The slug in normal shotguns is very useful for shooting weapons off hunters etc. at close to medium range - something where the Exp. shotgun (also) totally fails. I haven’t compared damage between slugs and buck for this purpose though.
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About the damage, I needed around 60 rounds of birdshot from an EXP shotgun to take down a tank.
The distance was mostly right, at least every hit produced those blue sparkles and that crackling sound and the tank got shaken out of his stance and had to readjust after every hit, just like after a hit with HEDP.
Having not tested it until now but I doubt you can take down a tank with 60 rounds birdshot from a normal shotgun !? Hmm… maybe I should test this on a similar occasion.
But I noticed that it was essential to get those crackling hits because otherwise it looked like hitting the tank with red/brown paint, producing one or another little explosion
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Ok, I just tested shooting weapons off FNIX hunters.
To shoot the weapon off, a 5-star (not experimental) 12G needs:
3 buckshot rounds
2 slug rounds
So slug does definitely higher direct/precision damage than the buckshot (for component damage). Maybe buck has higher armor piercing, I can’t say. 
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From my personal experience, the 12G with birdshot ammo is great against Hunters, and with a mix of assault rifle takes down harvesters in 2 minutes or less. The slug rounds just don’t make much sense, almost useless.
The short range is just how the devs balanced the flechettes. Dunno why you’d need to balance somthing you’d probably only get late game but I’m not a dev.
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If by “balancing” you mean “make useless” then they have succeeded! 
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I do agree that the X-Pump Shotgun’s flechettes need a buff. Give us what the Hunters have, that stuff’s lethal!
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Yes, it doesn’t have to have the few hundrets range as the hunters shotgun, but more than 1 m would be very helpful.
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I think that the fact that slugs have only one flechette explosion already balances this type of ammunition. No need to reduce the range to a broken state.
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As of 26 /11/19 the Slugs work even worse, might be a bug or not…too early to tell
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I just got the experimental shotgun and it seems bugged to me. It doesn’t seem to do anything at all.
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I managed to take a Rival Tank down with a 12G Experimental. I grew very tired of both 
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X shotty i gave it a good go , took ages to drop of a rival ,i found after lenthy testing and puzzlement that its proper pants , aye normal 5 star is better
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Yeah, after reading up on how OP the Experimental weapons supposedly are, I was saving it for when things went properly south. Bad idea, I had to hide and revert to the Sjögren.
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Using birdshot ammo with the 12 G is great against hunters and harvesters.
Buckshot is only good inside bunkers and houses or at less than 3 meters from enemies.
Slug rounds are useless though.
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Having recently acquired this (to my excitement) I have become extremely disappointed. The explosions don’t seem to do anything but give me a scare. They seem to do no damage. I’ve yet to see a machine topple over and die from the secondary fireworks. Also, no matter if I use birdshort, buckshot or slug it feels like the weapon never actually hits anything unless it is right in front of me. Otherwise it’s just a puff of yellow sparklers that are noisy but go nowhere. All three ammo types, no difference that i can tell. Before getting this I was using the semi-auto and having great success with that and having developed different strategies and uses for each ammo type. This experimental shotty is supposed to be better but it seems really useless. I have to be close enough for a handshake to get any damage and even then it requires way more shots than a regular shotgun to kill even a runner.
Anyone know if the flechette damage is affected by the explosive expert perk?
Birdshot does the job, buckshot is only useful at very close range, slug is useless at any range.
I also got my hands on it and tested it.
Birdshot travels furthest and has higest spread but dmg per flechette is low.
Buckshot has tighter spread with better dmg per flechette but distance is shorter.
Slug distance is so small that i wasn’t able to hit anything with it, even when standing almost next to the machine.
However, 6* 12G shotty with buckshot is great against harv itself. Being in the range of buckshot and firing in general direction of the harv, the 2nd stage of damage, exploding flechettes, do damage several harv components at once. (I tested it out on FNIX harv.)
At current state, 6* 12G shotty is niche weapon, good against harvs and perhaps tanks as well when using buckshot.
Interesting… I’m probably not going to throw my life away trying it on tanks but I will try the Harvester thing. I didn’t figure it was worth bothering with anything since I can’t even one-shot a tick with it and the flechette bursts don’t seem to hurt runners much. Feels like I’m throwing ammo away and not getting anywhere.
Wouldn’t be worth it to me to carry around just to blast harvesters though.
I like the idea, look and handling of it but in its current state it’s a useless novelty that wastes hard-scavenged ammo. With a 4* semi-auto shotgun loaded with 5 shells I can kill 3 maybe more dogs in hurry and shooting from the hip. With the 6* Exp one I can blast 6 shells into a runner that isn’t even phased by it. Maybe I’ll try it again and not use anything but birdshot. Maybe they came up with it as a way to blow off a birdshot surplus.
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Use a choke for birdshot. 