Any less dangerous way to build melee skill?

[william_doe]

So now that we have sappers I'm thinking of taking a melee approach to combat but non of my colonists have too high of melee skill.  Is there anyway to build it without hunting?  I get scratched and bit in almost every encounter and then have to heal up, and it's taking a ridiculous amount of time to train.  I thought maybe i could just melee walls or some other inanimate object but it wasn't working.  Any suggestions are welcome.

[LouisTBR]

It certainly is harder than ranged weapons, both to fight and train with. I haven't come across many methods, as I don't really bother with melee. You could try trees or plants, but I'm not sure they work. There is probably a mod somewhere for melee and ranged weapon target practice 

[Gonorejus]

Have you tried shanking your unwanted prisoners? Shank em just a little bit, heal em up, shank again. Rinse and repeat. Might work. In my mind that is.

[william_doe]

Have you tried shanking your unwanted prisoners?

Nope...that's a good idea actually.  I think it'd probably be too slow to be practical though.   I'd need to rotate a few prisoners and/or wait in between for them to heal.  I think maybe I just need to rethink my sapper strategy in general.  I looked for suggestions and everyone seems to suggest just fighting them.  Too bad I have pistols and they come with automatics, grenades, and rocket launchers lol (PS no I don't have a sniper rifle and if I did I'm sure i'd miss 6 times before they got in range to shoot me anyway).  I tried placing more turrets and mines on my soft points.  Maybe that will help sigh...

[Lys]

(PS no I don't have a sniper rifle and if I did I'm sure i'd miss 6 times before they got in range to shoot me anyway)

The survival rifle that you get at the start actually has a quite large range as well, from what I remember it is very well enough to take out sappers from afar.

[Sens]

So since dealing with sappers is what you problem is, here are some solutions could tell you more specificly if you would post a screenshot of your colony or map overview so i could see how it looks:

You can: Flank them somewhere in between your colony and the point there spawn at. Must be carefull to not move your guys infront them, must be done from the side of their path, i guess you do save / load, so let them run first towards your base so you know what their path is exactly, then load and move your guys somewhere aside that path and flank them, make sure your guys will only shoot at a few of them from a side dont bother "intercepting" everyone, avoid shooting at first guys in group.

You can: Call in friendlies and let sappers wound someone from friendlies, they "often or always" abort their attack on your base and just try to capture that wounded colonist. Or just let one of your guys get wounded by them and once they abort attacking and start moving towards map exit, you immediatly charge the guy who wants to haul your wounded colonist away, this will work well in most cases, you just need to be close enough so he doesnt haul him off map before that.

Since you dont have snipers yet, use the survival rifle guys, but give that rifle to someone with high shooting skill. Again i could tell you more if i saw what you are dealing with and what your layout is.

Melee: You can buy melee neurotrainers from traders which will raise your melee skill instantly.

[Grimandevil]

u can try using training facility mod, which includes melee dummies.

[william_doe]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.  I might look into that mod, that sounds neat.  I'm trying to avoid too many mods before release time because I don't want to get hooked on a mod just to have it abandoned and not compatible with a later release.

The good news is I think I found a decent way to defend them.  It worked once at least.   I just let them sap into my base.  Then they go straight for my mountain turtle zone doors.  I set up around some corners and just pick them off as soon as they blow my doors up wasting their grenades (probably rocket launchers too when those come?). 
I'm working on getting better weapons now too.  Finally got an M16 and an LMG.

I'm definitely going to try the call friendlies strategy but I need to make some friends first.  That seems like the most hassle-free method of dealing with them.  I also have a psychic animal pulser...that might be a good thing to unleash as soon as they appear on the map?  I'm not really sure how it works yet though.

P.S. Thanks for the melee neurotrainer tip!  Seems like that's the only way to build your melee reliably in vanilla without getting wounded a lot.  I've abandoned melee for now but might be useful to know in the future.

[Gonorejus]

I also have a psychic animal pulser...that might be a good thing to unleash as soon as they appear on the map?

Be cautious with that thing cause ALL the animals on the map will go into manhunting frenzy, even your own tame animals.

[StorymasterQ]

Have you tried shanking your unwanted prisoners?

That is so going in to my list of Rimworld quotes...

[Panzer]

Shanking armless prisoners with an awful wooden shiv is still the best way to train melee skill. Just be careful with the shanking, sometimes you get 40 cuts on the torso before they go down.
Well, they do go down after that, but thats final

This is more of a lategame thing though, you need either lots of expendable prisoners or a lot of medicine, treating all those cuts burns through your herb stash in no time.

psychic animal pulsers are not recommended when you have a lot of animals, since they belong to your faction, every animal has a "key" and can open every single one of your doors ^^ (Yes I died to that once)