Auto shotgun (dNetHack)

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Name	auto shotgun
Appearance	strange broken crossbow or unfamiliar long gun
Damage vs. small	1d2
Damage vs. large	1d2
To-hit bonus	+10
Weapon skill	firearms
Size	two-handed
Base price	1500 zm (+10/positive enchant)
Weight	60
Material	iron

For the firearm in SLASH'EM and its derivatives, see auto shotgun (SLASH'EM).

For its "non-automatic" counterpart in the same variants, see shotgun (dNetHack).

An auto shotgun is a type of weapon that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. The auto shotgun is a huge futuristic launcher, making it two-handed for most medium and smaller heroes. It uses the firearms skill and is designed for use with shotgun shells.

The auto shotgun has a default material of iron, and appears as a strange broken crossbow for heroes in most roles when unidentified—Anachrononauts, Androids, Pirates, and Undead Hunters will instead see the unidentified item as an unfamiliar long gun.

Generation

Anachrononauts and Androids start each game with knowledge of the shotgun shell's appearance. Half-dragon Anachrononauts start each game with an uncursed +3 auto shotgun and 100 uncursed +3 shotgun shells as ammo.

Auto shotguns are not randomly generated, though they can be found in bones and can only be wished for by Tourists—note that wishing for one by appearance (i.e. a "strange broken crossbow") will yield a rifle instead of an auto shotgun, due to multiple items sharing that appearance.

Only Undead Hunters can create an auto shotgun by manual smithing if they know the item's appearance.

Description

Like the shotgun, the auto shotgun has a very limited range of 3, but has a higher base rate of fire at 2 (versus the shotgun's -1) and a lesser-but-still-significant to-hit bonus of +10. A hero applying an auto shotgun will switch it between semi-automatic and full automatic modes of fire.

When set to full automatic, an auto shotgun that is shot with Basic skill or lower in firearms will always fire a minimum of 2 shells, and the maximum amount increases by 1 for every skill level above Basic, i.e. (2–3 at Skilled and 2–4 at Expert). When set to semi-automatic, an auto shotgun will always fire 1 shell. Firing the auto shotgun produces noise in a radius equal to 2 x (multishot + 1), for a maximum of 10 squares at 4 shells.

Shotgun shells fired from an auto shotgun deal 2d12+4 against small monsters and 2d6+4 slashing damage against large monsters, and zombified monsters also take +2d6 slashing damage.

Origin

An automatic shotgun is a type of automatic firearm that fires shotgun shells, using some of the energy from each shot to automatically cycle the action and load a new round—the gun will fire repeatedly until the trigger is released or ammunition runs out. Automatic shotguns have a very limited range, but provide tremendous firepower at close range.

Automatic shotguns generally employ mechanisms very similar to other kinds of automatic weapons, and there are several operation methods with the most common being gas, recoil, and blowback operated: Each of these methods use springs to return the retracted parts to their forward positions and restart the cycle. Many automatic shotguns are capable of selective fire, meaning they can fire in multiple modes (semi-automatic, burst, and sometimes fully automatic). They generally store ammunition in detachable box or drum magazines in order to decrease reloading time, rather than using under-barrel tubular magazines like most pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns. Automatic shotgun ammunition choices are slightly limited because the fired shot must provide sufficient recoil energy to reliably cycle the action.

Shotguns have a short effective range of about 50–70 metres (160–230 ft), but provide a lot of firepower at close range, and automatic fire enhances these effects in theory due to the increase in the rate of fire—in practice, automatic shotguns are generally viewed as less reliable than manual operation shotguns, as more moving parts lead to increased chances of error and jamming. Automatics also typically have much shorter barrels than pump-action shotguns and especially hunting shotguns, giving them a very high chance of hitting close-range targets and even hitting multiple targets in one area. They are generally intended for use as military combat shotguns, with their high rate of fire and relatively low recoil making them ideal for fast-paced close combat situations.

Messages

You switch your auto shotgun to semi-automatic mode.

You switch your auto shotgun to full automatic mode.

You applied an auto shotgun to switch modes.