Not sure how that would work since the overall damage would remain the same. Anyhow, reducing the number of pellets will lead to a higher percentage of pellets hitting as well, which will increase DPS and energy efficiency. Greener weps FTW.

It also would become easier to just range platties with 50% more range..

Lol, you may be right there, my logic tried to go in 2 directions at once and just fell and hurt itself.

Not if you have decent tracking... I either hit with all 5 or miss with all 5.

I've noticed no problem with the multishot guns, if you're worried about multishot then you have to consider all the multishot guns not just abstructor and excom.

If you're going to reduce the shot amount then you'll have to beef the damage by each shot considerably, not just add the two damages from the missing shots to the remaining.. Otherwise it's just going to end up being a bit of a nerf with mining control not affecting it as much, any decent player always hits all 5 shots with their setup.

Or you could just fix the reason you're lagging out lower end systems which isn't the weapons themselves but how you handle particles.

I sometimes run SS on a system that's from early 2000 and it runs perfectly fine with many people firing Excom / Abs and that only has an early geforce 5x card.

He said that's why he would increase the range - to make up for the nerf from mining control.

Actually, Stooch has a good point. Lagrange skills are added in AFTER everything else, so more pellets per second = higher damage. With this change, class skills and augs will make a bigger difference to it, instead of the lagrange skills. So, now, you can use an excomm even without MFing or a high RoF and still do decent damage. If you use excomm, you need to build your setup around it for maximum DPS, meaning augging for RoF instead of damage. Now, you can use it whenever you want, and it will work well.

One thing, however: Although this change will aid the Excomm, it will hurt the abstructor. Abstructor has almost no damage, it relies on the skills a great deal to make it useful. If you change this, then it will become just another pointless weapon. Maybe make it so only excomm loses the bullets, but abs also gets a range boost? Maybe not by as much as the excomm, but I am fairly sure that with most setups, an excomm would still do more DPS than an abstructor if this occured.

after hearing everything said I'll say reduce it to 3 shots and add 50% range

however, some good ideas mentioned that ought to be implemented anyway:
-changing MF to only display the firing of one weapons while stacking the damage accordingly to cut down on lag

-give abstructor an additional beef so it doesn't become useless after this change

-limit the particle effects in multi-shot weapons to reduce lag

-extend this change to other multi-shot weapons as well

That changes the gameplay by a lot, especially in pvp. It would be a lot easier to dodge a MF's shots if they only used one weapon and it would totally defeat the meaning of "multifiring".

Agreed. One of the main advantages of excom and abs IS the amount of bullets and the resulting damage boost from mining control without having to sacrifice an aug slot for additional damage. And it looks awesome if multifired as well.

If you only limited the particle effects on weapons with multiple projectiles, they'd look strange in comparison to "normal" weapons. I don't get why SS has so much graphical lag anyways. If you compare SS to Fraxy (the comparison doesn't quite work, I know), you can see that Fraxy doesn't just look insanely epic, it lags less, too.

The Abstructor is an awesome weapon for its tech, I don't think a beef would be good.

If the Abstructor gets more range than the excom, as well as more bullets, I'm fairly sure a lot of people would prefer it. That, of course, depends on how much the excomm would be beefed.

The rather high spreading of the excomm bullets can be an advantage as well, less bullets don't nesseccarily mean more hits.

I'd like to add another argument as well: the abstuctor and the excomm are mining weapons, right? Mining weapons are used to mine and what would help a lot in a dense asteroid field? Multiple Projectiles.

Um, I did not mean give abs more range than excomm. I meant to beef the range of both of them, but beef the range of excomm by more than that of abstructor.

Ah, misunderstood you then. I thought beef excom's damage, take away a bullet or 2 and beef abs' range. Would still be a beef for the abs, though and it already is a pretty good weapon. I mean, what other tech 9 weapon can be used to vaporize w3 AI in seconds?

I really like the suggestion of giving the abstructor more bullets than excomm. It would provide a more meaningful choice between the two.

The reason I pose this is is because of the particle's that come off the bullets and the lag they cause. I'm adding more range to all the mag's generally, but don't want to add more range to these 5x weapons because that will also mean a lot more lag, unless we reduce the number of pellets.

I will also change most other 5x weapons to have less pellets, but those are not used as widely, so I'm not bringing them up specifically. The catapult line is getting totally changed to be one or 2 big bullets that knock the target back and possibly give some negative tweak to bases.

It would be pretty awesome if catapults were high-recoil, high-damage weapons, that knock both, you and your target, back a little to make the projectile look like it has a hell lot of mass. At least that would be how I'd imagine a catapult in space.

Mmmm, fun. I used to use catapults in my gunner izer before I had wep 20, but almost noone else uses them, good to see they will now have a use. Does this only go for the 5-shot ones (catapult, executioner, vigilante and seige), or will it hold true for the cadet/enforcer/constable catapults as well?

Seige Catapults should be the only one with anti base buffs.
Excomms and Abs are one of the few weapons in the game that have a trail left behind the projectiles, and it is certainly one of the longest lasting trails. That is what contributes to the lag.
Surely in client 2 you are going to do something so that multi projectile weapons dont cause nearly so much lag.