Soldiers/Warriors

Started by Vagabond, February 20, 2015, 06:26:01 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Vagabond

Hello,

This one is pretty short: Make it so that a colonist can have a ranged weapon and a melee weapon equiped at once. A lot of backgrounds sensibly boost ranged and melee skill, but in my personal experience I tend to not ever switch a colonist from a weapon type after I've started him with it. Brawlers always get melee, and everyone else ranged. Being able to have colonist equip melee and range will allow them to defend themselves in both ranges. Having one of each equipped seems perfectly plausible.

Cheers,
Michael

tommytom

Sounds good at first, but then you realize that melee is useless as they have no better chance than ranged. Maybe the shields, but yeah.

I personally don't like melee too much. 1-2 max and much later in the game.

If what you suggested was implemented, there would only be ranged and there would be no penalty to having a 100% ranged colony (in the case of a swarm of melees coming in.

I don't know how the personal shields work though. I know they block bullets, but I don't know about melee. Maybe it's gun/melee or shield/melee and still viable?

Vagabond

Tommytom,

Shields block range in and out. It is for melee exclusive characters.

My thing is that having a character start with high ranged and melee seems like a waste since they will most assuredly use one or the other for the duration of their life. IF you were able to equip them with both, then they can make full use of their skill set by simply switching to melee when a mob closes on them.

For some reason npcs seem much more efficient in melee than player colonists. Even other human npcs. This is with the colonist using a vibrosword with a skill advantage over the human npc whom had a gun. In that situation I had two deer attack events, one handled by a human npc visitor and one handled by my tribe child/warrior with brawler. My colonist recieved much more damage and took longer to kill the second deer than the human npc did with the first. There are two possibilities: colonists have nerfed melee, or the second deer was somehow more powerful than the first. The latter seems unlikely as it appeared to be the same as the first.

With that aside, it could be a decision to either use a gun and sword, or a sword and personal shield if balance is your worry.

I don't think it will make much of a difference as most colonies are already 100% ranged because it seems far superior to melee.

I don't understand what you mean by a penalty for having an all ranged colony. There is no penalty to all ranged, all melee, or a mix. There shouldn't be. It's personal preference and dependant on who is good at what, and whom you have train to be good at what.

Cheers,
Michael

Mithradates

Quote from: tommytom on February 20, 2015, 09:22:01 PM
Sounds good at first, but then you realize that melee is useless as they have no better chance than ranged. Maybe the shields, but yeah.

I personally don't like melee too much. 1-2 max and much later in the game.

If what you suggested was implemented, there would only be ranged and there would be no penalty to having a 100% ranged colony (in the case of a swarm of melees coming in.

I don't know how the personal shields work though. I know they block bullets, but I don't know about melee. Maybe it's gun/melee or shield/melee and still viable?

Erm...I don't see what you're saying here.

Melee characters are highly valuable if used properly. They must be micromanaged, yes, but they are far from useless - even before the new personal shields. I also don't see how having people be able to equip two weapons (presumably with a second or so buffer time when switching them) would lead to all-ranged colonies.
Romani arma in omnis habent, acerruma in eos, quibus victis spolia maxuma; audendo et fallundo et bella ex bellis serundo magni facti. Per hunc morem extinguent omnia aut occident.

tommytom

Like I said. I don't know how shields work. If they only block ranged, I see no point in melee/shield combo if all can be ranged behind cover and murder everything until they come in close.

My experience with a good kill box is 90% die to ranged and 2-3 make it behind the cover and if your colonists are 100% as good at melee range as well as ranged, there is no need for melee-only that don't contribute to the ranged slaughter that is 90% efficient.