Projectile Flight Speed

Projectile Speed (also known as projectile velocity or flight speed) is an attribute on each weapon that defines how quickly the ammo travels to your target after leaving your weapon. Projectile speed can be of huge consequence to player performance, because shooting at enemies directly on the reticule might result in bullets hitting nothing but air if the bullet's velocity is too slow; players must instead "lead" the target, which means they should aim and shoot to where they think the enemy will be by the time the bullet crosses the distance.

Hitscan vs Projectile
Hitscan is a technical term based off a computational algorithm used to determine whether a pull of the trigger results in a target being struck. Tracking the flight of a bullet as it travels through empty space takes a significantly greater amount of computer processing than it does to "predict" a hit. The hitscan algorithm, upon clicking the mouse, reads whether there is an enemy in the line of fire, and then instantly determines whether or not an enemy has been successfully struck.

Projectile in this context describes weaponry where the ammunition gets tracked dozens of times per second. Hitscan weapons do not shoot out projectiles: there is no object that flies through the air over any period of time, and any smoke trails or flashes of light that display on the gun or the target enemy are all fictitious and for visual effect only. Another perspective would be that hitscan weapons have a theoretically "infinite" projectile speed, so that travel time is effectively zero.

In Archwing missions, the distances between the player and enemies can be so great that one can readily see how hitscan guns like the Imperator have deceptive bullet animations where the damage numbers on struck enemies come up far sooner than when the bullet actually ends its journey into the enemy.

Projectile Speed Modifiers
Because hitscan weapons do not have projectile speeds, double-check before using any of the following mods. In the case of Fatal Acceleration, the only projectile shotgun as of Update 16.6 is the Drakgoon. Whirlwind is listed as "melee" but only matters for thrown melee weapons.

In addition to the above mods, Volt's Electric Shield converts all outgoing projectiles into hitscan. This is well-documented side-effect of the technical implementation of the ability. It also gives hitscan and continuous fire weapons a fixed 70m range.