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Guys before me did a really good job explaining ranged weps, better than I could, but I wanted to put in my 2 cents on melee weapons.

MELEE 101- TEACHING YOU ABOUT MEHGUY'S OPINIONS ON MELEE B/C HE USES THEM TOO MUCH.

Spears and Longswords- Big damage, slow swinging. Good if you have a brawler or good melee. Longswords are better but spears are basically cheap, common longswords in terms of dps factors.
Gladius- In between Longsword and Knife. Good all-around weapon. Less likely to destroy limbs than Longsword but still does decent damage.
Knife- Quite low damage and fast swinging. Use only if focusing on incap rather than pure damage or if you're in a pinch. Also good for lower melee stats, as the fast swinging means that at least you'll land some hits, even with super low melee.
Club- Kind of like the knife in that it's better for focusing on incap rather than pure damage, but slower swinging and more damage. Outside of trying to get captures it's a little ineffective.
Shiv- DO NOT USE THESE. PERIOD. You're better off using fists, wooden log, or beer bottle 9 times out of 10. Use them only if you have a super duper shiv (legendary plasteel?). Otherwise it's basically a death wish. Although... one time a visitor to my arctic colony with a shoddy wooden shiv DID take on a Centipede for 2 days straight before finally getting his skull bashed in. Okay then, correction- only use shivs if they're super duper shivs OR if they are imbued with the favor of the void gods.
Items (Wooden log, beer bottle)- Use in a pinch if you must. Don't use over a better alternative.
Prosthetic weapons (scyther blade, power claw)- Recommended only to use these on Assassins and such who do bugger all aside from fighting and eating your food. Since they affect manipulation you shouldn't use them on people who can do anything that requires that (which is almost everything). Note that if you use these, you should put them on BOTH hands. If you don't, in combat they'll alternate between hitting with one hand then the other- if they only have one weaponized prosthetic this means they'll lower their own dps by using their lower damage regular hand half the time.
Fists- Last resort, but also great for incapping. It's fun to find a raider whose legs got hurt bad, cause when they start running away, you can catch up to them and have all your shooters stop firing and punch 'em down, hoping for an incap, since fists are probably the best melle for chance of incap.

There's my 2 cents on melee b/c I use them too often.

I had some ideas for near-future (aka higher level midworld tech) weapons and historical weapons (lower level midworld tech and miscellaneous medieval/renaissance tech).

2 near-future weapons-
Electrothermal Rifle- Works the same way as gunpowder weapons, only instead of igniting gunpowder you shock a special mixture with high voltages, enough to turn it into rapidly expanding plasma. Probably equivalent to the M16, but make it more accurate, 1-3 more damage, and less range.
Mini-railgun- Works like the sniper rifle but with more range slower firing.

3 recent historical weapons-
Revolver- Like the pistol but more damage and slower firing.
Lever action rifle- Like survival rifle but faster firing and less range.
Lever action shotgun- like shotgun but with more accuracy and less damage.

4 Medieval + Renaissance weapons-
Pike- Like the spear but higher damage and slower hitting.
Longbow- Like the greatbow but more accurate at longer ranges and less accurate at shorter ranges (kind of like the survival rifle range/accuracy function).
Musket- Does a lot of damage (15, 20?) with decent range but not too accurate at longer ranges.
Leather Cannon- Historically these are miniature cannons that people would tug around the battlefield on little wagons behind them that shot deadly balls of leather. I'd say that in-game it should do considerable damage (20-30) but with a very long cooldown and the range of the M16, and maybe with a slight move speed penalty.

So there are the ideas I had. What do you think? I would implement them myself if I knew how to mod, but I don't, so I wanted to see if any of you awesome people would like the ideas.

Visitors are annoying. They just kinda sit outside your base staring at you like some sort of stalker fanclub thing.
I recently played my first game on the Ice Sheets. Hard, but I'm managing okay. The first time visitors come, I notice they didn't pack enough insulation for the -99 F temperatures and started getting hypothermia. I also noticed, from living around it all the time, that thick snow slows people down a lot.
I saw the need. I saw the tools. I did the deed. All I had to do was stop shoveling snow from my porch and close the gaps I left in my cover, which slowed down base traffic- and I soon had a glorious ring of frozen corpses around my base entrance that once thought it'd be a good idea to visit me. Every time a visitor group arrives, I grab some popcorn and prep the comms to sell their gear.

The way I've experienced the game, I'll say that I don't believe in a 'magic bullet' base design to protect you from strong raiders (mechanoids & late game raids). Generally I try to keep the enemy close (out of melee range though 0.o), have a decent amount of turrets to distract them from the colonists, and a mobile 'melee squad' of a few colonists with personal shields and good melee weapons who I'll send out to melee key targets.