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Probably my biggest passion is biology in general, but particularly, Evolution and the way creatures evolve to adapt to their environments. It's really too bad Humanity has so few big physical differences, mostly just skin tone, slight size differences, and hair(wiry, curly, flaccid and straight, ect). While animals have such massive physical differences between similar species.

These mods added to the game, along with greater variety  of animals with more unique  traits, in a balanced and official capacity would make the game 10x better to me! I absolutely love the variety already have and taming. Many of these mentioned Xeno humans would be the coolest thing! I am just hesitant to add any actual mod, because they are rarely balanced very well, and I absolutely love a very challenging game. I wouldn't want it any easier whatsoever. The couple you mentioned don't sound particularly balanced, especially the psionic one, and psionics are both one of my favorite fantasy types of magic ever, and one of the hardest things I have ever seen balance wise universally between video games and DND haha. They seem like they fulfill the role of a strong research at work crafting pain that is a pacifist, just significantly stronger at it, with slight drawbacks. They wouldn't go in combat, so you wouldn't have to worry about the pain tolerance. They actually seem stronger than pacifist because they can go in combat! And psionic sensitivity is annoying, but you can deal with it. And I would gladly trade that for the big increase in research and productivity.

Anyway, they would absolutely make my day(year) if these things were added to the game or balanced very well as mods! It was a pleasure reading all that lore you linked, and thanks for taking the time to post all that!

I am not fond of the higher raider death rate either haha.
One, you already rarely get the one you want at the end of a fight, and even if ya do, he/she often has a complicated injury or 2 to deal with, on account of the hail of lead.

Two, It means even less usable gear after a fight from the D modifier! Also, my panthers and cougars greatly prefer live prey to scavenging, unlike me.

And Three, less surgical guinea pigs! My colonists would greatly appreciate if their new surgeon cut their teeth on a pesky raider than their loved ones!


I am also concerned about wild animals mauling pawns without shooting in melee.. I'm not sure how you could balance that, but a punch fight with a cougar doesn't often go my way without good armor haha. I have to be quite careful now, which is both fun, but also a little tiresome sometimes over time. I'm already on watch 24/7 because damn cobras keep trying to eat all my crap and baby animals haha. And they still succeed sometimes! The little ninjas.

There is a huge difference between allowing shots in melee, and only having 20% accuracy in melee.

Don't go comparing the game to real life warfare. Only good use of melee is to block shooters from shooting. If you go making parralels between life and game, you ll have way too many things to complain about, that make no sense of whatsoever. You try to shoot in melee - you get your hand chopped off, so instead you re forced to use fists, pistol handles, stocks and the like. Allowing shots in melee just pretty much disables said melee from the balance standpoint.

Because why would anyone ever use a gladius or a knife, when you can use a shotgun, which rapes people at mid-to-close range and will also be able to rape people at touch range?

Again, not with accuracy penalties, or touch range accuracy as wildfire calls it. That would help draw things to a much better balance in melee.

And I think getting your hand chopped off is quite a exaggeration.. This game does a great job of making many things realistic, realism doesn't always balance well with gameplay, but often enough that you can make it work. And if you try using a knife against a pistol, you're going to have a bad time haha. Even if you are in such close range you are actually grappling your opponent, you can wield a pistol relatively effectively. All you have to do is pointed at them, while a knife generally requires a swing of the arm.

Oh yeah, and I would also greatly prefer having the old difficulty lingo back! The standard medium and hard are no fun.

Guys, who would ever choose to go in full-melee, when you know, that you ll get face full of bullets point-blank? The only unique and useful advantage of melee combat in RW always was that you can disable people armed with dangerous ranged weaponry by ambushing them into melee. So this is how it should remain.

I do agree... Melee weapons should be unmatched in the only range they are capable of functioning. Which is why i suggested accuracy penalty. A melee pawn should still win out like 70%+ of the time vs a shotgun imo, if they are able to close without taking enough damage to cripple them. Let a shotgun try to focus on either closing in on long range like a mele, or attempt more of a kiting style fight with a melee character. If you can hit them enough to cripple by the time melee closes, maybe you have the chance to beat them toe to toe. Otherwise, Kite them. Often times a solid melee hit will slow your move speed, making it hard to kite. Striking a delicate balance.

Its hard to give both shotguns and melee weapons their own unique identity without shotguns always being the go-to because they also have some range.

Oooh, and maybe even give pistols MORE of a accuracy penalty in close range than shotguns, so they are more medium/close, while shotguns are close/melee. Giving shotguns the tactic of combating long range pawns much like a melee would,  try to close in on melee range where they are unable to retaliate effectively, but you can still attack back. Or lying in ambush waiting for them to get too close, like a melee would.

It's now impossible to shoot in melee.

Why? Shotguns and pistols should always be usable in melee.

My proposal: give short-range weapons bonuses to hit at melee range, and long-range weapons penalties to hit.

I would say all long range weapons are unusable in melee, ARs, Rifles, ect, while shotguns and pistols ARE usable in melee, but with reduced accuracy. Further cementing shotguns IRL niche of dealing with short range. Maybe even reduce the range on shotguns a bit more? Or reduce their accuracy at the longer range?

You would need to make melee weapons still outperform shotguns in melee range i think... so melee weapons aren't useless, but let them have the chance to defend with a accuracy penalty at melee range with a shotty instead of being useless.

Shouldn't shotguns and pistols be able to fire in melee? Especially now that shotguns got a AP nerf. I thought really close range was shotguns purpose, and some pistols. I do love the change over all to make melee more of a thing though!!

Exactly because of how dangerous melee is, melee should restrict the use of any ranged weapons. Otherwise if you could just shoot point blank, melee would have no purpose at all. Nearly any ranged weapon has more DPS, unless its specialized advanced weapon like a longsword or a gladius. And even against a gladius if you could shoot attacker in the face with a shottie, i wonder who'd win.

Though predators hunting your colonists now pretty much will always succeed in eating them, since the only way to counter a predator was to feed it with lead point blank.

I thought using a ranged weapon in melee heavily reduced accuracy, therefor allowing it to be used as defense, but giving melee far more power. Shotguns had power because they were great in melee and close range. Now, they are out ranged by other guns, useless in melee range, AND almost no AP. Giving them a far smaller niche. Could just be my imagination:P They feel a lot weaker right now.

Shouldn't shotguns and pistols be able to fire in melee? Especially now that shotguns got a AP nerf. I thought really close range was shotguns purpose, and some pistols. I do love the change over all to make melee more of a thing though!!

But if a raider does manage to close the gap, isn't your pawn kinda Fkd?
I'm not sure if the goal is to never let it close on you with a ranged wep, but it would be nice to be able to carry a small melee wep to switch to in those  cases. Or let pistol whipping do a bit more damage than a punch.

Panthers can haul now, i haven't seen that mentioned in any patch notes. Is that a bug? Or are there more hidden patch notes on animals? Because its one of my favorite changes!

Or, perhaps the drill bit wears down, and you have to replace it much like the turret barrels. Instead of constantly replacing the entire thing.

Perhaps make it tanky as well, with the drill bit replacements serving as an upkeep cost. You can also make it a mobile drill, on some kind of trailer maybe, to stop from having to constantly break it down and rebuild elsewhere.

I just had a hilarious internal image of a drill on wheels being pulled by beasts of Burden haha.

Maybe that last recruit of yours that ran into your base being chase by Raiders, was actually a spy!

Maybe I'm misunderstanding mechanics. Why did you remove that penalty Tynan? It also makes the weapons you get from Raiders far more valuable to you now. And you get quite a lot of them! I rather liked that they were situationally a good addition to Your Arsenal, but now, functionally, aren't they all much stronger? Only being weaker based on build quality.

I did see a bit of a potential to abuse the removal of penalties to Armor and weapon effectiveness at lower durability. Now that there are no penalties, you can let your gear degrade to a very low percentage, to make your net worth far lower than it actually is and therefore make raids much weaker. Especially early game, even the reduced price doesn't matter that much when compared to staying alive. Such as on NB.

I think it is more to do with their intelligence and ability to drag things in their mouth,  along with size. Big cats are smart!

I had a few scary run-ins with ostriches, trying to tame them was a nightmare haha. They seem like they would be great at hunting down fleeing enemies and separated hostiles with that speed and damage! But they go Manhunter like crazy.. which I can imagine is pretty realistic haha.

And no point doing permadeath if you are using alt F4:P I'm damn surprised I didn't end up losing anyone before I took a break while I waited for 1.0 to come out.

And that bruising mechanic sounds awesome! Just like using a Kevlar vest in real life. I would maybe even say a few broken ribs if you get hit by something hard enough! I didn't see the full details of that change to damage and armor, but melee could always use a little love also! That sounds like it could potentially give melee a few interesting uses with those mechanics.

It would be great if colonist could hold a melee weapon on their person along with a ranged, that way they could have the option to just switch to melee easily once the enemy gets close enough. Or possibly even a bayonet?