The Combat Shotgun
Most famous for being a weapon of choice when exterminating ghouls, this shotgun, with a 12-round drum magazine, is no legend in why many people chose this to be their favourite shotgun in the entire Capital Wasteland. It is great for close to mid-range combat and it is steady, powerful, and even easy to find parts for repairs. Not exactly cheap to buy ammo for most people and not exactly cheap to have someone to repair it for you. It is great for hunting Yao Guai and Deathclaws but always remember folks, once you play with the Big Game animals, you better be packing because they will not back down.
Standard Use[]
The combat shotgun is a drum magazine weapon, and thus is perfect for using in a crowd. It has a fast reload time, simply replacing the drum, thus making it the perfect weapon for dealing with close-quarters battles. However, it is a shotgun, and thus has large spread, and the farther away from the target you are the less likely you will hit them or damage them potently.
One simple use of the combat shotgun is the scatter purpose, best used when fighting crowds. When firing it on a group of raiders, they may scatter in order to avoid the central fire, allowing you to get into their ranks and take them out easily with less opposition. That being said, the shots may miss and you may run low on ammo and make the enemy more dangerous against you with this close quarters weapon. It can hold its own, but when facing several automatic weapons it and you may be in a tight spot.
When facing single enemies, it's best to aim at the center of mass: the torso. With the combat shotgun's spread, it'll be enough to either cripple the torse, or half-cripple many, if not every, body part. The only downside to the shotgun, aside from the spray, is the low rate of fire, but if you manage to cripple an enemy every shot or so, you won't need that fast of a fire rate.
In the Wastes[]
This weapon is fairly common, especially amongst raiders. Its counterpart, the Hunting Rifle, may have a longer range but it also has slower firing and reloading time as well as lower damage. This makes people who like to deal with fighting the opposing force head on favor the combat shotgun. Also, due to its abundant supply, you can find it at any standard store as well as ammo for this baby. This is one weapon you don't have to sacrifice anything to use. It is cheap to find, cheap to use, and though the shells are usually costly, they aren't anything a handful of caps can't fix. It'd be better to go find our own ammo, but I wouldn't sell those shells. They would do better in the head of a raider than in the hands of another wastelander.