No. Weapons should more or less follow what EVE established, but not to the exception of new, creative weapons.

Maybe it would help illustrate my point not to the of a Rail Rifle, for example, as a Caldari weapon. Instead, think of a Rail Rifle as a Hybrid weapon, and that Caldari are inclined to use Hybrids.To that end, Hybrids are split into Blaster and Rails. There should be some mirror of Blasters and Rails for Sidearm, Light, and Heavy weapons. It's makes sense for a Blaster equivalent Light weapon to be a shotgun. It DOES NOT make sense for there to be some weird Rail Shotgun.

how does that not make sense? Rail technology, in real life is simply magnetic propulsion of objects. A rail gun, in real life is an anti tank weapon that uses a massive metal that exhibits diamagnetic properties to be propelled at astounding speeds to destroy the interior of tanks. If a shotgun were to use rail technology, it would fire a slug, similar to modern rail guns

It's too narrow in scope - caldari use missiles too they're not just hurf durf RAIL!!!!!11!!1, just like the amarr use rockets & drones, and the minmatar use artillery & missiles.

Well would you like to design a Missile firing "shotgun"?
The rail is the most logical weapon type to use for a close quarters weapon.

3 rounds, 0.5 Charge time per Shot, Fires a spread so tight it could be mistaken for a slug, 1 round is enough to drop a heavy at 3m
Provided you hit. Has 10m range.

Does that not fit Caldari Doctrine?


The Laser "Shotgun" is a bit more difficult, here it might make more sense to use a micro missile payload.


It still comes down to the fact that in infantry warfare, every race is going to have a full roster of ranged weaponry, the caldari not having some form of short range weapon just makes for battle stratergy.

I dunno. There's the Tri-beam laser in Fallout. There's also things like this.