Riot Shotgun (Fallout)

Information
The riot shotgun is a semi-automatic shotgun with a drum magazine. It has a high damage-per-second, due in part to its large ammunition capacity when compared to other shotguns, and its high rate of fire. With the Shotgun Surgeon and And Stay Back perks, it can be a very devastating weapon in close quarters combat. It also reloads much faster than any other shotgun and therefore can change ammunition types very quickly. It also has the distinction of having the lowest Action point cost of all shotguns at 17 AP per shot which is comparable to some pistols, making it very useful for VATS-dependent player characters.

There are several disadvantages with the weapon. Like most shotguns, it suffers at mid to long range due to its poor weapons spread, more so than most other shotguns. However, this can be countered to a certain extent by using the 12-gauge slug ammunition (which decreases spread considerably) but even then it is horrendously inaccurate. Also due to its rapid semi-automatic fire and fast reload, the weapon can use a large quantity of ammunition quickly, with 12 gauge shells being relatively rare and expensive to buy in large quantities.

The riot shotgun can fire a total of about 870 standard shells, the equivalent of 73 reloads, from full condition before breaking.

As critical hits count for each projectile shot out of a weapon (outside of VATS), if you have a high critical hit chance (~25%), Better Criticals, and Shotgun Surgeon, you can expect normal (7-shot) Magnum rounds to do the most damage against targets with 15DT or less. At 20DT, 4/0 Buck Magnum rounds win with Slug and Magnum rounds 10% and 18% behind respectively. At a DT of 25 or higher, slug rounds win, with both magnums falling about 30% behind. If you have 35% critical chance and both former perks along with Just Lucky I'm Alive, standard magnum rounds win against targets with a DT of 30 or less, which is just about every enemy in the game. With all these perks against a target with 12DT or less, you can expect the Riot Shotgun to do roughly 630DPS with standard Magnum rounds, 512DPS with Buck Magnum, or 300DPS with slugs.