Addressing Melee

[TheMeInTeam]

Tribe raids and mechs are the worst for melee.  The latter is functionally untenable on even modest difficulties, forget extreme.  Melee vs centipedes using anything except animals is a bad idea, and scythers don't exactly tickle.

Even with good layout to force 3v1s, you can still lose fingers to a spear unless you're rocking power armor.  It works early game when you can club a few raiders before they start shooting and take their weapons as a tribe, but melee is crappy after that.

In any case where you can use melee somewhat effectively, guns with similar micro ability will do the job better, and have more flexibility for general purpose use. 

"all standing on one tile" was *not* fixed.  3 or more raider pawns can fit in to 1 square to beat on a door or wall.  If they're pathing from a decent distance, you can see 5+ raiders stacking up on one spot (can be abused in reverse with explosives or other tricks).  It is even still possible for the player to get significantly more than 3 pawns into 3 squares so you can get 4v1s or even 6v1s through a door.  This is not an environment where one reasonably concludes the issue was "fixed" .

[Ser Kitteh]

While not a proper fix to melee, I propose we have the option to disable all firearms. We can disable things like hauling or hunting and incidents, why not go the whole way and get rid of certain items too? We can have swords and power armored knights, but no guns.

[Britnoth]

It is even still possible for the player to get significantly more than 3 pawns into 3 squares so you can get 4v1s or even 6v1s through a door.

Fun fact: 20 guys with charge rifles standing in a doorway drop a centipede in 1 round. 

[crazyroosterman]

I wonder if a18 will do anything about this? I like the idea behind it but there's just a great deal preventing that.

[TrashMan]

I thought the "all standing on one tile" thing was already addressed?
Near as I can tell they only do it while moving long distances now...

Things I would like to see in/for melee:

1.

• 
  Pawns standing behind a target have a greatly reduced chance of getting hit by ranged attacks that miss the target:
  E = Enemy
  T = Enemy Target
  S = Colonist Shooter
  (E-T--------S) = E is covered by T and so will benefit from reduced chance to get hit by missed shots from S
  (T-E--------S) = E is not covered by T and so will have the normal chance to get hit by missed shots from S
  
  Why do I want this? Because then you can position your brawlers behind incoming enemies and they will be relatively safe from friendly fire. It even comes with a counter balance in that it also protects the back lines of the enemy raiders from your ranged fire(which should make sneaking behind the enemy with brawlers more useful).
  
2.

• 
  Armor should have a Minimum Damage Threshold. Any damage dealt that does not exceed the armor's Minimum Damage Threshold is 100% negated and does not harm the wearer(but still damages the armor).
  
3.

• 
  EDIT: Nvm. It seems this one was already fixed in A17.
  Damage that armor takes should be reduced by what the resulting damage dealt to the pawn would be. Currently shoddy armor with lower reduction values last longer than legendary armor because armor just takes what it isn't dealt to the pawn. 10 damage at 10% reduction means shoddy armor only takes 1 damage, but a Legendary armor that reduces at 100% takes 10 damage and degrades faster.
  It is:
  10 incoming damage -> Reduced by 40% = 6 damage to the pawn and 4 damage the armor
  10 incoming damage -> Reduced by 90% = 1 damage to the pawn and 9 damage the armor
  It should be:
  10 incoming damage -> Reduced by 40% = 6 damage to the pawn and 6 damage the armor
  10 incoming damage -> Reduced by 90% = 1 damage to the pawn and 1 damage the armor
  
4.

• Multi Targeting. Brawlers in melee are currently too focused on one target when they are surrounded. They should focus their attention on the most immediate threat(Enemies who's attack swing is not currently on cooldown), and should get a dodge bonus against which ever enemy they are currently focused on.

THIS MAN IS WISE.
LISTEN TO HIM.

[sadpickle]

While not a proper fix to melee, I propose we have the option to disable all firearms. We can disable things like hauling or hunting and incidents, why not go the whole way and get rid of certain items too? We can have swords and power armored knights, but no guns.

I like this. Disabling an item or item category from spawning would make for interesting games.

In general, firearms are superior because of all the reasons listed here as well as the most obvious: infinite ammo. A gun is really just a crappy club without both a projectile and a means to propel it. Indeed, cartridges (what rubes call a "bullet" but is actually a bullet + propellant) have made it pretty simple to load and fire a gun, but they are marvelous inventions and the result of centuries of perfecting firearms. They also require a lot of infrastructure. Reloading brass doesn't, you can do it at a desk with a small collection of tools. But shaping brass so it won't explode in the chamber is a lot more demanding an enterprise.

Like water, this basic consideration is abandoned for game balance. How annoying would it be for a new player to fight off two raids, spend all his ammo and find he is at the mercy of traders or a complicated system of research and workbenches and resource acquisition before he can fire his starter Survival Rifle again. It would also make hunting probably way too expensive to bother. Miniguns would just be a waste of ammo.

The reasons for it not being modeled are obvious, but it does reduce melee to an auxiliary skill at best, while IN REALITY most people fought by hand before the advent of firearms, and IN REALITY most people on a planet subject to poverty and regular hostility would fight by hand as well, out of simple necessity. They wouldn't just pick up a bow and go to work; learning to use a bow takes time (as a boy scout, I have had passing acquaintance with them and they are HARD to use, both by how much strength they require and to aim true while struggling with the draw). Most serious archers were trained from early childhood into adulthood.

In short, if I could dream a mod into existence, it would be one that added ammo requirements for all projectiles and would make them MUCH more rare in raids AND in trading. There would be less gun-fighting in general, and a gun would be both a serious threat and a major prize.

EDIT: It would also have flintlock-type guns, craft able, which have a much lower firing speed than even the sniper rifle. And gun range would be dramatically expanded to make them that much more dangerous to face, and desirable to have.

[Bozobub]

To be frank, that DOES sound like a good mod, and seems completely possible as well (although I haven't done any modding myself, so YMMV, of course ^^').

[Ser Kitteh]

For the longest time I've eyed Combat Extended by I'm unwilling to give up my Rimsenal Extended, but I digress.

More systems in melee would certainly help. I realise Rimworld is a colony simulator first, but the fact is all players at some point become increasingly familiar. A large 10 man + colony with an outer perimeter, bunkers and killboxes with everyone wearing dusters and cowboy hats. You can't stay tribal forever with clubs and bows because if you don't pirates with rifles will burn your colony down.

Which is why I'm in favor of disabling certain items. Cant have pirates roflstomping you if they too have bows and spears.

[TrashMan]

*SNIP*

And yet there is a mod that adds ammo and the game is BETTER For it. Of course, it requires re-balancing.
Melee used for hunting. More use of bows and cheap weapons. Change in weapon balance (specifically the minigun, which should absolutely MURDER anything, at the expense of huge ammo consumption)

[Ser Kitteh]

If we're gonna talk melee, then we should talk armor. The fact of the matter is even something like a kevlar vest and a helmet takes too much resources. I propose something basic like mail shirts and gambessons for early game armour. It won't do jack against guns but it would very much work for melee weapons.

It should be balanced by having mail shirts being cheap but takes a very long time and being heavy (mail is the heaviest component in a set of plate armor) and gambessons should take something like animal wool or a ton of cloth at the expense of overheating. Heck, gambessons are basically thick winter clothing anyway.

These are just two apparels that would make melee viable, and we haven't even touched things like plate armor yet. And yes, I realise that we have medieval mods, but I'm talking vanilla additions, not full overhauls.

[makkenhoff]

My own experience has been that if you design your base to reduce the effectiveness of ranged fighters, you can make a decent run of it. My own melee/shotgun/heavy smg/grenade tactics works fine up until I start seeing raids larger than 10; I do feel overwhelmed by sheer numbers in those tribal cases. To be fair, I don't usually see Mechanoids raids, but I've handled a few from ancient dangers but usually with casualties even when I manage to kite scythers into a centipede's firing angle. Though I feel most people simply don't build bases that utilize melee over ranged, and honestly have no real interest in it. I enjoy it, but I've always been fascinated by the idea of melee combat. In practice, I wouldn't enjoy it at all, way too much blood and gore.

I would agree blocking industrial age and beyond weaponry might be nice if post tribal to industrial ages had already been fleshed out; as it stands right now, I think it would perhaps limit the game too much.

[RemingtonRyder]

Melee is useful for holding choke points against easy enemies. But unless you can lure ranged attackers into a murder box, you have to fight back with ranged.

How I deal with this is to have lots of ways through the perimeter wall. It sounds counter-intuitive, and actually I still need the large pincer-shaped entryways otherwise I'm just walking out into a hail of gunfire, but the reason this seems to work is because I can more easily set up a situation where enemies are not in good cover on at least on side.

When you have lots of great bows in the hands of your tribals, they can be surprisingly effective. Not as good as guns, but not as resource intensive either. And you can still use sand bags and walls to improve your cover.

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes, you can design a base to allow melee to close w/o being shot, even without shield belts.

It doesn't matter.  That won't save you vs sieges, sappers, mechanoids, or large numbers of dangerous manhunters like wargs.  These situations will inflict bad damage or casualties on melee fighters on higher difficulties, consistently.

Melee can handle other encounters safely.  The problem is, so can the countermeasures to the above threats.  You already solved any issue melee could help with just by making a surviving design against other raid types. 

By making a configuration that lasts more than 1/2 year to year on intense or extreme, you've obsoleted your melee outright.  That's why I asserted it's early-game only in practice earlier.  I say this despite that my most commonly used weapon in the first few months is a club.  Once things scale up, the viability scales down.  A shield belt pawn or two still has some utility into the end game, but melee isn't long-term viable.

[RemingtonRyder]

Melee combat is useful in certain situations, but you can't rely on it exclusively. At any one time I'll probably have one or two colonists maximum with melee weapons, but if the circumstances suggest changing things, then I have other weapons in shelves.

The thing I tend to notice about non-sapper raids is that when there are no turrets in the open, but there's a perimeter wall blocking their way, they tend to split up and attack the doors and walls. You can send melee-equipped colonists off to ambush the ones which are on their own and busy punching walls or doors.

Remember, raiders will give up if they lose too many people, so for each of them that you kill or down, the sooner the raid ends.

Can't say the same for mechanoids, but they have their own weaknesses - they do not benefit from cover so you can get a few shooters at a time to take down an individual Scyther, and you can fall back out of the range of a Centipede before it mows your colonists down.

Colonists are going to get injured whether they're fighting melee or ranged. If they lose limbs, you can replace those with bionic body parts. And that just comes down to making a lot of money.

[Bozobub]

Colonists are going to get injured whether they're fighting melee or ranged. If they lose limbs, you can replace those with bionic body parts. And that just comes down to making a lot of money.

Not so much, currently.  Bionics have become MUCH rarer.  The bottleneck is now much more likely to be simple unavailability.