The best Starfield weapons can turn space pirates into space pulp with just a few shots, and one player has taken this philosophy, and the RPG's weapon modding system, to an extreme by converting a shotgun into portable artillery that devastates entire areas so efficiently that you barely have to aim the thing.
My new favorite weapon, pretty sure it's banned by the Geneva convention from r/Starfield
Reddit user iSwearSheWas56 cooked up a double-barreled Coachman shotgun that, by all rights, surely violates some wartime law somewhere. With the simple addition of a Hornet Nest ammo mod, the old-timey weapon becomes a new-age mortar, effortlessly peppering entire areas with hot slag.
You might think that short-range shotguns wouldn't be the best fit for a weapon mod that enables long-range shelling, but Starfield is clearly more generous with the effective range of its shotguns than your average FPS. As this gunsmith so thoroughly demonstrates, you can lob these shells straight up, and as long as you're facing the general direction of the thing you're trying to hit – hell, as long as you're on the same planet – some hits will probably connect.
I don't think you'd want to fire this thing indoors at close range, but on the other hand, that kind of makes it the perfect shotgun to pair with another shotgun. Any high-level variant will serve you well in standard gunfights, and with this monstrosity, you also have a potent option if you happen to find yourself besieging an entire pirate camp. In a comment, iSwearSheWas56 explained that their build focuses on two similar extremes: "stealth sniping and explosive shotgunning, there is no in-between."
If you want to kick some Hornet Nests of your own, you can unlock this mod via Magazine and Battery Mods 3 research and craft it using one adhesive, lead, and tetrafluoride. You'll still need some shotgun shells, of course, but that certainly wasn't a problem for iSwearSheWas56. They brought 1,500 shells to this camp and cleaned it out using only a handful. Turns out a pocket mortar stretches those shells pretty far.
This Starfield player didn't need any fancy mods to kill a pirate three times their level and walk away with an OP legendary gun, just the blessing of the RPG gods.
