What exactly does the spread mean for a Gatling tower?

Question

I understand that it means that the bullets have a spread, so not all of them will hit their intended target. I've seen tables which list a value for the "spread", but I don't know what exactly that value means in mathematical terms.

Is there a way to determine how many bullets will hit? How does that depend on the distance from the Gatling tower?

Finally, if a bullet misses its target, will it still potentially hit other targets? Is it simply a "hit or no hit" or is it more of, "the bullet will follow this trajectory, now let's see if it will hit anything"?

I've been modeling damage from various towers in different maze configurations, so these kinds of specifics are fairly important for that.

Answer 1

This post on the official forums may be exactly what you're looking for. Here's a brief summary:

Today i took a look at the good ol gatling tower. A common strat that i've been seeing is placing a gatling behind a holo ( or sometimes 2 ). I decided to go bonkers and test test and i have come up with some information that you might appreciate.

First i must say that spread is an important factor here. The gatling tower has a spread of 9.1 and thus, the closer the tower is to the actual wave, the more bullets actually hit the target. In return this grants more damage and that's exactly what we want!

One last note, the gatling dps is actually a bit misleading. It is true that the math works out but what it doesn't calculate is the spread. Not every bullet hits and really the only thing you can gather from the gatling dps is that it is the max potential dps. I would argue that you do not get the most DPS per resource as well.

edit: As far as the second question goes, for most FPS games, the bullet is shot and has a trajectory. If it intersects with an enemy model, it's considered a hit, regardless of the intended target. I can only think of RPGs where you "target" an enemy and roll to see if an attack is a hit or miss. Even then, targets behind your main target usually have to roll for hit at a penalty to the attacker. Fallout 1 and 2 come to mind. This is all speculative based on other FPS games though.