B18 Feedback: Melee vs Ranged Balance.

[SpaceDorf]

Good to know. Thank you.

This explains why I need less prostetics

[Ser Kitteh]

I actually never noticed how melee became less viable which is a shame bcause B18 was the first time I took melee seriously (and really enjoying it!)

Other than reducing ranged weapons melee dmg and keeping or buffinv melee weapons, what else can be done?

The only exception I feel should be the pila. The pila was in fact used as normal spears, just not as effective as dedicated non-throwing spears.

[Sinosauropteryx]

Turning all guns into clubs in melee was one of the best changes in B18, IMO (as someone who prefers realism over arbitrary diversity/parity). A long gun is closer to a club than it is to a fist. And a 13% damage advantage for swinging a mace vs a rifle in close quarters seems about right. I don't think gun melee DPS should be reduced significantly from what it is now (except for bows, which are not clubs).

Where I agree with you @granitecosmos are the prices involved. Especially in conjunction with threats scaling with wealth. Part of the problem is guns are too cheap and easy to come by. After the first serious raid I rarely find myself manufacturing weapons. Melee weapons could have a niche as a cheap stopgap to shore up a lack of guns, but the situation just doesn't come up.
The other part of the problem is that shield belts are easily worth the ~1200 silver when used in small doses, as bait to draw fire while your own shooters attack. You don't need more than a few belts for this purpose, and perhaps the belts were priced with this in mind. When used for their "intended purpose" (charging down shooters in 1:1 numbers) the loadout is prohibitively expensive. I wonder if the price could come down to something in the 200-500 range without breaking anything.

@spacedorf I like your ideas about damage dealt to the weapons themselves. This might be a very effective solution to the melee/ranged parity question. Namely, ranged weapons used in melee combat would take some extra % damage, while dedicated melee weapons would not. This way guns get to stay the tactically superior weapons, but carry additional economic/infrastructure costs, which approximates reality.

[Yoshida Keiji]

I would really love to see Shield crafting earlier of wood and metal but must be very careful with electric shields. If Personal Shields become available earlier (which it should) that would mean that raiders will be wielding them earlier and almost always in midgame. I'm fine with that except that the viable counterplay will be EMP grenades, traps and shells. And there would lay the problem to me since building EMP traps and shells require components.

[Yoshida Keiji]

Can't wait to see a Chirrut Îmwe in Rim World. New trait: Wushu champ.

[ZebioLizard2]

You know one of the changes I would like to see is that ranged weapons have deterioration faster against someone with a melee weapon. If you are using a rifle to block sword blows you are likely causing that weapon issues that you'll need to fix out. It'd be interesting to see melee weapons cause deterioration to clothing, weapons, and armor depending where things strike. With various things causing issues for what it strikes depending on what weapon type it is.

[tmo97]

"So just to ensure you can start a melee brawl without any penalties you need the shield."
Well no, you build strategically. Duh?

"Ranged weapons' melee DPS is buffed from this ~4.27 to a base of ~5/~5.18, while gladius/spear/longsword base DPS is changed from ~6.15/~6.5/~6.8 to ~6.26/~6.53/~6.82; barely changed at all."
This is indeed ridiculous. A gladius should be better than any ranged weapon in melee, that's it, end, nothing to be questioned about it.

"you'll get shot without a shield"
sorry, but no you don't, moron, you wait around corners. how hard is this? you got all that math going for you, why can't you see this?
they don't even have time to aim if you make them go around a corner, that's how easy this is.
off-topic; this is where mechanics should be expanded, for example attacking from a sandbag gives your first hit a damage buff, and can be repeat by stepping off and on the sandbag.

"Shivs are worse than any ranged weapon in melee. "
I recall me questioning whether shivs were any better than fists at all. They used to just not hit.

"The pila beats the knife in melee, what the hell?"
lol, but I think this is derived from the fact that when I got a long stick and you got a pointy bit, you're not gonna get close to me.

"Except wood log and beer bottle as melee weapons are outperformed by fists regarding DPS."
I figured it was a bug that they could be wielded, but when I realised it was intentional, I just couldn't figure why fists are better.

"Remember that change back in A17 when fists got buffed from 6 to 7 damage and from a cooldown of 1.85s to 1.6s?"
Thank God for that. My biggest concern when fighting with fists wasn't actually the enemy, it was the chance of the battle being over and the fists guy still fighting and drawing the attention of the gunmen.

"big chart resulting from tedious analysis"
thanks man, looks very nice. appreciated. you actually colored them accordingly, wtf? sometimes i don't even have the patience to reload after an unfair fight and i ragequit, yet here you are doing this.

"pretty much point-blank."
this is why i recommended strategic building, either im missing something or you're gonna feel stupid.

"DPS advantage from 29% to about 93%"
I'd buff steel a bit and add an intermediately priced material that isn't an RNG dependent resource and has strong up/downsides.

"Too bad the weapons' market value scales more than the actual damage with higher quality."
it's not fun when you subconsciously acknowledge that when you give your pawn a melee weapon, he's either gonna win or die trying.
especially considering fleeing is nonsense.

[Granitecosmos]

sorry, but no you don't, moron, you wait around corners. how hard is this? you got all that math going for you, why can't you see this?
they don't even have time to aim if you make them go around a corner, that's how easy this is.

I took the most basic scenario: the rush on an open field. Results: obviously, attacking melee pawn gets shot a few times, thus losing some combat effectiveness. Then the actual melee brawl is a 50-50% win-lose because ranged weapons have too strong melee attacks.

The point is to compare the raw data. In the situation described above, both weapons get to be utilized fully for the best comparison; ranged has the range bonus to have the opportunity to do some damage before the melee brawl even starts, melee has the melee damage superiority to eliminate the target after engaging in melee range. Well, at least in A17 that was the case.

In B18 there is no reason to use melee because it doesn't have the edge in melee fights anymore. Using walls/mountains for better performance should be a choice of utilizing tactics for better performance, not a necessary step to even stand a proper chance (exactly like the choice of using cover in a ranged skirmish; although enemies automatically using cover themselves pretty much forces the player to do so as well). And shields are so late-game tech, by that point the enemy numbers alone counter the melee approach unless players intentionally keep the colony's market value low.

The point of melee was always the "more risk for more reward" playstyle. In A17 and prior, melee without shields worked, even when used as an open-field rush. You risk those shots (which can result in a shot-out eye or even brain damage, as well as death, obviously) the enemies get to land before you reach them for the reward of beating up the enemy in melee with almost certainly positive results. Sure, RNG can troll anyone at any time but when you have a 35-40% DPS superiority on average after getting in range even in the open-field rush, chances are you will most probably win.

In B18 there is greater risk and no reward. Why go melee when you can just go ranged for better performance and more safety as well?

I recall me questioning whether shivs were any better than fists at all. They used to just not hit.

Their chance to hit was fine before and is fine right now as well. However, they had quality in previous versions and raiders tend to spawn with damaged and bad quality gear for the first few years. A bad quality damaged shiv had worse DPS than fists (same for clubs, those don't have quality anymore either). Shivs take almost no time to craft so they are very low-effort weapons, therefore their poor DPS is justified. But even the shortbow has better melee DPS which is ridiculous, since the shortbow is also a quite low-effort ranged weapon.

lol, but I think this is derived from the fact that when I got a long stick and you got a pointy bit, you're not gonna get close to me.

From a realism standpoint this has a point but I'd argue why don't weapons with superior melee reach provide a dodge bonus versus shorter reach counterparts instead to simulate this. And even with that in mind, don't forget that the pila is all wood (no metal required to craft it) while a knife has to be made of metal. One good parry and the pila user is dead. That or wrestle it away, or just break it because it's literally just a pointy wooden stick. Furthermore, how comes the longer wooden pointy stick is worse than the shorter one then? A wooden spear has about half the melee DPS of the wooden pila. Not really realistic, now is it?

From a gameplay-balance standpoint we have a weapon that has only melee capabilities (knife) and a weapon that has both melee and ranged capabilities (pila). Logically the melee-only should be better at melee, otherwise noone would ever consider using it since it'd be worse compared to the ranged one in every way. If the pila was higher in the tech tree then this might be justified but it isn't.

Thank God for that. My biggest concern when fighting with fists wasn't actually the enemy, it was the chance of the battle being over and the fists guy still fighting and drawing the attention of the gunmen.

This little change was also the reason why social fights usually ended with losing a few fingers in A17. This was fixed in B18 by changes to the external bodypart health mechanics. The whole problem could've been avoided by buffing the attack speed of fists instead of the raw damage; same DPS increase without the obnoxious finger losses in A17. The bodypart health mechanic changes in B18 have slightly nerfed weapons of every kind with high base damage since overkill damage doesn't remove limbs or other parts as easily as it did before. Snipers rifles, which performed poorly regarding long-ranged DPS in the first place anyway, were made even worse by this change but this also affects bolt-action rifles, shotguns, spears and longswords to a lesser extent.

I'd buff steel a bit and add an intermediately priced material that isn't an RNG dependent resource and has strong up/downsides.

Steel is fine. Plasteel is just overpriced. We already have a material for blunt melee that has both advantages and disadvantages; jade increases blunt damage while slightly increases cooldown as well. The result is roughly 36% DPS increase. Unfortunately jade is overpriced as well since that 36% increase costs 2.63x market value. Most "alternative" materials are overpriced and experienced players either just avoid using them or trash their weapons to appropriate market value levels to match the added DPS.

Tynan wanted improvements to increase in costs the more you have of them. This is why an excellent gun has 2x the market value of a normal one and has 20% better DPS while a legendary one has 6x the market value for 50% better DPS; an extra 30% difference costs 5x as much (2x = +100% value; 6x = +500% value). The same principle applies to the various materials in the game. It's nice on paper but in a game where colony wealth is a major factor for raid strength scaling, it simply doesn't work properly because it doesn't actually improve anything. Sure, you might have better gear, but since that improvement costs so much, guess what; raids got stronger by that much as well, if not even more! Sure, one weapon in itself won't be such a huge difference but let's not forget all the clothes they wear; the furniture also has quality; sculptures add quite a bit as well, although beauty is the only stat that scales well even in this flawed system.

[IHateRegistering]

Honestly, I think the combat system is a bloated mess and in need of a major rewrite and redesign. Rather than fix the melee in the current system I'd rather have a new system entirely. The problem is, though, that the combat system is intertwined with pretty much everything else in Rimworld so I don't really see that happen.

[tmo97]

shortbow has better melee dps?

i didnt know it was that bad

"From a realism standpoint this has a point but I'd argue why don't weapons with superior melee reach provide a dodge bonus versus shorter reach counterparts instead to simulate this"

That's good stuff, and indeed a discrepancy.
The fact that a pila is better than a knife at both melee and ranged makes me sad. I always figured the faster hit speed would give me an advantage since I'd hope for them to disable their opponents before they'd get crippled by RNG.
Clubs are terrible. I'll just make pilas now.
I think it's really nothing bad of me to be disappointed in Tynan in not foreseeing any of these issues. They're all self-contradictive and they become obvious once you play the game.

I wish we had a thread where Tynan criticized his own game and shared his own suggestions with us. He gets to leech us, but we don't get to hear him truly.

p.s. "This little change was also the reason why social fights usually ended with losing a few fingers in A17" laughed my ass off at this. i never really noticed how much it really was until now

[patoka]

From a gameplay-balance standpoint we have a weapon that has only melee capabilities (knife) and a weapon that has both melee and ranged capabilities (pila). Logically the melee-only should be better at melee, otherwise noone would ever consider using it since it'd be worse compared to the ranged one in every way. If the pila was higher in the tech tree then this might be justified but it isn't

for a change i am on your side on this one. i have mentionned quite a few times that EVERYTHING should have to be researchable. sure, most colonies would start off with many things already researched, like crashlanded would start off with normal beds, but the cave men shouldnt have beds available, only sleeping spots.
same with all the weapons. why add gladii to the game when the same research topic unlocks longswords. i have never seen anyone build a gladius instead of a longsword when he lacked time or resources. if anything, he builds a knife. well, at least in alpha17. in beta18 they would much rather build a short bow, it seems.

so, to repeat: first research shivs. then research knives. then research gladius. then research spear. then research pilum. then research longsword. and if you wanna you can scatter the other weapons somewhere aswelll
actually, i might do a little research tree for you guys myself as an example, gotta get home first though

[Yoshida Keiji]

There is another problem, which people tend to miss, like here.

Melee weapons were useful mostly before industrial age and guns. BUT the period which game spends between start and industrial age (if you play as a tribe) is very very short. You can basically force research in a matter of days.

If you play industrial+ level from scratch, its fine.
If you start as a tribe, there is a whole era missing.
Need longer medieval period. With VERY longer research. Preferably between each period. Say, research to go from neolityc to medieval to be worth 50000. From medieval to industrial 250000, from industrial to spacer 1000000.

I think this has to be in vanilla game. Because transition is WAY too fast. As a tribe, I never had to use bows and swords, because outsiders supplied with plenty of higher-tech weapons

+1

The jump between eras is ridiculous. We have huskies but no sled carts... a Futuristic game mixed with Western...and no Horses...

Has there ever been a Western movie without Horses? Answer...in Rimworld only. Even Firefly episodes had horses...

We have no catapults... no vessels... See those islands in the world map...we don't have maritime forces either...Vikings...

Not to mention that in end game stages there is no drones or airplanes.

We only have ground combat... which is strange considering that there's pod launchers, drop pods and even the new orbital weapons whose name escape me since so far I never got one yet...

[fiziologus]

Big trouble with melee vs range combat is draw close stage. IRL melee fighter no charge direct to target, but quick move on arc constantly avoid line if fire. In RimWord fighter just move to target even no charge and get dose of bullets. Equal range and melee possible via "evasion move": while melee fighter draw close to shooter walk speed increase (charge) and 2x dodge take to evasion direct decrease shooter's aim.

[Azzinoth]

I want to point out that the Melee Skill must be taken into account here. If you are attacking a ranged enemy you have most likely a much higher melee skill than him, giving you more DPS advantage. Also, the changelog of A17 states, that you get an additional dogde chance the higher your melee skill is, effectivly lowering the DPS of your enemy.

Removed post-process curve from melee hit chance so it uses the simple level-by-level tuning. It'll be much harder to hit things now at low melee skills. Note: Default hit chance is 0.6 for pawns without skills. This equals the chance of a pawn with melee skill 6.
Added a melee dodge stat, so better melee-skilled pawns will have more advantage. Pawns don't melee dodge while aiming or firing ranged weapons.

[sick puppy]

But even if the devs end up buffing melee, there is one way to avoid adding more one-hit kills (which have dramatically decreased in B18 anyway, due to the new game mechanic for bodypart damage). Decrease the cooldown istead of increasing the damage. Better DPS while having the same damage per attack. Problem solved.

i also thought about increasing attack speed of melee weapons, but consequently you'd also have to increase the attack speed of normal punches. that would make it far easier for any pawn with ranged or non-ranged weapons to stunlock their opponents if they have superiority in numbers.
furthermore you'd have to increase the attack speed of animals and nobody wants op zerg i mean squirrel rushes back
:/

oh i think i know what you mean.
"everything is relative" - albert einstein
if you buff weapons, no matter how you do it, you will end up with more powerful humans.
if humans are more powerful that must mean animals are weaker in comparison. just like mechanoids, turrets and even walls.
it is all simple maths. if a weapon needed 10 hits to kill another human at first and now it needs only 9 due to a buff applied to it, it will also kill animals, mechanoids, turrets and walls quicker.
relatively speaking, you are nerfing everything else aswell. (not just animals, like patoka said, but anyway)

why would you care? let's say in alpha 17 everything in combat was perfect. (i claim it was more or less perfect) now in beta 18 stuff has been buffed and it completely threw over certain aspects of combat.
e.g. ranged weapons do way more melee damage, so much so that normal melee weapons arent worth it anymore. on a less severe note it also made animals weaker in comparison. a manhunter in a17 needed x hits to die. now it needs less than x, since weapons have been buffed. so now not only can you shoot manhunters from afar, but you can fight them effectively in melee aswell by equipping your colonists with guns. that makes manhunter packs much weaker in b18 in comparison to a17. same applies to mechs.

and unless all these relative nerfs are wanted, i aswell have to warn the devs about buffs that can turn into nerfs if you dont think about the change enough.

still, the combat system as it is right now is flawed. my proposition is to still try and fix it, but not with isolated buffs. if you buff something you often need to buff many other things aswell if you dont do it perfectly.
you cant just buff attack damage of mechs, animals and turrets or you'll end up with too frail combatants RELATIVELY SPEAKING. suddenly combat takes half as long because everything dies much sooner. you also need to raise hp where needed if you decide to buff dps. and if you raise the hp of structures and furniture and so on, fires dont do enough damage relatively speaking.

and i could go on forever. but this is the jist of it.

please just be careful about the game balance. aside from lore and program running speed, balance is the main reason why most mods arent added to the vanilla game. so please dont screw it up like you did with b18. this is the reason at least why i still play alpha 17 instead (i also dont like the inspiration thing, but that is minor)