Weapons discussion for 1.0 specific

[Tynan]

Interesting info, but why test with such a weird pawn? Level 20 scarred wimp is a bit odd.

Anyway, the idea it combine melee and ranged fighters; a totally unsupported shooter will generally lose to a fast-approach melee attacker if placed 1 on 1 and that's fine.

[TheMeInTeam]

^ ranged has the advantage of not taking return fire until melee closes though, and there are still ways to guarantee the melee can't.

Also was the autopistol nerfed since 1.0 started?  If it is still consistent with the wiki it has the unique property of being capable of shooting and moving in < 80 ticks, no other weapon can do this in < 100 (machine pistol burst eats too much time).  That gives the weapon a unique niche in that only fast weapons can contest their mobility with cover.  I haven't tested it in the most current update yet, but if it's still sub-80 it's a solid weapon for urban engagements now for its pure mobility.

[Oblitus]

Interesting info, but why test with such a weird pawn? Level 20 scarred wimp is a bit odd.

Anyway, the idea it combine melee and ranged fighters; a totally unsupported shooter will generally lose to a fast-approach melee attacker if placed 1 on 1 and that's fine.

That's what RNG gave me. Who am I to argue with RNG? Scars are extremely common roll in my experience, so until you got bionics - it is what you have to deal with. Wimp is fine anyway since battle which comes to melee is already lost strategically.

But this is way too overturned in favor of melee. An almost perfect shooter, yet 22% chance to win against one of the basic enemies with little to no effect from the equipped weapon.

And the biggest problem is - melee pawn is expendable. It is a meat shield that will inevitably take damage from both sides (had my melee pawn got her leg shot off by my own shooter while being in direct proximity). Raiders and animals can afford it; they are just spawned from thin air. Player has no such luxury.

So only real options are expendable animals (a big headache) and turrets (kinda unreliable when you got raid during a solar flare).

In my experience, during mid-game raids, my pawns are outnumbered in 1:5 to 1:10 ratio. Animals just can't reproduce fast enough. So all that is left is "cheese" - traps, turrets, killboxes. Things that can be rebuilt and repaired.

[TheMeInTeam]

There is indeed no such thing as an expendable pawn.  You can melee without taking friendly fire, or even enemy fire.

Gunplay gains advantage as you add more shooters and more of the game's mechanics.  It's true that automated hunting is still very dangerous compared to drafting though, where with the latter it's going to be routinely 0 : 5 in pawn favor with 5x the shooters and lack of immediate predator aggro, and this is before getting into bullet intercept in manhunter scenarios.

[Oblitus]

There is indeed no such thing as an expendable pawn.  You can melee without taking friendly fire, or even enemy fire.

Sure, if you attack a downed pawn. Otherwise, it is too situational.

[Awe]

Early game - revolvers looks fine. Especially you dont have a much choice and they are pretty frequently delivered to you doors.
Mid game - shotguns, heavy smg for "door" fights. Bolt action for sniping.
Late game - snipe/lances as heavy fire support, charge rifles at front line with melee dudes. I dont know why people complain about CR - they are work much better than assault rifles against heavy armored targets like centipedes or guys in power armors.

Assault rifles is ok too. Especially for lazyness. Viable for any kind of activities - hunting, door fights, sniping.

Miniguns now looks completely useless. Didnt try LMG.

[DariusWolfe]

There is indeed no such thing as an expendable pawn.  You can melee without taking friendly fire, or even enemy fire.

EVERY enemy pawn is expendable, which is why they can get away with using melee pawns all the time. That's always been my problem with how raids are balanced. Yes, we can use smarter tactics than the AI raiders, but there gets to be a point where smart-but-still-fun is simply not sufficient; The cost will end up being too high, because our pawns aren't expendable. So you get killboxes and animal hordes or door cheesing or what have you.

a totally unsupported shooter will generally lose to a fast-approach melee attacker if placed 1 on 1 and that's fine.

One shooter vs one melee, unless the melee is using tactics to close the distance without getting shot, should almost always default to the shooter, unless the melee is considerably better than the shooter. Melee should be the resort of the zerg rush, where you can afford to lose lots of pawns, or used tactically, using terrain, covering fire or superior protective equipment to get close to your enemy. In roughly even odds, the melee shouldn't win, except by fluke.

[TheMeInTeam]

There is indeed no such thing as an expendable pawn.  You can melee without taking friendly fire, or even enemy fire.

Sure, if you attack a downed pawn. Otherwise, it is too situational.

If you just draft and attack in the open, sure.  That's a losing proposition no matter the weapon though.

If you don't do that, then it's up to the player to engineer the situations where the weapon has the advantage.

[DariusWolfe]

If you just draft and attack in the open, sure.  That's a losing proposition no matter the weapon though.

If you don't do that, then it's up to the player to engineer the situations where the weapon has the advantage.

This is exactly what I mean. I've expressed my discontent with the melee vs ranged system in the past, but I think this is the main point of contention. A melee pawn charging directly at a gun-wielding pawn who's targeting him is just too damned strong. If the player doesn't target the melee because there are too many of them, like in a tribal raid, or because they prioritize the ranged pawns, then they kind of deserve to get wrecked. But when I have 3 pawns targeting a single melee, and he still gets there mostly unscathed, that's where I draw the line. As a player, I should never consider draft-and-charge to be a viable tactic, either.

[dearmad]

Idk... I just want one awesome martial artist in my game, that's all.  Craft her a bo-stick or some have some stealth skills and smoke bombs to get in close and take out that entire enemy base solo! 

Hehe

[Wintersdark]

This is exactly what I mean. I've expressed my discontent with the melee vs ranged system in the past, but I think this is the main point of contention. A melee pawn charging directly at a gun-wielding pawn who's targeting him is just too damned strong. If the player doesn't target the melee because there are too many of them, like in a tribal raid, or because they prioritize the ranged pawns, then they kind of deserve to get wrecked. But when I have 3 pawns targeting a single melee, and he still gets there mostly unscathed, that's where I draw the line. As a player, I should never consider draft-and-charge to be a viable tactic, either.

I'd be ok with this, except for the resultant situation.

For raiders, having pawns permanently injured is irrelevant: They cannot run out of pawns.  Raiders can send melee pawns in, have them get injured in every battle, and it doesn't matter because they'll have fresh pawns for the next raid.  So, raiders can use melee pawns effectively, whereas we can't.  If your melee pawn charges them, he's going to take melee damage, hostile fire, and friendly fire.  He's pretty much garaunteed to be injured, probably seriously, and as a result he's going to be scarred or crippled.  Each raid will permanently reduce his capability both as a warrior and as a useful pawn. 

Sure, there's bionics and archotech, which can actually improve a seriously mangled pawn, but that's extremely expensive end-game stuff there. 

I find, in the early to mid game, firing into a melee is insanely dangerous and basically a 50-50 chance of hitting your own pawn. 

If this where a game with health bars and no long term injuries melee vs. ranged would be way easier to balance.  But with long term injuries, how can you balance when considering how the attackers are not impacted by crippling injuries, but the defender suffers attrition in every single raid?

[Barley]

There's also the issue of the tech tree. I play tribal because it lets me take flawed pawns where other scenarios necessitate "Perfect" colonists but still get a challange. But if melee outdoes shooting weapons then why should I ever research past Plate Armor and Longswords except to maybe, eventually, put down a few distract-o-tron improvised turrets?

[DariusWolfe]

I'd be ok with this, except for the resultant situation.
(snip)

It feels like you're disagreeing with me, but you're not saying anything I disagree with. Can you elaborate on how you think my suggestion is bad, given the context you gave?

It's clear that Tynan wants to keep melee viable. I'm reluctant, but I'm also willing to admit that I could be biased. So I'm trying to give suggestions that keep melee strong at melee ranges only. Given that raiders tend to come at 2-3x the colony's strength, melee raiders are still viable because the player can be distracted by gunners, explosives, or just overwhelming numbers. Melee colonists can be viable as defense against those melee raiders, commandos sneaking around to assault the flanks, or ambushers. Both sides can take advantage of superior defensive equipment as well, later game.

[mndfreeze]

I definitely agree with some of the commentary here in regards to the AI factions do not have the same limits in place as players, but get the same combat systems we use (sometimes better equipment/pawns even) and it can be pretty unfair at times when they already come in much larger numbers.  I also agree that we have human brains and logic to try to work around it but the code does need to support us in ways as well. 

I'm finding I still need to use a kill zone alley of sorts, riddled with traps, turrets and my shooter pawns with melee behind them waiting to engage if people make it close, which they always seem to and I generally lose at least one person per raid it seems now.  I'm still early to mid-ish game right now. 

Revolver didn't seem to do much good for me.  When it was my only gun it did, but I was having better luck with an autopistol.

Bolt action has done lots of work for me for auto hunting, and once instance where I needed to distance sniper someone, but too slow for most of the raids that have come at me.

LMG's definitely seem a lot better then I remember them being.  My 2 pawns using the LMG's are only so-so shooters.  One is like a 11 and the other an 8 or 9 I think, they are doing a good job spraying down bad guys, getting hits and keeping them off me.  Mostly.

Assault rifles seem better now that they were buffed back up a bit.

The SMG definitely feels weak, almost too weak.  IMO it should have at least a little stopping power, or perhaps if all guns has a
little bit at least that might help balance out how fast melee hordes can close the gap and slaughter you.

I do have 2 arctic wolf pets and a dog that I've had to use quite a bit to save my ass.  I've shot them so many times lol.  Only one tail lost so far though, phew.

I'm not a fan of the fact that I can't shoot point blank anymore.  That was the one way you sometimes had a chance to survive an animal or bad guy closing the gap when you didn't pray hard enough to RNGesus.

The game I'm on now was a naked brutality start.  Thankfully all the food poisoning let me make it long enough to recruit a second pawn.  I did have to roll for quite a while to get a starter pawn that could survive the start.  I'm midway through year 3 and I only just now researched turrets and assault rifles.  It took FOREVER before I was in a secure enough spot to let someone research. 

My tribal run died out to a raid.  A single melee user took out 3 people, then the 2 shooters took out my last 3 people almost perfectly, from behind cover. :/  FU randy.

So far I'm finding I need roughly 3 melee people with above mentioend dogs/wolves + 4 to 5 shooters, traps, and a few turrets to handle the amount of people a tribal raid throws at me.  Pirate raids are coming with less people and nothing too crazy yet with weapons.  I've had to get creative to get around seiges and mining around defenses.

I've lost 2 people to melee scythers.  It moves so fast that if you have a ranged pawn and you don't take it out right away, you're just done for.