There are two main types of shotgun ammunition: shells, which fire a swarm of pellets at your enemy, and slugs, which are pretty much big bullets in a shotgun cartridge. Slugs need various things to line them up with the barrel, since there's some extra space in the sleeve that the slug doesn't fill, but you should only worry about that if you're planning on reusing your shotgun cartridges. If you're doing that, I suggest that you look up detailed instructions or take a class: I'm really not the guy to ask about that. Anyways, most slugs are best fired out of a shotgun with a rifled barrel: spinning gives the bullet stability by "averaging out" any imperfections in the bullet's weight, just like how a spinning gyroscope would work. This explains why this weight distribution is called the gyroscopic effect. However, this rifling also makes shotgun pellets spread out in a ring, thanks to the effects of centrifugal "force." At close range, this doesn't matter so much, but it becomes more and more problematic the further away you go. A slug gun isn't meant to fire shot, so it doesn't do it well. No surprises there.
A smoothbore shotgun has a smooth, unrifled barrel. It lets the shotgun pellets fly around randomly, filling the shotgun's cone of fire instead of ringing it. But--and there's always a drawback, isn't there?--the smooth barrel doesn't give a bullet spin, making any slugs fired from it fly about as well as musket balls. Normal slug plus smoothbore shotgun equals control failure. Again, no surprises.
But smoothbore shotguns have a kind of slug that they can fire accurately. These slugs have rifling along their outsides which lets them spin in a smooth barrel. Since spin = gyroscopic effect, the bullets fire true. With this innovation, the shotgun has surpassed rifled barrels. A rifled slug in an unrifled barrel may not be as accurate as an unrifled slug in a rifled barrel (I don't know), but it's certainly good enough to hit enemies a good ways away. Adding that to the shotgun's ability to fire shot effectively, and it becomes the clear choice for versatile use. Unless you've got a shotgun with interchangeable barrels, in which case that one wins. Or if you've got a shotgun with multiple barrels and feeds. Then that wins.
I'll stop.
A smoothbore shotgun has a smooth, unrifled barrel. It lets the shotgun pellets fly around randomly, filling the shotgun's cone of fire instead of ringing it. But--and there's always a drawback, isn't there?--the smooth barrel doesn't give a bullet spin, making any slugs fired from it fly about as well as musket balls. Normal slug plus smoothbore shotgun equals control failure. Again, no surprises.
But smoothbore shotguns have a kind of slug that they can fire accurately. These slugs have rifling along their outsides which lets them spin in a smooth barrel. Since spin = gyroscopic effect, the bullets fire true. With this innovation, the shotgun has surpassed rifled barrels. A rifled slug in an unrifled barrel may not be as accurate as an unrifled slug in a rifled barrel (I don't know), but it's certainly good enough to hit enemies a good ways away. Adding that to the shotgun's ability to fire shot effectively, and it becomes the clear choice for versatile use. Unless you've got a shotgun with interchangeable barrels, in which case that one wins. Or if you've got a shotgun with multiple barrels and feeds. Then that wins.
I'll stop.
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