Ranged weapons are actually the worst.

[Doom Sayer]

Its almost impossible to botteneck enemies with them. All colonists constantly miss so will hit melee fighters or downed colonists killing them. For a while I thought you should give colonists weapon they are good at but at least if i give them melee they wont kill other colonists.

[Sunbird]

Learn the game!

[The Blind One]

you can keep ranged pawns up to 4 tiles behind a melee fighter and they will not friendly fire them. You're probably keeping your own ranged units too far away allowing for friendly fire to hit be enabled to hit them. Keep them as close as you can to avoid this.

Ironically this game plays more like 'pike and shot' tactics from the 16th and 17hth century than modern tactical positioning. You have to put melee blockers (pikes) up front and 3 to 4 rows of ranged pawns (shot) directly behind them.

This how this game is played in endgame or without killboxes. You put 3 melee blockers at a door entrance and wait for your enemy to slowly walk in one by one while you keep 12 ranged pawns behind the melee blockers to mow them down.

It's incredibly janky and counter intuitive and really lame. But that's how this game is played.

So instead of imagining a high tactical positioning, imagine a pike and shot battlefield of the 16th century with braindead AI that will suicide itself into bottlenecks. Once you know this, combat becomes trivial and repetitive.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

You have to put melee blockers (pikes) up front and 3 to 4 rows of ranged pawns (shot) directly behind them.

This how this game is played in endgame or without killboxes. You put 3 melee blockers at a door entrance and wait for your enemy to slowly walk in one by one while you keep 12 ranged pawns behind the melee blockers to mow them down.

That is absolutely not "how the game is played late game," while it might be viable it does not sound at all optimal. About the only situation where you have a setup like that is against an all melee force, typically an infestation or manhunter pack with many weak enemies. Against normal raids you generally always want to be using things like cover.

The only thing the OP is doing wrong is not understanding the friendly fire mechanics, and making the assumption that just giving a skill 6 shooter a normal pistol makes them a crack shot. Late game with high quality guns and bionic'd soldiers at decent skills, you do not need any melee at all in any situation, and your shooters will drop enemies very quickly with minimal if any misses, especially with shooting specialists. Melee can definitely be useful and very strong, the game does a pretty good job balancing melee and ranged in the game, but it's balanced to the point where it's worthwhile to use melee but not at all necessary, or particularly optimal. When I do use a mix of range and melee, the melee typically only sees much use against infestations and mech clusters (to rush turrets).

Early on when your shooters are garbage though, yes it's very useful to equip at least one colonist in armor and give them a melee weapon to intercept enemies. Still not necessary, I do many runs that are ranged only and nobody is ever allowed to use a melee weapon.

[hardy_conrad]

He is making an understandable mistake. Most video games tilt the scales to make the player feel more powerful. Think of the typical zombie game where you singlehandedly wipe out thousands of enemies despite having only just picked up the game. Subconsciously that experience will linger in our heads. So when we begin playing Rimworld, see two or three melee attackers shuffling along, and set our couple of handgun users to deal with it, well...

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by hardy_conrad:

He is making an understandable mistake. Most video games tilt the scales to make the player feel more powerful. Think of the typical zombie game where you singlehandedly wipe out thousands of enemies despite having only just picked up the game. Subconsciously that experience will linger in our heads. So when we begin playing Rimworld, see two or three melee attackers shuffling along, and set our couple of handgun users to deal with it, well...

Thats not really issue its just the fact if you dont know very specific way they stated that to stop shooters from killing other colonists then it will happen constantly. The miss chance is comically high. I think I accidentally figured out that it has a tile range around time i posted since i started doing 3 melee blocking a held open door with a gunner behind center guy.

Its basically a guarantee that your better off having a 15 shooting 0 melee guy being used as meat shield then having them 5+ tiles away.

I know how to get around the issue more or less its just extremely jank design. In recent colonies i also figured out colonists that cant fight are good meat shields.

Its been more common for my own colonists to one shot other colonists than enemies to do it even with mortars attacking me.

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by The Blind One:

You have to put melee blockers (pikes) up front and 3 to 4 rows of ranged pawns (shot) directly behind them.

This how this game is played in endgame or without killboxes. You put 3 melee blockers at a door entrance and wait for your enemy to slowly walk in one by one while you keep 12 ranged pawns behind the melee blockers to mow them down.

That is absolutely not "how the game is played late game," while it might be viable it does not sound at all optimal. About the only situation where you have a setup like that is against an all melee force, typically an infestation or manhunter pack with many weak enemies. Against normal raids you generally always want to be using things like cover.

The only thing the OP is doing wrong is not understanding the friendly fire mechanics, and making the assumption that just giving a skill 6 shooter a normal pistol makes them a crack shot. Late game with high quality guns and bionic'd soldiers at decent skills, you do not need any melee at all in any situation, and your shooters will drop enemies very quickly with minimal if any misses, especially with shooting specialists. Melee can definitely be useful and very strong, the game does a pretty good job balancing melee and ranged in the game, but it's balanced to the point where it's worthwhile to use melee but not at all necessary, or particularly optimal. When I do use a mix of range and melee, the melee typically only sees much use against infestations and mech clusters (to rush turrets).

Early on when your shooters are garbage though, yes it's very useful to equip at least one colonist in armor and give them a melee weapon to intercept enemies. Still not necessary, I do many runs that are ranged only and nobody is ever allowed to use a melee weapon.

I dont really agree melee literally locks shooters out of shooting so hard counters it. Since the portable force fields exists you can just combine that with plate armor and win any fight. About only ones that will be lost are mortar raids or possibly those mechanoid base things since you cant bait all hostiles into base easily.

Even with that if you build mortars and have zappers it negates that problem.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

I dont really agree melee literally locks shooters out of shooting so hard counters it.

Melee locks the shooter out of shooting *that* melee fighter. They can still decide to shoot at another pawn further back while being shanked. In 90%+ of cases they'll engage in melee, but sometimes they just really want to shoot your non-violent janitor who picked that moment to start cleaning up blood.

[Wasted]

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/File:Friendly_Fire_Radii.png

[brian_va]

https://adamvseverything.com/rimworld-guide-to-combat-combat-basics-for-beginners-veterans-2023-1-4/

text or video; up to you

[TTVShadowVat]

or understand how "Guns" Work.

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by YTShadowVat:

or understand how "Guns" Work.

I mean they do work colonists are very good good at shooting other colonists in back of head instakilling them.

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

Originally posted by YTShadowVat:

or understand how "Guns" Work.

I mean they do work colonists are very good good at shooting other colonists in back of head instakilling them.

https://adamvseverything.com/rimworld-guide-friendly-fire/

19 seconds in, shows you the radius. guns only, not for explosives.

prevention isn't that difficult.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

I dont really agree melee literally locks shooters out of shooting so hard counters it. Since the portable force fields exists you can just combine that with plate armor and win any fight.

1. This is entirely moot if you don't let them get into melee range. Yes shooting accuracy is based on distance, becoming increasingly less accurate at high ranges. The thing you are likely missing is, shooting skill is not even the largest factor in shooting accuracy. At 20 shooting skill a pawn has +20 shooting accuracy, the max shooting accuracy a pawn can get is 62. Let that one sink in. Realistically your shooters will be at around 30-40 late game from things like bionic/archotech eyes, shooting specialist buffs, and other lesser bonuses.

At 10 shooting accuracy chance to hit at 1 tile is 97.00%, chance to hit at 20 tiles is 54%
At 20 shooting accuracy chance to hit at 1 tile is 99.00%, chance to hit at 20 tiles is 81%
At 30 shooting accuracy chance to hit at 1 tile is 99.65%, chance to hit at 20 tiles is 93%
At 40 shooting accuracy chance to hit at 1 tile is 99.80%, chance to hit at 20 tiles is 96%
At 60 shooting accuracy chance to hit at 1 tile is 99.90%, chance to hit at 20 tiles is 98%

So yes 10 shooting skill without bionics or shooting specialist buffs or anything else is indeed pretty garbage, progression is an important part of this game and your colonists don't land as gods. Those values are multiplied by weapon accuracy and cover. Many legendary weapons have 100% accuracy in their optimal ranges, meaning mid to late game enemies in an open field are hit by nearly every shot from your defenders and drop like flies. Don't forget you can also make your colonists much faster than enemies so they can also kite them around. I occasionally use a single fast colonist with a sniper rifle or charge lance to deal with an entire mid-size raid by kiting them around the edge of the map just for fun (jump pack/legs are a vital safety for this).

2. Low-shield packs are very hard to get and mostly only usable in emergency situations. They are also MUCH more useful if you have guns as the entire point of them is enemies can't fire into them but your pawns can shoot out of them. You might use one when dealing with a particularly dangerous group of sappers/breachers where there is no good cover nearby, so you drop it in front of the enemy group and shred them with your firing squad. If you mean shield belts, yes those are required for melee to function beyond the early game, but they only block a few shots and you absolutely can't charge a group of enemies that significantly outnumber you with a few melees with shield belts and expect them to survive. If you are playing on a very low difficulty that might be fine, but it doesn't work on higher difficulties, you need to use blind corners and choke points to handle raids as melee, but even enemies with guns will batter your melee units down eventually since blunt resist is so low on armor. All melee is definitely possible, I've done that a few times as well, but it's definitely much harder than all ranged or a balanced mix.

Skipshields are a useful melee tool, but this requires going heavily into psycasting, and other options at a similar tier include berserking the enemies while your psycaster is invisible and having the raid kill itself. Psycasting is very strong.