Unsure I rarely use shotguns myself, but you can test it by going say 6m from a wall with a bit of texture on it and aim at it first using hipfire and squeeze off a few rounds and notice the spread. After this aim down the sights and see if you notice any difference in the spread.

It is a light weapon. Light weapon upgrades, sharpshooter, reload and max ammo all effect it.

The Shotty itself is weapon spread*. That has always meant the cone shape of the pellets leaving the barrel. In every video game I have played unless/until you can use slugs. The closer you are the more hit the target. The less spread, the further away you can be to accomplish the same thing.

Two different ways to look at it. Same net effect. As stated above, more pellets actually hitting, means more damage.



*Shotgun Skill is 3% reduction of spread per level so that gives you a 15% reduction of the CONE used to calculate where the pellets went and if that cone exceeds the size of the target at the range it was fired at. For quick math in game, if the cone is smaller then the target then all the pellets hit. If the cone is larger then some virtual random dice is rolled to determine if each pellet hit or what percentage of pellets hit. Then damage is calculate once that is determined. This can be offset based on where you were actually aiming when the trigger was pulled. Which is consistent with how other weapons appear to react.