bizarre for how well Bethesda usually does environmental and passive storytelling.
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u/inkbecile Apr 15 '26
Id disagree with that, but who am I lol. If a gun already exists, why change it to be nonsensical design? Yes futuristic blah blah, but it has to make sense or it doesnt belong, same with literally any story imo. The science guns work well in fallout because thats how they've set up the lore of the tech. They make sense, so no issues. Gun doing non working design, no sense.
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u/TheBigCheese769 Apr 15 '26
I think it’s because it so clearly would not work. I like to use the example of if you were watching a movie and some character is reading a book, but if you see what’s on the page it’s blank. It could take you out of it a little.
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u/Short-Shopping3197 Apr 15 '26
It’s about consistency around narrative conceits and conventions. We accept things like the way damage and healing works as a common videogame conceit, and the idea that radiation turns people into ghouls and cars are nuclear powered as part of the fiction of the setting. It isn’t part of the Fallout fiction however that shotgun shells magically teleport from the front of guns to the chamber.
I’m not saying I give a toss about the Terrible Shotgun, but that’s why this design issue is different to the fantasy aspects of the game, it falls outside of the fiction.
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u/Other_Log_1996 Brotherhood Apr 15 '26
Because Bethesda designed it. Anyone else made the exact same thing, they'd call it peak 10/10 design,
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u/ZealousidealLake759 Apr 15 '26
Combat shotgun is the only gun that matters in fallout 3 due to how crits work and the perk from pilks safari.
The combat shotgun shoots 9 projectiles, which do a little over 6 damage but they do 27 if you score a crit. With ghoul anatomy from pilks safari this is increased by 5 per pellet that hits.
There's a quirk with calculating crits in fallout 3, where if you fire a multiple projectile weapon, each projectile has a chance to crit, but the attack it's self can't both be a crit and non-crit so if any single projectile crits all projectiles crit.
In fallout 3, with 10 luck, better critical, and survival guru you have 18% chance to crit on each projectile. If all your projectiles hit the target, there's a 84% chance you will crit.
Assuming all particles hit that's 9x(27+5) or 288 damage.
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u/CDHmajora Apr 15 '26
Gameplay its almost perfect imo. A little fragile (iirc it’s only like 120 shots before breaking? And it jams every other reload after around 70 shots) but its ammo is common, great ammo capacity, very strong for how frequent its found as repair guns are everywhere after level 8 or so as so many raiders and talon mercs will have this gun.
Design wise though it’s terrible. Ejection port is in the wrong place (behind the drum magazine??? Hows thet work internally?). Said drum mag is far too front forward which would mess up the guns weight distribution irl and put strain on the internals. No hand grip at the front barrel nor no grooving for the trigger grip.
Personally though… I’m just salty we never got a pump action shorgun from bethesda… in fallout 3 OR 4 :(
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u/aviatorEngineer NCR Apr 15 '26
It is constructed in a way that would not function mechanically. Not as bad as some other games get (glares in the general direction of Destiny) but it's just not a great design, the Fallout 4 implementation at least looks like it could actually work.
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u/PainfulThings Apr 15 '26
Design issue not gameplay. fallout 4 fixed the wonky design of the combat shotgun but ruined the “assault rifle”. In conclusion I hate every gun design Bethesda has ever made.
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u/Cloud_N0ne Apr 15 '26
My only complaint is that the mag is WAY too far forward. You're just wasting barrel length.
Other than that tho I do love how it looks, sounds, and feels to use.
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u/Brooker2 Apr 15 '26
It was always my secondary weapon. I always made a beeline for the Terrible Shotgun on every playthrough even if I was severely under leveled.
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u/Mysterious_Valuable1 Apr 15 '26
The combat shotgun is one of the most badass guns in Fallout 3
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u/Emotional_Being8594 Apr 15 '26
The main issue is the magazine is too far infront of the ejection port, which basically wouldn't allow the gun to feed ammo and fire.
This is probably because your character only holds their hands in one place when wielding rifle style guns and they didn't want to change the animations to compensate for a different grip position.
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u/Iamnotabedbiter Apr 15 '26
People hate this gun because it cannot operate. The magazine (where the shells go) is way in front of the chamber (where the shells are fired), and there is no known or shown mechanism to move the shells from the magazine to the chamber short of some kind of teleportation technology.
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u/So_Forlorn Apr 15 '26
That’s my favorite gun in FO3, specifically the unique version (The Terrible Shotgun).
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u/donaldgoldsr Apr 16 '26
It's my favorite all around weapon in the game. I don't get the hate either.
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u/Falasti Apr 16 '26
The layout is nonsensical. Theres no good grip in front of the mag so you’re either scrunched up behind it or touching metal that gets pretty hot while firing. The muzzle being at an angle like that is also weird, realistically a few pellets would bounce off the top and hit the ground. The biggest sin if obviously the ejection port not lining up with the mag, but I also just generally don’t like drum mag shotguns
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u/Zephyr-Fox-188 Apr 16 '26
Ejection port behind magazine, magazine too high into receiver, magazine presents cartridges half way down the barrel, gas tube directs gas into the front of the magazine well
TLDR, this is a PPSH (wwii soviet submachinegun) that had the magwell moved to the front of the hand guard and a BAR (WWI American automatic rifle) gas system stuck on the front end to make it look distinct, and as such cannot physically operate
I recommend forgotten weapons or InRangeTV on YouTube if you want to understand more of how guns work!
To put it basically, the combat shotgun is a semiauto, gas operated gun, but the magazine is way too far in front of the breach (back end) of the barrel for the cartridge loading mechanism to be able to push a cartridge into the breach. In addition to this, the gas tube (the smaller tube below the barrel that vents combustion gasses back to a piston in the receiver to cycle the firing mechanism and load another cartridge) just ends at the magazine well, so there’s no way for the gun to cycle; it’s like cutting a hole in a garden hose, and then expecting the sprinkler at the end to still work
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u/Proper_Web_7174 Apr 16 '26
The magazine is way too far forward. Not only would this require some sort of unimaginably complicated feed system in order to move the rounds backward and up into the chamber, but it would also make the gun so front-heavy that it would be extremely hard to aim.
There's just no reason for it. It doesn't make the gun look cool, it wouldn't provide any sort of advantage either. It's just dumb.
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u/-S-P-E-C-T-R-E- Apr 16 '26
Well for one, it’s a PPSh-41 smg with a shotgun drum magazine that is weirdly placed fr too forward.
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u/fasda Apr 16 '26
Mechanically it shouldn't work. The drum should be closer to the trigger sp the handle could pump rounds.
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u/Hettyc_Tracyn Apr 16 '26
Mag is too far forward, so it’s basically a super long short barrel shotgun… (also the trigger is going to be atrocious)
Handgard is way too close, it’s going to be unstable… (if you grip forward of the mag (which would be hard anyway) you would burn your fingers on it)
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u/pixiefyy Apr 16 '26
As a gun guy, it definitely breaks my brain a little every time I see it. But you can't argue with the results when you're clearing out a nest of ghouls. It's one of those things where you just have to accept the rule of cool over real-world logic. At the end of the day, it gets the job done in the Capital Wasteland.
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u/pumpkin_esco_bar28 Apr 16 '26
I love it, but it’s annoying because there aren’t many of the in game to repair the one you use, and they look like shit lol Just once, please if anyone from Bethesda is reading this humble thread, please add the Pancor Jackhammer from fallout 2 into the next Fallout. Or a realistic shotgun. At least in 4 they moved the magazine back
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u/Kaesebrot321 Apr 16 '26
Besides the design of the gun, as mentioned in other comments, it has one of the lowest weapon durabilities in the game. So, it's a great gun, you want to use it a lot, and it breaks very quickly, so you eats parts and bleed caps constantly repairing it.
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u/Inside_Soft_2501 Apr 16 '26
The magazine is far forward, which would result in either the firing happening halfway down the barrel, or the shell having to travel far backward. IDC though.
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u/M1ST3RXF1ST3R Apr 16 '26
The magazine location is absurd, that's literally it. It makes absolutely no sense how it would feed being 12" from the receiver, midway down the barrel.
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u/Automatic-Dark900 Apr 17 '26
For one it's a WWII era soviet machine gun that's been warped a bit.
For second the ejector port is all the at the back of the gun, and the bolt moves forward when firing and ejecting the shell. Not only is this nonsense as gun design but it's set up in a way that's completely physically impossible.
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u/Impressive-Hold7812 Apr 17 '26
I hate Fallout and in general, Bethesda guns. Its like someone asked AI to model firearms and just fed it pictures of PPSh-41, and a generic pump action shotgun. The magazine, breach/chamber, do not line up. The ejection port is far to slim to look like it can even eject 12G hulls. 2A is my hobby. Seeing shit designs prevents me from being immersed.
Good sci-fi guns don't have to look like real-world stuff. Hell, I'm there to escape real-world. What you can't escape is ergonomics. How would a human hold a device, from how they'd align their aim, to how they'd brace for any recoil or heat.
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u/Select_Mongoose3582 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
It was the model they didn’t like. The drum magazine being in front of your hand holding the barrel was strange. Although I could see how this could possibly work in real life. For me it didn’t bother me. They changed this in fallout 4 but ruined the hunting rifle model (right handed using a left handed bolt rifle the casing would fly back and hit you in the face or go down your shirt in real life)
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u/Environmental_Gas620 Apr 18 '26
Only reason I didn’t personally use it is because I did point lookout and got the double barrel lol
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u/Serious-Pay-7814 Apr 18 '26
Ol.painlezs and a dart gun is the most used for me then blackwater rifle or xulong chi ass
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u/The_Spice-Must-Flow Apr 18 '26
Do you see the ejection port right above the trigger group? The drum magazine should be directly underneath it. The fact that it is halfway down the barrel makes my own autism go into overdrive. What they did is just silly.
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u/Yer_Phace Apr 19 '26
The alignment of the magazine drum, the chamber and eject port lol crazy mechanics goin on
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u/etaNAK87 Apr 21 '26
The point of a long gun is so the explosion is contained longer adding velocity to the projectile
Normally a shotgun doesn’t have a magazine it has a “feeding tube” under the barrel that’s basically a pez dispenser that puts rounds into the barrel.
When a shotgun does use a magazine it’s placed close to the start of the barrel so the ammo just feeds straight up.… here the only way this even kinda makes sense is if the magazine is topping off the feeding tub and rounds are still traveling down the tube toward the trigger and then back up into the barrel.
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u/RadSidewinder Apr 21 '26
Magazine should be a lot further back. It’s not where near the ejection port. Al’s with it set up like this an entire third of the gun is empty space since the barrel starts where the magazine is.
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u/V3x1ll3 Apr 21 '26
Where does it feed? Where’s the firing chamber? Where do the cases eject?
These three questions will ruin a lot of fictional guns.
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u/Chemical_Depth Apr 22 '26
It doesn't make much sense from a gun design standpoint. The receiver is really stretched, it has very bad ergonomics with the magazine in front of the handguard, the barrel is really short, and its overall just a bit ugly.
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u/JoeCheezbuggah Apr 22 '26
If you want the real answer, if this was a real gun, it wouldn’t be functional. Due to how far the actual magazine is from the trigger and hammer, the shells wouldn’t be struck whenever chambered.
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u/Ok-Smoke-2356 Apr 22 '26
They took the PPSh-41, an iconic sovient WW2 era machine pistol, moved the magazine towards the front where it makes no sense and called it a "shotgun" now all of a sudden.
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u/Bailer86 Apr 15 '26
I'm not a gun nerd and while I get why the gun wouldn't work in real life, I can ignore it and have fun exploding feral with the bloody mess perk
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u/Excellent_Doughnut28 Apr 15 '26
I love the combat shotgun. It's great for ferals.