Pump shotgun

The pump shotgun is a moderately heavy, single-shot weapon in RimWorld which deals a slightly higher amount of damage per shot; a slightly shorter time between shots; high accuracy and short range.

Combat Performance

It'll take 3 shots to the torso to kill an unarmored human with a pump shotgun, or around 5 shots against a human with a normal armor vest. The pump shotgun can also instantly remove digits, cripple eyeballs and cause lethal brain damage if the victim's skull is unprotected. Limbs can be crippled in 2 shots against an unarmored human.

Owing to its short range, decent base accuracy and fairly quick fire rate, the pump shotgun is a somewhat skill-friendly weapon. A healthy level 2 traitless shooter, level 0 careful shooter or level 6 trigger-happy can somewhat efficiently use the pump shotgun up to 11 cells. However, a level 8 traitless shooter, level 10 trigger-happy or level 4 careful shooter is advisable to efficiently use the pump shotgun up to its maximum range of 16 cells.

On average, the pump shotgun is best paired with a careful shooter until level 7, then with a trigger-happy shooter beyond that point.

Melee Combat

A pump shotgun has a weapon bulk of 100%, but weapon bulk doesn't seem to have any observable effect on actual gameplay.

All possible melee attacks with a pump shotgun:

Tool	Attack	Damage Type	Power	Cooldown	Likelihood	Base DPS	Armored DPS
Overall	-	-	9.69	1.869s	-	5.181	4.767
Stock	Smash	Blunt	9	1.8s	31%	5	4.6
Barrel	Smash	Blunt	10	1.9s	34.5%	5.263	4.842
Barrel	Poke	Blunt	10	1.9s	34.5%	5.263	4.842

Obtaining

Pump shotguns can be purchased from outlander and orbital combat suppliers, or obtained from the following raider kinds:

Pirates:

Scavenger - 10.2% chance (poor quality on average, 20-90% health)
Pirate - 9.5% chance (normal quality on average, 40-150% health)

Outlanders:

Town Guard - 7.8% chance (poor quality on average, 20-200% health)

Mercenaries:

Mercenary Gunner - 10.4% chance (normal quality on average, 70-230% health)

Spacers:

Space Soldier - 8.8% chance (good quality on average, 100% health)

Pump shotguns can also be crafted at a machining table once the gunsmithing research is completed; from 60 steel, 3 components and 30,000 ticks (8.33 mins) of work.

Conclusion & Comparison

Being obtainable so early-game since it only requires gunsmithing to be researched in order to be produced, the pump shotgun is a fairly solid weapon at that stage. However, it quickly gets knocked off the pace by the more advanced yet cheaper machine pistol - especially damaging to the pump shotgun's appeal since the latter is very commonly-equipped by scavengers which are often encountered in the early to early-mid game. This means that the heavy SMG and charge rifle will significantly outperform the pump shotgun.

Due to its 18 points of damage per shot, the pump shotgun can instantly render hands, feet and spines useless since they hit 0% efficiency after one hit. This doesn't change how it fares against the other above weapons since they spray out many more projectiles owing to the fact that they fire in bursts.

When it comes to 1 vs. 1 battles between two stark naked, healthy baseline level 8 shooters behind granite chunks with 12 cells between then, the pump shotgun trades blows with the machine pistol, but the machine pistol wins more often than not. When both shooters wear normal armor vests and simple helmets though, things get much more competitive and it's almost a 50-50 split.

Graphs

The graphs assume a normal quality pump shotgun against an adult human that's out in the open in clear weather. For DPS, projectile speed has also been factored into the equation, with the weighting based on the base amount of attacks that it'll take to put the aforementioned target into pain shock.