Some Melee Questions and Observations

[Barley]

Observation 1: Mechaniods are weak to Melee
Turns out instead of trading shots you can run up to them and pummel them to death. Once they start aiming their weapons they don't want to switch to brawl mode, apparently, even when your attacks interrupt their aim!

Question 1: Power Claws Vs. a Nice Sword.
I got an Excellent-quality plasteel longswordsword, and a couple power claws. Which is superior? A Single Fist or a Longsword.

Question 2: Double Claws
Will having two claws increase attack speed? Damage? Or make two attacks at once?

Question 3: Claw + Longsword
If I were to let my colonist use both a Claw and a longsword, would he only use one, would the claw's manipulation penalty effect the Longsword attack?

Melee Agility
What does this effect? Attack Time? Dodge Chance? Chance to Hit? Need Tooltips!

Why do I ask?
I'm thinking of turning my Brawlers into anti-Mech troopers, but I want to know all the consequences going forward. My current disposition is a power claw + Longsword combo, so they can still work on farming and mining but will have maximum damage output.

[Utherix]

O1: I've definitely had them use their melee attack before, and it's a two hit kill maximum. Its a big risk.

Q1: How much damage does a power claw do? The long sword is probably better.

Q2: No. Two does nothing.

Q3: No idea. I asked the same question and got no answer.

BTW, currently there is a bug where if you have a power claw, they won't use the melee weapon. There's no point in having both, you pick one or the other.

[Cimanyd]

More importantly, the bug means bionic arms are used instead of melee weapons, even though they only do 8 damage. Give good melee weapons (or all melee weapons, really) to colonists that don't have bionic arms.

[Tasty]

Observation 1: Mechaniods are weak to Melee
Turns out instead of trading shots you can run up to them and pummel them to death. Once they start aiming their weapons they don't want to switch to brawl mode, apparently, even when your attacks interrupt their aim!

About this; so if you wait until the mechs attack with their weapons, do they refuse to melee? After discovering that melee can overpower mechs like this I would send all my colonists charging forth to beat down any vile robots that opposed me. But one day the villainous robots came down upon my colony in a ship of theirs and I went with the good ol' beat down technique. Within a minute or so, every one of my colonists were pummeled to death with a single hit to each. Ever since that day I've never attempted to melee a mechanoid again.

What I'm curious about is can you manipulate the mech AI to prevent it from meleeing your colonists back? I found it strange that they only melee sometimes, and try to run and shoot other times.

Also, while on the topic of melee, what are the pros and cons of knife protrusions and power claws? I've always been interested in them but never gave any effort to try them out.

[Goo Poni]

The knife protrusions make colonists less dexterous and thus, work slower as one might expect from having a hand replaced with a shank, but they obviously deal a lot more melee damage in turn. Power claw, I presume it's a similar deal.

[milon]

I have NOT had opportunity to test the following, it's speculation only:

The mech AI runs a simple move/shoot/melee decision tree. Once it's decided what to do, it executes the action and then makes its next decision.  If it chooses to shoot, that's when you need to melee it.  Melee resets the aiming, but does not trigger the decision tree (so it can't decide to punch you back).  It's a bit of an exploit, and I assume Tynan will fix it.

What we really need are EMP Knuckles!

[Tasty]

 Ah, that makes sense. It will continue to try and fire until it gets the shot off and if it does then it will check if melee is a better option. I need to test that out.

[Aporatael]

If you select a pawn you can tell when they are aiming. This includes Mechs.

[Grizzlyadamz]

Hm, weird. Well I saw a tribal fighting a centipede & almost made a topic, but then I noticed the centipede did have a melee attack listed, and after about 5 swings the centipede had enough and one-shot the tribal.
Wonder what triggered the re-evaluation?

[milon]

I'm probably wrong/incomplete with my above assumption. Either that, or the tribal paused his assault long enough for the mech to fire and reevaluate.

[Barley]

Observation 1: Mechaniods are weak to Melee
Turns out instead of trading shots you can run up to them and pummel them to death. Once they start aiming their weapons they don't want to switch to brawl mode, apparently, even when your attacks interrupt their aim!

About this; so if you wait until the mechs attack with their weapons, do they refuse to melee? After discovering that melee can overpower mechs like this I would send all my colonists charging forth to beat down any vile robots that opposed me. But one day the villainous robots came down upon my colony in a ship of theirs and I went with the good ol' beat down technique. Within a minute or so, every one of my colonists were pummeled to death with a single hit to each. Ever since that day I've never attempted to melee a mechanoid again.

What I'm curious about is can you manipulate the mech AI to prevent it from meleeing your colonists back? I found it strange that they only melee sometimes, and try to run and shoot other times.

I'll admit I don't know the exact cause of their reluctance to melee, but it appears you have to wait for them to fire their weapon first.

This came out of an act of desperation during a playthrough of my latest colony. The Mechaniods had destroyed my turret defences, destroyed everything and were bombarding my base entrance with inferno cannons. Not good, because it was underground and braced with wood walls. Desperate, I pulled everyone out of the Mechaniod line of sight and waited for them to enter. When they did, I threw all my colonists into melee and pummeled 2 centipedes and 2 Scythers to death with bear fists, without taking any further damage from the Mechs.