Make the colonists use their firearms when drafted or being attacked

[ShrektheHulk]

So many times I have a colony wipe because colonists stop using their firearms and instead try to melee with them. Even if you tell them to attack a target they will shoot once and then go back to melee. It's really frustrating to have to micromanage every single shot when they should just shoot until everything is dead. Coming into melee range is no reason to stop shooting.

Most recently a pack of raccoons...racoons...killed 3 people who had shotguns and rifles because they refused to just use them. I even had them funneling through a door so only one could attack at a time and they downed 3 people. I have lost more colonies because of this than I can remember, and it's the absolute most frustrating thing.

[erdrik]

Don't assume the smaller animals are just biting your colonist's ankles.
"Please mister raccoon, stop mauling my face while I try to aim this long barrel rifle at you."
(I had a colonist lose an eye to the smallest of the insects)

I dunno if it is intended for colonists to auto switch to melee when being attacked by melee aggressors, but frankly it makes sense to me. Even a pistol isn't going to be great once the enemy is close enough to grab or hit your firing hand. A point and fire weapon is worthless if you are being prevented from pointing it in the right direction, to say nothing of a small animal on your face running the risk you might shoot your own face trying to get at.

EDIT:
I think a better suggestion would be that colonists use their ranged weapons as clubs when in forced into melee.
It would make more sense that they are pistol whipping opponents rather than punching bare handed.

[jamaicancastle]

An exception for pistols that makes them, but not longarms, usable in close combat would be an interesting point of balance between them (sure it's less powerful, but more flexible, etc.). As for realism, well, there's a lot of infighting that gets glossed over for the sake of gameplay. A pistol may not be an ideal weapon if your opponent is in your face like a raccoon, but neither is a spear.

[BetaSpectre]

Realism would have bullets being 20x better than melee.
Not to mention pain being incapacitating before firing like 20 times into a target.

Accuracy IMO is realistic for small moving creatures, but not for anything bigger than a tortoise.

[erdrik]

... A pistol may not be an ideal weapon if your opponent is in your face like a raccoon, but neither is a spear.

Actually a spear could work decently, as long as your not directing the pointy end at yourself.
Just turn it side ways, hold in both hands, and thrust the horizontal shaft up past the front of your face. You still have the chance of hitting your face, but at least its not with the pointy end, and the 'coon might get knocked off. Then you can poke 'im before they get up in your grill again. But I would imagine that just gets abstracted out to longer cooldowns since a spear doesn't have the range it is suppose to.

I don't think Pistols should be shot in melee tho. I assume melee is abstracting all kinds of martial maneuvers, like grabbing at or knocking around the opponents firing arm to prevent them from shooting you.

...
Accuracy IMO is realistic for small moving creatures, but not for anything bigger than a tortoise.

I agree. Im not a gun hobbist or anything like that, but I was trained to use rifles in the Airforce. I get especially rankled when the colony's hunters miss a sleeping target 10+ times in row with 13+ skill no injuries and a superior weapon... I feel like an incapacitated/downed or sleeping target should ramp up a stacking per shot accuracy bonus for the shooter until it moves or wakes up...

[eadras]

Realistically, colonists should be able to carry both a melee and a ranged weapon, and switch between the two if engaged in melee combat.

[cultist]

The weirdest thing to me is that pawns can somehow use both their fists to fight while also holding a minigun in their hands. Yeah...

[Boston]

Realistically, colonists should be able to carry both a melee and a ranged weapon, and switch between the two if engaged in melee combat.

Don't say that! That will destroy the 'careful game balance" that makes the Melee skill viable......

.....

PPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

No, but seriously. Thankfully, there is a mod that already does this. "Simple Sidearms"

[TheMeInTeam]

Isn't getting enough separation (IE barely any) to fire a gun part of martial training for soldiers?  We have some actual current or former soldiers here who could probably comment on that, but my understanding is that shooting the attacker is preferred (under assumption of conflict where killing the enemy is permitted/preferred or at least acceptable, like pirate raids in Rimworld), and techniques to allow that can be learned.

There are six guns in the game that colonists can use that have more DPS than a steel spear at "touch" range.  Strangely, the pistol isn't one of them.

Bullets travel pretty fast, fast enough that if someone is trying to disarm a pistol while the shooter intends to fire it they have a good chance of catching that bullet with their arm or torso.  That is, if by "catch" one means "bullet enters and may or may not exit while doing a lot of damage".  It takes a lot less time to pull a trigger than it does to approach a weapon while ignoring putting any body part in front of the gun (where a trigger pull is going to disable you, fast).  Presumably, Tynan simply avoided this to make melee mean something in the game.

Note that while only a handful of firearms in the game out-DPS a normal quality steel spear, all but a few out-DPS bare-handed combat, so unless your pawn is running power claws you should probably shoot when up close with a firearm.  It is indeed strange that pawns would halve their DPS by not shooting further when manually ordered to shoot.

In contrast, I don't see any reason in terms of plausibility or gameplay that sleeping/stationary targets should have a high miss rate if they're targeted directly. 

[erdrik]

...
It takes a lot less time to pull a trigger than it does to approach a weapon while ignoring putting any body part in front of the gun (where a trigger pull is going to disable you, fast).  Presumably, Tynan simply avoided this to make melee mean something in the game.
...

We're not talking about approach. Approach is still "fire on target without retaliation" range. For all intents and purpose in the game, if the target is close enough to hit you in melee they are already close enough grapple you in melee. And if they are grappling you, you are going to have a much harder time shooting them(unless you have training specifically for that)
Thats my point. I don't think melee in the game is just two dudes standing in front of each other taking turns swinging at each other. The melee pawns are swinging their weapons yes, but they are also shoulder bumping the enemy and batting their firing hand away, or grabbing onto it so they can't aim at them.