Chaingun

The chaingun is a rapid-firing, multi-barrelled automatic weapon. It uses the same ammunition as the pistol, and is fed from the player's shared stock of bullets.

The chaingun's rapid rate of fire means that a single enemy caught in its hail of bullets will have little or no chance to retaliate. The weapon is also highly effective at mowing down hordes of zombies or imps.

The chaingun always fires at least two shots (if the player has at least two bullets, of course). The first two shots in a burst will always be exactly on target, but the weapon's recoil will cause later shots to wander rapidly off-target. This makes the chaingun an ideal weapon for sniping, as the player can tap the fire button for accurate two-shot bursts ("Remember: short, controlled bursts" &mdash; Corporal Hicks, in Aliens).

The chaingun contains 20 rounds of ammunition when picked up (40 on the I'm Too Young To Die and Nightmare! skill levels). Chainguns taken from dead zombie chaingunners contain 10 rounds (20 on ITYTD and NM) and, unlike pre-existing chainguns, disappear when crushed beneath doors or moving ceilings. Note that, although shots fired by chaingunners inflict only 3-15 points each, the bullets in their dropped guns behave like any other bullets when used by the player.

The chaingun first appeared in the Doom press release beta. The graphic was slightly different, in that the tips of the barrels did not extend past the barrel band.

Note that, strictly speaking, the "chaingun" in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom should be called a Minigun.

As with the rocket launcher and BFG 9000, the full chaingun sprite (after pickup) is slightly too large for the screen, and can only be viewed with a level or resource editor.

Demo files

 * [[Media:Map07-chaingun-tapping.lmp |Chaingun "tapping"]] technique being demonstrated on MAP07: Dead Simple (file info).

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of chainguns (excluding those of dead Chaingunners):