Super shotgun



The super shotgun, also called combat shotgun in the manuals or otherwise simply double-barreled shotgun, is often abbreviated to SSG, and is a sawn-off, break-open, double-barreled shotgun, in contrast to the original shotgun which is pump-action and single-barreled.

Not featured in Doom, the super shotgun was the only new weapon introduced in Doom II, appearing first on MAP02: Underhalls in single player mode, and in two locations on MAP01: Entryway during multiplayer games. A super shotgun contains 8 shells when picked up (or 16 on the "I'm Too Young To Die" and "Nightmare!" skill levels).

Combat characteristics
The super shotgun takes the same ammunition as the shotgun, but uses two shells per shot. However, whereas the shotgun fires 7 pellets in each shot, a super shotgun blast has 20 pellets. Each pellet still does 5-15 points of damage (for a total of 100-300 points of damage per shot, provided that all pellets hit the target). The super shotgun is thus nearly three times as damaging as the standard shotgun per shot, a good bargain since it only uses twice as much ammo each time.

Tactical analysis
One well-aimed blast almost always kills two imps, one demon, or one spectre, and often inflicts additional damage to nearby monsters, whereas a shotgun burst is less reliable at dispatching an imp in one shot or a demon in two. The devastating firepower afforded by the super shotgun can enable the player to hold his own against crowds of humanoids or tough monsters (hell knights, arachnotrons, mancubi). It is often sensible to prefer the super shotgun over the rocket launcher in such situations; the super shotgun is similarly powerful, shells are more plentiful than rockets, and a short-range rocket blast can harm the player.

The SSG is even slower to reload than the shotgun (approximately twice the time), meaning that any enemy not killed by the first shot will have plenty of time to retaliate. Some speedrunners, however, take advantage of the reload time by quickly circlestrafing to line up multiple monsters within the "damage cone". The blast-and-dodge and circle strafing tactics described for the shotgun are even more useful for the super shotgun.

The wide spread of the pellets makes the super shotgun ineffective and wasteful at longer ranges. If shells are the only plentiful ammo, or if sniping at a distance is required, it is advisable to switch back to the shotgun. Furthermore the shotgun pellets only spread horizontally which makes it more useful than SSG in cases where your line of sight to the monster is a narrow horizontal part of the monster. The super shotgun also becomes overkill and wasteful for dealing with lone humanoids scattered in mazes. This is usually a problem when starting a level and the super shotgun is picked up before the regular shotgun.

Regardless, the SSG is a very potent and powerful weapon in the right hands, and it serves as a great alternative for the bigger weapons when facing lone enemies smaller than a baron of hell.

Data



 * 1) This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, and pellet dispersal are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
 * 2) Assumes that target is close enough to be hit by every pellet. (This is extremely rare in real play, however, especially during speedruns.)
 * 3) Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of super shotguns:

Doom 64
In Doom 64, the super shotgun reloads much quicker, nearly as fast as the regular shotgun. It does not have the reloading animation that is present in the PC versions of Doom either, which is also the case with the normal shotgun. In addition, the gun knocks the player back a bit when fired.