Cite a piece with several authors as "FirstAuthor et al" at first citation instance with apacite citation management package

I want to cite pieces with several authors throughout my whole file as "FirstAuthor et al.".

I use the apacite citation management package with the natbibapa option for several reasons and don’t really want to change it (usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite}).

The first time a piece is cited, all names get written out, and only from the 2nd citation onward is the piece cited with et Al. Is there a way to truncate the full list of authors on the first citation, so that all citations are in FirstAuthor et al. format?

Sadly, shortcite seems to not work with natbibapa.