The shotgun turret is a main staple for playing with Rampant and it can basically carry you to end-game using nothing but regular plain red ammo. It's my opinion that maybe this should be nerfed? The reason why it's so incredibly effective is because of its innate x2 damage modifier, which I think stacks multiplicatively with the AMMO damage technologies. The pellets deal so much damage that it can overpower even anti-physical mutations.

My suggestion would be to lower it to be in line with the MK2 Gun Turret, which only has a 20% innate damage bonus.

The shotgun turret is a main staple for playing with Rampant and it can basically carry you to end-game using nothing but regular plain red ammo. It's my opinion that maybe this should be nerfed? The reason why it's so incredibly effective is because of its innate x2 damage modifier, which I think stacks multiplicatively with the turret damage technologies. The pellets deal so much damage that it can overpower even anti-physical mutations.

My suggestion would be to lower it to be in line with the MK2 Gun Turret, which only has a 20% innate damage bonus.

Edit: Not sure what happened there. Anyway, I realize since Rampant is very configurable, "end game" for me may not mean the same to others. But either way, I do believe that the Shotgun turret is too powerful as it is right now.

1st the damage bonus is only 50%. 2nd it has slightly less range and 3rd from my testing it barely outperfroms the gun turrets (while using a lot less resources for ammunition, initially costing more to build, having more hp and requiring bit more research but those are different topic).

Anyway I think it is pretty well balanced

Last time played with it several years ago, because didn't like how it works against far-away standing spitters - only one or two pellets hit the target every shot, and didn't allow walls (yes, it was fixed after that...). But agree that it's very good vs melee biters. I didn't get them to middle game and see how it deals damage to physical-resistant enemies. Probably shouldn't do well when there is considerable phys dmg decrease somewhere for enemies tier-5, but tech bonuses may really overcome it. Maybe need to give it a try in my defense line again. Thanks for idea.

P.S. MK2 Gun Turret does 70% or even 100% surplus damage applied after all other bonuses. So I usually keep yellow magazines till late middle game due to its huge bonus, then switch to poison/fire skipping red magazines.

Ah, I never noticed that the MK2 Gun Turret has the same innate turret buff. It's made to be multiplicative to the turret damage techs instead of additive, which makes the damage incredibly high.

Despite big bonuses they alone still don't do well at high evolution when playing vs Rampant new enemies with max tier above 7. Too small range and they don't allow horde control like flame turrets and rocket turrets. :-)
Of course these turrets are redundant when playing without Rampant New Enemies.

@Mackeroni what is the ending tier/level of the new enemies you are playing against?

I gave shotgun turrets one more chance - good damage only first half of range. Then it takes 6-7 shots to kill a spitter tier-3 from bigger distance. Good against melee biters, but no-go in general.

@Mackeroni what is the ending tier/level of the new enemies you are playing against?

@Veden Tier 7, eventually increased to 8, which did increase the difficulty enough for regular red ammo not to be enough anymore when fighting physical resistant mutations. They are still incredibly resource efficient, however.

I am playing without the "Enable the Swarm" mod option, as biters in this version of Factorio don't get hung up on each other anymore during pathfinding. Perhaps the more "vanilla-style" collision mask makes more pellets hit them.

Aah, need to try one more time then :-)
In previous playthroughs I enjoyed Personal shotgun defense a lot, feeling it a little overpowered against many enemy factions, but now with that option Off probably it will be an uber-powerful self-defense tool...

I am playing without the "Enable the Swarm" mod option, as biters in this version of Factorio don't get hung up on each other anymore during pathfinding. Perhaps the more "vanilla-style" collision mask makes more pellets hit them.

Tested with this option. There is some positive difference, but still many pellets miss the target if it's not in close vicinity. Turret is not overpowered from my point of view (or maybe I need to research all available tech upgrades for it to see title issue).

UPDATE:
Shell pellets do really miss a lot even with biters swarm disabled and new biters spawned after that - no matter shotgun manual aim or automated shotgun turret fire. That is for small biters of early evo tiers. Probably for bigger at later evolution it is 100% hit (because with vanilla biters new nests generate this problem doesn't exist).
But I enjoyed these turrets in other aspect. They give early-game crowd control, making Rampant finally viable in deathworld start without cheat options (huge start area or big iron surplus). Like flame turrets the more biters come up in horde the better efficiency turret has. Therefore I build them only in areas where pollution-triggered squads may attack and it saved me a lot of times.
Thank you for idea !