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. Each bullet inflicts 5-15 points of damage.

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 (excepting boss monsters, whose pain chance tends to be very low). 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 volley 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 is first found in a secret area of E1M2: Nuclear Plant, and again in a secret area of the following level. It then appears in a non-secret area on E1M4: Command Control.

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 of damage each, the bullets in their dropped guns behave like any other bullets when used by the player.

Data



 * 1) This table assumes that all applicable calls to P_Random are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: the monster's pain chance must be handled, as well as possible counterattacks and AI pathfinding, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably most significant for small monsters.
 * 2) In the case of continuous fire, the target must be close enough to compensate for the weapon's recoil.
 * 3) Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.

Demo files

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

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