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UPDATE: Restored DT/DR calculations, as it turns out they ARE factored into critical hits. Also fixed an issue with my fix where I'd given the Caravan Shotgun the Dinner Bell's damage level on crit. I also realized that this fix could theoretically cause you to kill an enemy without receiving XP for it, as the scripts use the "DamageAV" function which does not tie damage to a player; to correct this the special crit effect will only bring the target down to 1 health, whereupon the "normal" damage will kill them. You shouldn't notice anything. Finally, I merged support for 12ga Bean Bag rounds into this mod, as it allows me to add Critical Hit Fatigue/KO effects like the other fix desperately needed.
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THE PROBLEM

One of the long, long, LONG-standing bugs in both Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 is the VATS damage bug for shotguns. Outside of VATS, Shotguns do respectable damage when they inflict a critical hit. Inside VATS, however, Shotguns do very, very low damage. This is caused by a problem with the way the game calculates critical hits when dealing with weapons that have more than one projectile: outside of VATS the game calculates the critical hit for each projectile, but inside VATS the game does only one critical hit calculation.

I had hoped that updates to the New Vegas engine would have taken care of this bug, but alas that was not to be. The bug still persists, making it very difficult to use a shotgun in VATS effectively.

THE SOLUTION

This bugfix adds a special Critical Hit Effect to all shotguns. This Effect is only activated when VATS is active, and applies an appropriate amount of damage to make up for what would be applied outside of VATS. The Effect is even set up to properly account for the Better Criticals perk and Sneak Attack Criticals, as well as the target's DT and DR.

SECOND PROBLEM: FATIGUE AMMO

This bugfix ALSO addresses issues with 12 Gauge Bean Bag rounds. Based on the description in the Pip-Boy, these shells are supposed to do two things:

- Apply 250 points of Fatigue (knock-out) damage
- Apply only 5% of the normal amount of standard damage

NEITHER of these effects are actually accomplished. In the case of number 1, only 50 points of fatigue damage is applied, and in the case of number 2, the weapon (ANY weapon) applies exactly 12.25 points of damage. That doesn't seem like a lot, but it's more than triple what the damage is supposed to be (averaging that is).

On top of that, there's another problem with the ammunition, in that it can apply fatigue damage to robots. This is something every other fatigue-inducing weapon specifically AVOIDS, for the simple reason that you shouldn't be able to KO a robot.

This fix addresses all of those issues using a script attached to the ammunition, correcting the behavior of Bean Bag shells so that they:

1) Apply 250 points of Fatigue (knock-out) damage

2) Apply only 2.25 points of normal damage

3) Apply NO Fatigue damage to robots or the player

Because of how the ammunition script (the Impact Script) works and when it is applied, the Bean Bag Round fixes for issues #2 and #3 do not apply to the FIRST round which strikes an NPC. This is because the Impact Script executes BEFORE damage (and fatigue) is applied, so when the script tries to restore damage and fatigue there is nothing to restore. Additional shots will behave as intended, which should make it far less likely that you'll kill an NPC before they are KO'd (and will make it impossible to KO a robot).

OTHER NOTES

I had previously addressed the 12 Gauge Bean Bag round issue in another fix, but was unable to get Bean Bag rounds to apply larger amounts of Fatigue/KO damage on Critical Hit. The scripts used for this fix provided a perfect opportunity to address the issue, so I moved that portion of the fix over here and added elements to apply increased Fatigue damage on Critical Hit. I will warn you that the fix is not perfect: in the rare situation where both you and a companion are using 12 Gauge shotguns and you shoot an enemy with a Bean Bag round, if your companion scores a critical hit within 1 second of that Bean Bag round hitting the enemy they may get knocked out instead of killed outright. Of course, considering they'll be KO'd and out of the fight it's not like you'll be too inconvenienced, other than the extra bullet your companion has to spend to kill the enemy.

A previous bugfix, the Shotgun VATS Critical Damage Fix by gudnaimsartaekn, attempted to address this problem, but did not do so to a satisfactory level (for me anyway). This bugfix is an update of that bugfix.