The Flame Shotgun being fired.
The Flame Shotgun is a Human weapon in Raze. A pump-action, tube-fed smoothbore weapon, it excels in close-range combat, capable of killing most unshielded enemies in one shot. It's characterised by it's low ammunition capacity of 4 shells a tube, each one producing a deadly spread of bullets followed by a burst of fire.
In-game Description[]
"The Flame Shotgun get it's name from the sac of gasoline fitted into each shell. When shot, the gasoline sac burst from the shells within the barrel of the shotgun. The blast from the shot causes the gasoline to ignite, also igniting the shells, and producing a large flame out of the barrel shotgun. Being hit by the flaming bullets is one thing, but being in the proximity of the flames as well is deadly."
Strategy[]
This weapon is only effective at close range, capable of killing unshielded enemies in a single shot and seriously wounding shielded enemies. Generally speaking, anything beyond it's immediate kill range will not be killed in one-shot. It's effectiveness is determined by how far up the laser sight a target is (i.e. toward the weapon) while it's pointed directly at their chest; the further down the laser sight a target is, the less likely a single shot will be to kill. Even then, if a target is within the shotgun's spread, flubbing the shot and allowing any of the bullets to miss will only wound a target. Therefore, it is imperative that the user only fires when they have a full, vertical view of a target's body in front of them when firing while prioritising the enemy's thorax as the target. Keeping this in mind will generally guarantee all of the bullets connecting with the target and killing them in one shot.
Given it's slow rate of fire and even slower reload time, it's recommended to use it as a combination weapon if the initial blast doesn't immediately kill a target. Switching to any other weapon to finish off the last of their health is much faster than waiting for the next shot to cycle.
Trivia[]
- This is Sager's personal weapon choice.
- Despite being a shotgun, the weapon's in-game description describes it's projectiles as bullets instead of the typical shot-pellets. A bullet is generally a conical projectile typically fired out of a rifled barrel designed to aerodynamically pierce through the air in order to maintain the absolute most amount of power prior to striking a target, while a shot-pellet is a spherical device fired alongside other similar projectiles, designed to spread out and hit as many critical points of a target as possible. Shotguns don't typically use conical projectiles due to being incapable of spreading out in the same fashion, as well as being too large to effectively pack into a shotgun shell, though it's possible the Flame Shotgun utilises Flechettes: a small, dart-like projectile sometimes used by shotguns, which would explain it's super-lethality.
- Interestingly, the laser sight on the in-game sprite of the shotgun is noticeably absent from the mural in the weapon description menu. It's likely this is due to a coding error on the developer's part than anything significant.