Thanks to the bug I haven't been able to try both the scope and the hip fire mod together but I can tell you hip fire alone turns it into a sniper shotgun, you can take people out at fairly ridiculous distance, it's well worth doing.
It still have some spread, does it?
Bug that I did mention, completly removes any spread, hence I'd like call it "ultimate ball of doom" and an onlooker would even mistake it easly as plasma sniper ball.
It makes bit diffrence how this weapon preforms... especially with headshot mod while spread bugged. Shooty at G5 doing like 5.2 dmg, with HS mod, its then slightly more than twice as much when (x1.5 to x2.2 was it with hs mod for headshot modifer along 8 pellets per shot) Score headshot with it, and total dmg is like 91.51, enough to kill high intensity enforcer from full shields to death in single headshot, or body shot anything else (if not too far away) - no other weapon in game can do that - but this one can if "prep" with bug, even at considerable distance... effective range is about 20-30m, then it loses its ability to one shot, but it still makes critical dmg.
Without spread bug, if there is any spread, shooty cannot work like that anymore, as some pellets either miss or hit diffrent body parts, especially in distance, but with spread bug, if headshot is scored, then all pellets ended up there. In fact, this weapon is actually one that benefits most from headshot mod, due of sheer number of pellets shots per trigger pull. No other weapon gain as much dmg, since no other weapon is multishot.
Just ran quick test too see it its still a thing, take a look:
Yep, its still works, confirmed 6 times enter ship/exit to fully focus pellets on single point. First pic shows a rock 100m and shoot at it from that very position, and second is when I came closer to see "hole". There is zero spread.
Another pic to see bullet when moved myself bit to right, soon after shooting it to the stars for the better perspective (its litte over right to the scope):