Allow pawns to carry a ranged and melee weapon simultaneously

[JaxelT]

Raids are a problem. Most of the time they are not fun, and they push players into adopting cheese strats, like funnels and killboxes and turret spam, in order to deal with them without all of their pawns dying. Drop pod raids are really fun, in my experience, mostly because by the time you have them you have a lot of colonists, and because they drop into your base it's more urban warfare than plinking at dudes across a field.

As we all know, Tynan's counter to the cheese is to spam more tribals, in response to which people spam more turrets, etc. People also complain about melee raiders, and raiders' lack of self-preservation in general, and especially about instant death from getting shot in the liver or what have you. I think that this suggestion would solve a lot of that. Allow pawns to carry BOTH a ranged and melee weapon, at the same time, and switch between them whenever necessary. This way, instead of the ranged raiders hanging back while the melee raiders suicidally crash against your defenses, you could have an extended shootout between the two sides, and occasionally the raiders might charge your defenses and then pull back if things go badly for them, not dissimilar to how sieges currently work. And instead of your colonists getting tied up into melee combat with no melee weapons, because melee fighters are garbage in colonies until you have a lot of colonists, they could switch to a melee weapon and fight back.

The dichotomy as it exists now is boring. End it. Allow all pawns to engage in both ranged and melee combat in fights.

[Hydra128]

Yes that would be an excellent idea, however it should be limited to 1 large melee/firearm (e.g. swords and rifles) and 1 small melee/firearm
(e.g. knives and pistols).

[Lightzy]

I also think this should be a possibility, but only if the pawn levels up and trains up as a warrior

[schizmo]

There are many balancing issues associated with this, and the game is already well designed to keep them seperate. I don't feel that merging them together makes any sense. You're supposed to have melee fighters to combat melee fighters. The two styles of combat have different specialties which is why they have different skills to begin with. It also sounds clumsy to have colonists carrying around heavy guns and big unweildy swords at all times. And without training them, most colonists will be useless with the swords anyway.

And further this idea doesn't actually solve the problem you mentioned, it does the opposite in fact it just sends you the same problem over and over. You say people complain about melee suicide rushes and your solution is that raiders should shoot at you for a while and then melee suicide rush? Huh? All this will do is enable perfectly safe and deadly raiders to occasionally remove themselves from cover and blindly charge you, putting themselves in serious danger.

I agree that melee raiders AI is currently foolish and needs improvement, but this suggestion is actively counter productive. You're just dragging all the other raiders down, and doing nothing to improve melee combat.

[asquirrel]

Awesome idea!

[JesterHell]

I think that pawns should have an inventory, by default you can carry things in your hands but certain equipment items could increase or decrease it a pawn overall capacity.

There could be back packs that enable pawn to carry more while hauling or holsters that enable you to carry multiple weapons.

[kilgoar]

Raids are a problem. Most of the time they are not fun, and they push players into adopting cheese strats, like funnels and killboxes and turret spam, in order to deal with them without all of their pawns dying. Drop pod raids are really fun, in my experience, mostly because by the time you have them you have a lot of colonists, and because they drop into your base it's more urban warfare than plinking at dudes across a field.

As we all know, Tynan's counter to the cheese is to spam more tribals, in response to which people spam more turrets, etc. People also complain about melee raiders, and raiders' lack of self-preservation in general, and especially about instant death from getting shot in the liver or what have you. I think that this suggestion would solve a lot of that. Allow pawns to carry BOTH a ranged and melee weapon, at the same time, and switch between them whenever necessary. This way, instead of the ranged raiders hanging back while the melee raiders suicidally crash against your defenses, you could have an extended shootout between the two sides, and occasionally the raiders might charge your defenses and then pull back if things go badly for them, not dissimilar to how sieges currently work. And instead of your colonists getting tied up into melee combat with no melee weapons, because melee fighters are garbage in colonies until you have a lot of colonists, they could switch to a melee weapon and fight back.

The dichotomy as it exists now is boring. End it. Allow all pawns to engage in both ranged and melee combat in fights.

Hey if you like the combat so much why not try some caravan games? During ambushes & attacks you can indeed carry a melee weapon, drop it, and switch to it. I know this doesn't help the overly static rts inherent in the base-building aspect of the game, but hey, your suggestion isn't bad either.

[Marduk]

Raids are a problem. Most of the time they are not fun, and they push players into adopting cheese strats, like funnels and killboxes and turret spam, in order to deal with them without all of their pawns dying. Drop pod raids are really fun, in my experience, mostly because by the time you have them you have a lot of colonists, and because they drop into your base it's more urban warfare than plinking at dudes across a field.

As we all know, Tynan's counter to the cheese is to spam more tribals, in response to which people spam more turrets, etc. People also complain about melee raiders, and raiders' lack of self-preservation in general, and especially about instant death from getting shot in the liver or what have you. I think that this suggestion would solve a lot of that. Allow pawns to carry BOTH a ranged and melee weapon, at the same time, and switch between them whenever necessary. This way, instead of the ranged raiders hanging back while the melee raiders suicidally crash against your defenses, you could have an extended shootout between the two sides, and occasionally the raiders might charge your defenses and then pull back if things go badly for them, not dissimilar to how sieges currently work. And instead of your colonists getting tied up into melee combat with no melee weapons, because melee fighters are garbage in colonies until you have a lot of colonists, they could switch to a melee weapon and fight back.

The dichotomy as it exists now is boring. End it. Allow all pawns to engage in both ranged and melee combat in fights.

Check out the Combat Realism mod then. It has that feature, among many others.

[AlleeCat]

Yes that would be an excellent idea, however it should be limited to 1 large melee/firearm (e.g. swords and rifles) and 1 small melee/firearm
(e.g. knives and pistols).

I completely agree with this version, the only problem being, what happens if you try to equip two melee or two ranged weapons? Maybe make it so that each weapon is either one or two handed? This would also allow colonists to do things like dual wield pistols (impractical IRL, but fun) or knives (also impractical) or have a short sword in one hand and a club in the other (much less impractical, but a shield would probably still be better to replace the club with.)

Plus, making things one or two handed would allow shields, which would make tribal playthroughs better from a narrative standpoint. Why would you charge into battle wielding a single one handed sword and nothing else? You're completely leaving yourself open to attack, and you're not even making up for it with more offense.

[OFWG]

... melee raiders, and raiders' lack of self-preservation in general ...

Actually, fixing this would fix the lion's share of raid frustration. Firearms don't suppress anybody at all and that's just not realistic. Combined with the laughable implementation of shooting skill, melee guys just run up through machine gun fire and inexplicably the MG guys put the gun away and start punching. This needs a LOT of work.

[loc978]

Survival rifle, plus melee: