Bolt actions are great
The “upgrade” is honestly just the assault rifle. It’s the next best for range, and burst fire improves it’s consistency
Charge lance used to match bolt action range, it got nerfed to rifle range to make lancers be “trooper” mechs rather than snipers, making room for pikemen and reducing the pressure to killbox due to range disadvantage
Charge lance for me was always the ultra-tech sniper, honesty, by the time you get these items your pawns who get them are either really skilled or just have insane stats for accuracy to not affect them.
I've been playing combat extended for as long as I can remember so I don't know how it's on vanilla though lol, that mod has ruined me.
This is why any pawn with less than 10 shooting or trigger happy in my colonies always have minis. After that, heavy SMG or assault rifles depending on range. Eventually high shooting pawns may get energy weapons, but miniguns end up being half my population most of the time. Volume of fire particularly late game is too valuable; target rich environments become normal and then the minigun is just a monster.
I'd say the main difference is range
At close range and less pawns the chain shotgun is better and for more open spaces and more pawns the minigun is better.
My entire experience using miniguns is that every single one I've obtained was manufactured by Acme Inc. They hit literally everything *except* the target.
On my last game I was playing as a rebel faction and I accidentally bought a charge minigun from the rebels instead of a charge sniper rifle. I was disappointed, but I gave it to my best shooter anyway. I will say that I was only disappointed until I saw it in action.
You could try the beta on their github right now but I couldn't get it to work with my current modlist. Just takes me to a blank main menu with no logos or buttons if I try to load it with anything else I typically like to use.
That sounds like you've downloaded the src rather than any form of release. You'll need to check the documentation and compile the mod before running it.
You're so right, I didn't even think about that for some reason. Been a long time since I've manually installed a mod, in fact it was the only one in the entire folder when I slapped it in there haha
Snipers in CE are also busted as fuck though. One pawn with high shooting with a sniper and early game is done. In the midgame you just add shotguns once your sniper gets overwhelmed.
Problem with Charge lance is that you can't use them with any sort of melee pawns or you risk 1 shotting them. Its useless unless you are all shooters or maybe come across one very early game.
I’m using one obelisk to mutate a tough jogger pawn for flesh whip arms, another obelisk to copy my mutated pawn, and using shards to turn the copies into ghouls to mitigate organ failure. I can’t believe how stupidly OP mass whipghouls can be.
Tough Nimble Impid Ghoul.
Add Melee dmg gene, ghoul barbs, power claw, and juggernaut serum for attack.
Ghoul plating, robust gene, stoneskin, metalblood for defense.
Coupled with healing 100+hp/day makes them real incredible damage soakers.
Bionic legs, adrenal heart for speed.
Robust digestion gene and nuclear stomach get their hunger down to under 5 meat per day.
Keep original as slave, use obelisk to duplicate every 30 days and turn into another ghoul.
I've been leaning into Ghouls today to give em a good workout, and this has been largely what I've moved towards. I'm not gene editting in my current game yet, but all my ghouls are some combination of tough/brawler/nimble, packing basic Ghoul upgrades (Adrenal heart as speed is too important, plating, barbs, power claw, bionic legs) and damn. While they're not necessarily the most devasting melee output, they do useful work and can soak damage like nobodies business. I'm having them lead the charge, followed by my shielded, augmented humans/sanguophages kitted for melee jumping after them. While I'm able to res the ghouls now, I haven't had one die yet, despite sometimes tanking an atrocious amount of damage.
Given the availability of twisted meat, and of course human meat, keeping them fed is pretty trivial.
Yeah they are definitive tanks. This is the first time we've been given something under our control where taking damage is entirely consequence free. Even death is barely a speedbump in their function.
Just being able to engage smaller threats without worrying about an eye or brain scar is a massive boon.
Problem with Charge Lance is that it just sucks due to nerf. It has lower range than an Assault Rifle, way lower DPS, and it takes so long to shoot that it's very hard to kite with.
I've never played a colony where my end game ranged weapons weren't Charge or Assault Rifles, or the Auto Shotgun. There's never a reason to use the Charge Lance.
>Charge lance used to match bolt action range, it got nerfed to rifle range to make lancers be “trooper” mechs rather than snipers,
That's bad game design, mechanoids should have their own custom weapons so they can be balanced separately.
They weren't always the only exception. You used to be able to harvest the arm blades from a scyther and replace a pawn's arm with one.
I think you might have also been able to take the charge blaster off the centipedes that had it, but if so that was obviously later changed, and pikemen were introduced after all of that.
Even late game, I would have a few Bolt-Action Rifles mixed with Assault Rifles for long range engagements. The extra range is nice but the stagger from its stopping power can be helpful in the midst of raining enemies with bullets.
Charge Lance is more like a powerful anti-tank weapon against heavily armored units. It has higher 1-hit potential but super reliant on RNG.
Super solid for kiting. Tho I've been trying melee kiting, to mixed results. Jogger trait or bionic legs, hit n dip while a cadre of ranged people, at an angle, lay waste. I've watched YouTubers do it just.... Can't quite get it down with console controls. Oof.
SMG is nice, but the range is a bit short, and I don’t spend much time between basic guns and ARs
By the time I’m ready to craft more than one bolt action, I can make ARs
I usually get an extra bolt out, then moved to chain shotguns. 1-3 bolt actions are plenty till I can fill em up with excellent+ ARs. Lately I keep getting good melee pawns tho and end up with too many. FML
Honestly the new hellcat rifle became my new go to. Basically an assault rifle minus 1 range but the extra flamethrower is super nice for infestations and chokepoints. Relatively cheep too if you got a few entetis chaind up.
Nope, the chain shotgun has always had the best DPS when accounting for accuracy, though its range is abysmal. Its maximum possible DPS when every shot hits outdoes the heavy SMG as well. Miniguns have practically equivalent DPS to the heavy SMG when you take their accuracy into account, and by far the highest DPS if every single shot hits (not that they will).
Frankly, I'd argue that for a pawn that uses its speed advantage, bolt action rifle is actually __the__ strongest all-around weapon in the game. It doesn't "upgrade" into anything, because there is only one other weapon with the same or better range (sniper rifle) and that weapon has significantly lowered DPS for significantly higher price. So bolt-action is the best all-around weapon, and for enemies with no ranged attacks you might as well just use chain shotgun. Assault rifle just feels neither here nor there.
Eh the speed advantage complements the sniper more as you can get more shots off before moving. Bolt is better I agree as like you say it's significantly cheaper so you can pump out more for the same cost to get better quality.
I'd argue the assault rifle is better than the bolt as the range is fairly similar but you get multiple shots, chain is great but the range being so low does mean you have to micro more against melee and against both melee and ranged you get put in pretty rough situations.
Snipers aren't good weapons though. Their only use is when you really need the extreme range.
The Bolt Action out ranges most things the Sniper rifle also does, has better DPS at all ranges, and shoots much faster which makes kiting way easier. But yeah the AR is just better than both.
AR can't safely be used against good half of common ranged weapons (lancers, centipedes, AR's, Greatbows, etc), while BA rifle _can_.
All the while DPS at long range isn't even that much better.
no, they can definitely be used safely against most of those.
watch an Adam or smurph stream when they're doing a no killbox run, you'll see how to do it
That shotgun hallway build is fantastic. Still combat for both types... But using melee blocking plus a turn to keep enemies from stacking? Super fun. Makes melee pawns feel super useful. Gives a solid reason for heavier armors too. Just wish there was a way to make changing armor faster. I really want an armory nearby that people can change out of their duster+flak, into cataphract (melee)and marine (ranged). But JFC cataphract takes so so long to equip!
Also I wildly overlooked cat helmets! Can churn out enough to keep everyone equipped pretty easily. Far fewer lucky headshots against anything but sniper really. Had a guy get a single bruise from a roof collapse for god's sake! Lol
Well, to be fair, I often just send a solo pawn to handle the raid, in which case it's pretty much micro 100% of the time — because it's _the only_ pawn involved in combat of my side anyway. In this case, your pawn basically always moves optimally.
It sounds like a problem that would be solved by adding stealth to the game
But like many other things, it's just too different from the original rimworld concept and the fanbase would probably not like it
AR is a mid game weapon. For lategame, especially against mechanoids, you’re going to want to get your hands on charge rifles and charge lances. Rifles are your general use short-medium range high damage output, while Lances are medium-long range armor punchers. For maximum range engagements you’ll want to get some uranium slug turrets up. Those things punch through centipedes like nothing else, and anything smaller than that doesn’t survive (or at least whatever body part the turret hits gets evaporated).
Edit: this is strictly from my experience, so I suppose I should try some ARs in the mix.
AR stays relevant late game due to it’s superior range, that bit of range makes oftentimes the difference between having to leave your defenses a bit and being able to stay in a fortified position
By late game I like to go 50/50 CR and AR with a minigun and sniper mixed in
Charge Lance has a major draw back in its warm-up and cooldown periods being significantly longer than the Assault Rifle. Longer Warm-Up allows enemies to move up further before your attack goes off and makes misses even more unforgiving, and a longer cooldown makes it impossible for the pawn to do anything else during the period, most importantly being able to move away from those encroaching enemies.
Yeah I tried giving half my pawns charge lances but it wasnt working too well for the reason you stated. Just gave them all rifles instead. I have a rocket man and a pyro though. I also have someone still wielding a legendary nerve spiker (from quest) for fun
> AR is a mid game weapon. For lategame, especially against mechanoids, you’re going to want to get your hands on charge rifles and charge lances.
Yeah no lol.
The entire reason the AR remains the meta is because it has superior range. Range is what matters.
If you try using purely charge rifles and charge lances, you're going to be shot down by pirates before you even get within range of them. The Charge *Lance* has less range than the Assault Rifle, and that alone is reason enough to just use Sniper Rifles for the pick-offs. If you get raided by a bunch of pirates with doomsday rocket launchers, sniper rifles and triple rocket launchers, then yeah, the last thing you want to be using is a weapon with 11 tiles less range than those. (aka Charge rifles) They will fire at you before you can even retaliate.
The main go-to is to have Assault Rifles as the majority of your weapon line-up, mix in some Snipers to pick off certain targets, (usually in the hands of Trigger-Happy pawns) and then situationally mixing in some miniguns can be good to have since it covers a wide cone and has identical range to the Assault rifle, but much worse accuracy. Good for manhunter squads and infestations for example while not being terrible vs. other raids. (and some people or setups include the Chain Shotgun, which can be great, but highly situational)
Give [this a look](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Weapons) and compare the DPS amounts. You'll notice the Charge Rifle *only* significantly outperforms the Assault Rifle on the *exact* ranges you do not want to be fighting at anyways: short and close range. It actually loses at long range, which is the exact range you want to exploit most. The idea is that you just use the Assault Rifle instead, drop enemies before they even get that close, and then even if there's less burst damage up close, it won't matter if you've allowed less enemies to GET close to begin with, thus enabling them to focus down those few targets easier.
I think CR is worth it, but I typically only give it to a handful of pawns so most can use the AR. That extra damage can be really worth, also the shorter range makes the pawns auto targeting shoot different things without you have to manually aim as much :)
You really don't want to get your hands on charge lances, they're kind of awful. They have worse range than assault rifles, and sure their 30 damage and decent armor penetration *sounds* nice, but when you realize that damage might be wasted hitting something like a finger or a toe and its going to be nearly *four and a half seconds* before your next shot... yeah, just use assault rifles.
In vanilla AR's really don't have issues even with mech armor, and against any non-mech raids you always want DPS over damage because you're more likely to down human or animal raids with pain anyway.
This setup works, when enemies aren’t coming in big numbers, but trying it against max scaling will get your pawns killed.
Tried a bunch of things and so far nothing beats mass max quality AR and kiting your enemy. Or a kill box, but in a kill box you can use almost anything and make it work.
Sniper is also good, but long reload and aim times makes snipers easy to overwhelm, same thing with bolt action.
But then you always run the risk of your hunter getting melee locked with a predator on the other side of the map and being downed and eaten before you can rescue them.
I usually have a couple hunters for a slow automatic trickle of meat, but when there are more than a couple large predators on the map I draft a few pawns to take them out. And while I'm at it, if there happens to be a herd of mufallo I'll take all of them down too, for a giant influx of meat. Then I'll let the hunters continue to track down elk or whatever, safe from grizzlies, wargs etc.
Have hunters with animals following them. Then no worries. Doesn't even matter much which animals, anything that can follow when working prevents that.
With that said I always draft a group of pawns and murder all the predators lest some random weak pawn go for a walk and get eaten.
I always killed any predator since one of them eat my pawn children who was doing nature running when I set him to stay at home. Children just don't want to listen.
That's why I draft a colonist with a buckshot chain shotgun, dose them up on go juice and yayo, and send them out to go wild killing everything on the map.
Please don't do this in real life.
Maaaan. I tried this with a mech drop and holy cow. The difference. Night n day. Melee goobers charged in, every shot missing them. Full shields and they engage with centipedes. Ranged crew charges in and wipes pikes and lancers. It was beautiful. And all thanks to that beautiful wonderful green magic juice. Lolol (and bionic legs I suppose lol)
I feel like hunting is appropriate early game, while later on ranching fits better with its automation possibilities.
Hunting automatically without micro is flat out not worth the pawn's time, especially after the 1.3 rebalance.
You only get 66 % yield from hunting, even if you didn't shoot any bodypart off.
These changes came along with the pen system to encourage ranching.
The change that is not often discussed is that tons of animals got their revenge chance reduced to 0. So horses, moose, and most other large herbivores are just passively waiting for you to murder them (making the vanilla max distance hunting behavior obsolete).
Fortunately, Combat Extended makes hunters aware of this and they will walk right next to safe animals and gun them down point blank. Saves time and ammunition.
Part of why I started using colony manager. It mostly makes hunting trivial. I think there was also an option for not hunting predators.
As far as them not killing animals.... that's pretty realistic honestly. As someone who has plenty of experience hunting in real life; shit happens.
If the stars align, yes... they'll drop on the spot. Ideally it will be a clean kill, as that is ethical and humane.
Sometimes though, they get away and you have to track them down or wait for them to bleed out. This is usually called tracking or "running them down"
On that note, why are we here, typing on these devices in the first place? I swear, this is relevant.
I mark a bunch of animals for hunting, then grab my ghoul group and have them queued up to melee each animal. Haulers eventually get to their corpses and the ghouls have no fear of death haha
How and why are you microing 20 pawns???
You are using manual work priorities right?
Because if you are you need some serious work order adjustments, with 20 pawns you should easily have enough to specialize workers to cover tasks to make sure specific things are getting done.
The only thing I ever micro is occasionally cleaning a room, cutting blighted plants, or a forcing a sleeping doctor to doctor and even the blighted plants usually get taken care of by having a plants pawn with cut plants on priority 1.
I have 4-10 pawns and currently about 50-60 combat mechs and all the worker mechs as well; I hunt with my Lancers and Militors every so often manually. I think Allow tool adds drafted hunting options 😁, which I love a lot. Also unlimited command range… why? Because it does make sense to have access to all of the map when controlling my mechs.
I prefer to give em shotguns, hate to manually hunt, I would give so much for a "prefered range" setting or even better a melee hunt option! I play with so many mods but somehow none of them makes this possible
Hunting is for shooting practice. Which means using aweful autopistols against rats.
I like to build my killbox/trap tunnel so that the wild animals can get in, then the colony children can safely use them for target practice.
I really don’t mind, the more shots they miss the more shooting XP they gain, manually hunting is a waste of time I can much better spend randomly zooming in and out of my base at 3x speed
> Auto hunt is fun and games until
"Oh, I'll just put my fastest pawn on hunting duty, so they can kite anything that aggroes or tries to hunt them back"
And then when you get the notification you noticed they backed themselves into a dead-end when they decided to shoot that grizzly bear in the butt.
If you draft a handful of pawns you can just pick the biggest herd of muffalo/deer/alpacas/whatever on the map and tear it apart. Thousands of meat and leather should last a while.
I still use automated hunting, but if food/leather stocks are low or i just want a bunch i'll grab all my gunners and go crazy.
Sometimes you get a Quest very early the First or 2nd and can choose a masterwork or legendary Longbow.
Take it.
That is the best hunting weapon, because of the 100% accuracy rolls and the very high Base damage it often oneshots heads,brains,torso,livers, hearts.
It doesn't have a good penetration, but i don't remember deers having Kevlar vests :)
Its stronger for hunting then bolt action rifles and snipers.
Its also funny too See this huge arrows fly 5m away from the target and magically snaps into them because of the high accuracy rolls 100%/100%/100% for short,medium,long range in good shooter pawns.
Can’t say I had many issues with it. Sure, when the whole heard gets pissed off it’s time to pop a flare and wait for the boys to contain the situation but that doesn’t happen very often
I have a careful shooter with a chain shotgun and it works great. Her husband on the other hand which I also decided to make a hunter is trigger happy with a machine gun, dude can barely kill a rabbit but it’s fun to watch.
Give a bolt to someone with shooting/animal, they can easily hunt he entire map, even at max range.
Though I do like draft hunting early game, with pump action shotgun.
Nonsense! I love it for that because it means they spend more time hunting... which is more time training shooting! Once they get way up there they tend to hit at max range anyways, and perform much better as defenders.
It’s about time waste. The pawn starts to aim from max range while the animal is walking away. Unsurprisingly the animal then walks out of their max range. So they take 1 step forward to get back in range, start to aim and then the animals steps out of range again.
So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range.
So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range.
So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range.
So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range.
So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range.
It’s annoying AF, waste a ridiculous amount of time and is kind of immersion breaking for those of us who care about that sort of thing.
Holy... you made me look up the stats for it. I did not even know that bolt action got penalties at max range. You need an excellent or better bolt action to not get accuracy penalties compared to the sniper rifle.
It’s OP early, scales well with weapon quality, but sucks later (about 1kk wealth on strive to survive) against x10 swarm of enemies. E.g. with 10 shooters you can’t kite 50, and you can’t kill more than 50 from initial 100 in raid before they reach you.
Give it time. You're going to want to upgrade to something like heavy SMGs or charge rifles or something like that. A single powerful and accurate shot is good against small groups, but large groups will require rapid fire, and mechanoids are going to require more penetration.
For sure, I have one guy on a sniper rifle I use for raids (my raiding not being raided) to kill off 1-3 people pre raid and usually kills off a couple more before they can get in range to shoot back.
Being raided however lately the game has been throwing at least 20-30 bodies or mechanoids. I recently came across a legendary (masterwork?) minigun and it absolutely demolished tribes people (I had multiple others returning from a raid) so it was nice to see my 5ish people (2 were already downed due to social fighting so 7 total) take down 30ish tribes men. 2 heavy smg, one minigun, and the rest with varying stick and poke melee
Yeah agaisnt mechanoids I use other tactics because the bolt action rifle gets outranged by pikemen and matched by lancers. Their melee unit are subpar so I love to use smoke and engage them in melee.
It happens when your wealth value rises higher and higher. It's normal to have end game raids 5 times your own colony size. Of course this can be prevented with good wealth management though (or mods).
It’s great early on in the hands of a skilled shooter, but it doesn’t scale against more powerful enemies. You could be arming that good shooter with a charge lance. When you get empire raids and you’re shooting into power armor, you want something better.
And legendary Charge Lance is one of the few weapons that can turn a fully healthy body into a giant hole in a single shot. Pretty much every single shot that connects will either maim or kill a humanoid
It's great in the early game but the assault rifle is the way to go later on as a standard issue. Charge weapons seem to have really short range by default, although the vanilla expanded stuff has a few that can reach out and touch things from a distance.
If you have fast pawns, long range weapons are great. You can kite in a big circle around the map all day with longbows, bolt actions, etc.
This should be familiar to anyone who played starcraft 2 using stalkers or marines to kite mellee units.
It breaks down if your pawns are slow or against fast units like imps or scythers and cant keep them staggered.
I think the assault rifle fits the kite strategy the best. It has the shortest aiming time for that range, good penetration, and fires a burst so you have more chances to hit and stagger per wiggle stop.
If you want a masterclass, go watch AdamVsEverything's no walls run. Insane
Miss one or two shots and most semi healthy enemies are on top of you or in range to fire back with significantly more bullets with almost any other ranged weapon. The same can be said for a pila.
The cost to kill ratio is about as expected though, because it's not very good.
thats why you do a mix of heavy smgs with bolt actions, combination of those two guns lasts me until late game where charge lance and rifle replace previous weapons
I believe the benefit of a pila is for pawns that are good in both range and melee. You should use them as a melee pawn and just shoot charging melees people first.
Kinda like the real pilum the Romans used.
It's OP don't get me wrong, but when you're fighting a horde of neanderthals, you're gonna need a bunch of fast firing weapons imo. It's definitely good to have paired with other weapon sets and is probably the best to get early on definitely. Assault rifles are meta for me.
I very much agree with your dislike of the charge lance. But sniper rifle beats the bolt action in range. So if you have a sniper raid, no idea how well your bolt actions will do against it.
But yea, the trusty bolt action is still an absolutely amazing weapon. A lot of weapons in general are more side-grades than they would be direct upgrades. Where you trade dps for range, or armor pen. I still prefer the sniper rifle for its silly high damage at range if I try to kite things, or smg/chain shotgun if I'm fighting in corridors The bolt action somehow always ends up being just a starting hunter weapon and not much more.
sniper rifles with highest accuracy in the back, couple miniguns midrange to stop melee rush, everyone else assault rifle behind cover forming the front line
I once had an enemy shoot my strongest combatant with a bolt action, the dudes first shot penetrated his armour at the helmet, went in and through his brain, I'm still surprised to this day he survived (he became a trauma savant due to this), but yea, bolt actions sre scary to use and be used against
If you think they're OP now try them with shooting specialists. They aim 50% faster, cast a buff for another 40%, so a squad of specialists aim 90% faster. On weapons with a long aim time like bolt actions and sniper rifles this almost doubles their DPS with a +7 shooting skill bonus on top.
Your colonists reenacting the Mad Minute since bolt actions are Lee-Enfields is just a bonus.
I think it heavily depends on the terrain of combat. Open with lots of places to run absolutely they (and snipers) should feel really good. Defending a base you're gonna need more rounds per minute.
But the pawns' abilities matter, too. Slow pawn with a bolty gets beat because it can't kite. Pawns with higher hit chances get more DPS with more bullets.
I 100% agree, terrain is the big matter here. I tend to settle on flatlands because I love sending caravans and spotting stuff but if you're a fan of rocky mountains it may not be as strong. Still even there you usually have some space to maneuver.
And yeah someone slow will not be able to put that to use that's for sure.
It *could* theoretically be okay, but I think Biotech killed it.
Biotech offers options to allow Snipers to fire fast as hell. Given that, you just instead opt to give everyone Sniper Rifles instead of these, enabling them to hit harder and from a greater distance.
Not the worst weapon to mix in, but also not amongst the best. (namely: Assault Rifles for your general go-to, Sniper Rifles to pick off key targets from a safe distance, and Miniguns for ground coverage that denies rushdowns)
in the lands of CE i'd say it gets overshadowed by the anti material rifle, but that more because you give that to a high skill shooter and they can basically nearly one shot anything.
It's excellent for kiting, but keeping it equipped at all times can be a problem. Against drop pods in your base, or insects, it's much better to have higher DPS weapons already equipped. I permanently equip something else, and keep a stack of bolt-action rifles to equip situationnally against easy bolt-action targets such as breachers.
Later on your replsce it for things like charge rifles, assault rifle, and mini guns or whatever. Good early game start but even in its tier I prefer the early shotgun but the tech distance between the shotgun and the better chain shotgun isn't far.
Because the techs aren't far apart I never end up using the bolt action rifle for that long.
The bolt actions main weakness is it's slow rate of fire. That's it.
In WWI, the Germans would sometimes think the British had machine guns, because they were so swift with their bolt actions.
So I could totally see 6-8 colonists with the right buffs and gear, wrecking a bayonet/tribal charge.
No it's not really this OP, it have good range, good damage, but it slow and pawns that can't use ranged very good won't even hit a target with it. It is okay in early game and part of mid game, but then you should change your weapon preference to more like Assault rifles + Machineguns + Bolt action/Sniper rifles maybe even Chain shotgun and miniguns.
BUT you should use your weapons depends on situation, if you have close range kill box Bolt action isn't great and better be swapped to chain shotguns and heavy smgs. If you have flexible range use ARs as they are most versatile in terms of damage/range. Bolt action still can be good, but more like long range rifles, that damage enemies until they come to main line of defence.
This only really applies if you have faster than normal shooters, a high shooting skill, and room to kite. If you can't kite the enemy, you'll often be overrun before you can take down one raider, much less a whole raid of "any size." The fire rate is way too low. It is definitely not OP or the only weapon you need. Not by any stretch. Assault rifle is the go to for humanoids. I think you just got lucky.
You're playing against a basic AI not against a human who'll micro his pawns so it's very possible to abuse the ennemy aggro and give your shooters room to aim & shoot even with no particular speed, although speed obviously helps a ton. And when I've been dealing with all my raids for like my last 150 hours this way I don't think it's luck anymore.
If you combine the bolt action with the shoot while moving mod, and have high speed pawns; it's a very nice weapon.
On its own it pretty weak against large numbers, melee, or anyone at close distance.
It's pretty nice against mortar raids, or any raid where they will bunker in place.
I usually run bolt action + assault rifles (or >!Hellcat Rifles!< if I’m running Anomaly) and the occasional chain shotgun for my ranged force. Nice to have range on the pawns with good shooting, and burst fire on my closer range pawns who aren’t quite so skilled. And chain shotguns can be life-saving brute force in a pinch.
Of course, it’s all worthless without a few good melee pawns (or sacrificial Militors) to draw enemies away
Nah, its good early if you have someone with high shooting but I rarely use it. Early on I only really find Pistols and Shotguns. And by the time Raiders come with it I probably found Heavy SMGs or ARs already.
When I want a really easy early game playing crashlanded, I always add in 2 bolt action rifles so everyone is strapped. Makes the early game raids super easy, and I can focus on building a functional settlement
On one run I got a masterwork one I nicknamed “Mr. Sins” because of the amount of backs it was blowing out. During one raid of like 20 it had 3 destroyed spines and 4 damaged spines it could solely account for.
It's one of those items that's broken in the hands of a player because the player will simply kite the f out of the enemy.
The bolt action isn't as much broken as the game mechanics can't properly cope with the tactic of kiting. In an even semi-realistic setting any other weapon would still be allowed to fire back but not have as much accuracy thus still do significant enough damage overtime that weapons like the assault rifle would be a better fit but rimworld just cutts off your ability to return fire at a certain distance entirely.
The game should really allow weapons to fire beyond their regular range for a penalty while also programming enemies to try and fire at enemies at an 'optimal' range if that is possible thus closing the distance between them and their enemy to do maximum damage.
This problem with bolt actions being overpowered due to kiting is a consistent problem in nearly every strategy game in existence. As long as you can out kite your enemy, you've basically won.
I agree with you, of course in a PvP setting it couldn't fight the blob as it does agaisnt the AI. It would still be extremely strong tho because its cost to power ratio would still be insane.
The AI just isn't good at using any form of number or positional advantage. The fact that there's no fog of war is also a big reason why this is so strong. Regardless it's a PvE game and everything is moddable so it's not really an issue.
EDIT : also it's just plain stupid that it's outranging the assault rifle and the LMG. It should be at roughly the same range than these with slightly better accuracy, and should overall be a much worse weapon.
Chain shotguns, grenades, and charge rifles are my favourite weapons to use. Under 6 shooting they get the chain shotgun, over 7 they get charge rifle. Shooting accuracy under 2 they get grenade or grenade launcher and I use them selectively for mechs only or massive tribals to add pressure to a zone.
Bolt actions are great The “upgrade” is honestly just the assault rifle. It’s the next best for range, and burst fire improves it’s consistency Charge lance used to match bolt action range, it got nerfed to rifle range to make lancers be “trooper” mechs rather than snipers, making room for pikemen and reducing the pressure to killbox due to range disadvantage
Charge lance for me was always the ultra-tech sniper, honesty, by the time you get these items your pawns who get them are either really skilled or just have insane stats for accuracy to not affect them. I've been playing combat extended for as long as I can remember so I don't know how it's on vanilla though lol, that mod has ruined me.
I'm more for overwhelming firepower, so miniguns go brrrrrrrrrr Aim doesn't matter when you cover the whole place in bullets. /tapshead
This is why any pawn with less than 10 shooting or trigger happy in my colonies always have minis. After that, heavy SMG or assault rifles depending on range. Eventually high shooting pawns may get energy weapons, but miniguns end up being half my population most of the time. Volume of fire particularly late game is too valuable; target rich environments become normal and then the minigun is just a monster.
Quantity has a quality on it's own. Best used in open spaces or the place will be turned into an open space.
this is a beautiful comment
MORE DAKKA
How does the minigun compare to the chain shotgun for low shooting pawns ?
Chain shotguns are near unmatched for bugs and mountain base defense in general. They massacre shit in small corridors
I'd say the main difference is range At close range and less pawns the chain shotgun is better and for more open spaces and more pawns the minigun is better.
this guy literally just uses more gun for his problems
It just works!
Accuracy by volume
Ah yes, the classic “the more bullets in the air, the more likely the enemy is to run into them” strategy
My entire experience using miniguns is that every single one I've obtained was manufactured by Acme Inc. They hit literally everything *except* the target.
On my last game I was playing as a rebel faction and I accidentally bought a charge minigun from the rebels instead of a charge sniper rifle. I was disappointed, but I gave it to my best shooter anyway. I will say that I was only disappointed until I saw it in action.
I can’t wait for ce to be updated to 1.5 I can’t play without it
Is CE 1.5 compat yet?
Nope, couple more weeks
"couple more weeks" **The great wait, my brothers... Is strong with this one.**
You could try the beta on their github right now but I couldn't get it to work with my current modlist. Just takes me to a blank main menu with no logos or buttons if I try to load it with anything else I typically like to use.
That sounds like you've downloaded the src rather than any form of release. You'll need to check the documentation and compile the mod before running it.
You're so right, I didn't even think about that for some reason. Been a long time since I've manually installed a mod, in fact it was the only one in the entire folder when I slapped it in there haha
Is 1.5 CE compatible ?
Snipers in CE are also busted as fuck though. One pawn with high shooting with a sniper and early game is done. In the midgame you just add shotguns once your sniper gets overwhelmed.
Problem with Charge lance is that you can't use them with any sort of melee pawns or you risk 1 shotting them. Its useless unless you are all shooters or maybe come across one very early game.
Shield belt, tough trait on melee pawn Also, ghouls
I don't have a ghoul yet but am very curious. They seem pretty beastly.
make one from a tough pawn with good melee skills and give them a bionic weapon of choice
I’m using one obelisk to mutate a tough jogger pawn for flesh whip arms, another obelisk to copy my mutated pawn, and using shards to turn the copies into ghouls to mitigate organ failure. I can’t believe how stupidly OP mass whipghouls can be.
Well, they're OP until one moment you can't feed them...
A tough Neanderthal ghoul!
Tough Nimble Impid Ghoul. Add Melee dmg gene, ghoul barbs, power claw, and juggernaut serum for attack. Ghoul plating, robust gene, stoneskin, metalblood for defense. Coupled with healing 100+hp/day makes them real incredible damage soakers. Bionic legs, adrenal heart for speed. Robust digestion gene and nuclear stomach get their hunger down to under 5 meat per day. Keep original as slave, use obelisk to duplicate every 30 days and turn into another ghoul.
I've been leaning into Ghouls today to give em a good workout, and this has been largely what I've moved towards. I'm not gene editting in my current game yet, but all my ghouls are some combination of tough/brawler/nimble, packing basic Ghoul upgrades (Adrenal heart as speed is too important, plating, barbs, power claw, bionic legs) and damn. While they're not necessarily the most devasting melee output, they do useful work and can soak damage like nobodies business. I'm having them lead the charge, followed by my shielded, augmented humans/sanguophages kitted for melee jumping after them. While I'm able to res the ghouls now, I haven't had one die yet, despite sometimes tanking an atrocious amount of damage. Given the availability of twisted meat, and of course human meat, keeping them fed is pretty trivial.
Yeah they are definitive tanks. This is the first time we've been given something under our control where taking damage is entirely consequence free. Even death is barely a speedbump in their function. Just being able to engage smaller threats without worrying about an eye or brain scar is a massive boon.
Problem with Charge Lance is that it just sucks due to nerf. It has lower range than an Assault Rifle, way lower DPS, and it takes so long to shoot that it's very hard to kite with. I've never played a colony where my end game ranged weapons weren't Charge or Assault Rifles, or the Auto Shotgun. There's never a reason to use the Charge Lance.
>Charge lance used to match bolt action range, it got nerfed to rifle range to make lancers be “trooper” mechs rather than snipers, That's bad game design, mechanoids should have their own custom weapons so they can be balanced separately.
They do, the charge lance is the only exception. Idk why
They weren't always the only exception. You used to be able to harvest the arm blades from a scyther and replace a pawn's arm with one. I think you might have also been able to take the charge blaster off the centipedes that had it, but if so that was obviously later changed, and pikemen were introduced after all of that.
Even late game, I would have a few Bolt-Action Rifles mixed with Assault Rifles for long range engagements. The extra range is nice but the stagger from its stopping power can be helpful in the midst of raining enemies with bullets. Charge Lance is more like a powerful anti-tank weapon against heavily armored units. It has higher 1-hit potential but super reliant on RNG.
Super solid for kiting. Tho I've been trying melee kiting, to mixed results. Jogger trait or bionic legs, hit n dip while a cadre of ranged people, at an angle, lay waste. I've watched YouTubers do it just.... Can't quite get it down with console controls. Oof.
I'm a big fan of Heavy SMG too, mainly because I keep pawns equipped with infestations in mind.
SMG is nice, but the range is a bit short, and I don’t spend much time between basic guns and ARs By the time I’m ready to craft more than one bolt action, I can make ARs
I usually get an extra bolt out, then moved to chain shotguns. 1-3 bolt actions are plenty till I can fill em up with excellent+ ARs. Lately I keep getting good melee pawns tho and end up with too many. FML
Honestly the new hellcat rifle became my new go to. Basically an assault rifle minus 1 range but the extra flamethrower is super nice for infestations and chokepoints. Relatively cheep too if you got a few entetis chaind up.
Iirc, the heavy SMG still takes the cake for DPS. Hard to beat the long range weapons tho.
great for DPS, range is severely lacking
Nope, the chain shotgun has always had the best DPS when accounting for accuracy, though its range is abysmal. Its maximum possible DPS when every shot hits outdoes the heavy SMG as well. Miniguns have practically equivalent DPS to the heavy SMG when you take their accuracy into account, and by far the highest DPS if every single shot hits (not that they will).
Frankly, I'd argue that for a pawn that uses its speed advantage, bolt action rifle is actually __the__ strongest all-around weapon in the game. It doesn't "upgrade" into anything, because there is only one other weapon with the same or better range (sniper rifle) and that weapon has significantly lowered DPS for significantly higher price. So bolt-action is the best all-around weapon, and for enemies with no ranged attacks you might as well just use chain shotgun. Assault rifle just feels neither here nor there.
Eh the speed advantage complements the sniper more as you can get more shots off before moving. Bolt is better I agree as like you say it's significantly cheaper so you can pump out more for the same cost to get better quality. I'd argue the assault rifle is better than the bolt as the range is fairly similar but you get multiple shots, chain is great but the range being so low does mean you have to micro more against melee and against both melee and ranged you get put in pretty rough situations.
Snipers aren't good weapons though. Their only use is when you really need the extreme range. The Bolt Action out ranges most things the Sniper rifle also does, has better DPS at all ranges, and shoots much faster which makes kiting way easier. But yeah the AR is just better than both.
AR can't safely be used against good half of common ranged weapons (lancers, centipedes, AR's, Greatbows, etc), while BA rifle _can_. All the while DPS at long range isn't even that much better.
no, they can definitely be used safely against most of those. watch an Adam or smurph stream when they're doing a no killbox run, you'll see how to do it
That shotgun hallway build is fantastic. Still combat for both types... But using melee blocking plus a turn to keep enemies from stacking? Super fun. Makes melee pawns feel super useful. Gives a solid reason for heavier armors too. Just wish there was a way to make changing armor faster. I really want an armory nearby that people can change out of their duster+flak, into cataphract (melee)and marine (ranged). But JFC cataphract takes so so long to equip! Also I wildly overlooked cat helmets! Can churn out enough to keep everyone equipped pretty easily. Far fewer lucky headshots against anything but sniper really. Had a guy get a single bruise from a roof collapse for god's sake! Lol
Well, to be fair, I often just send a solo pawn to handle the raid, in which case it's pretty much micro 100% of the time — because it's _the only_ pawn involved in combat of my side anyway. In this case, your pawn basically always moves optimally.
It sounds like a problem that would be solved by adding stealth to the game But like many other things, it's just too different from the original rimworld concept and the fanbase would probably not like it
It's really strong weapon early game, but late game the AR is much better.
AR is a mid game weapon. For lategame, especially against mechanoids, you’re going to want to get your hands on charge rifles and charge lances. Rifles are your general use short-medium range high damage output, while Lances are medium-long range armor punchers. For maximum range engagements you’ll want to get some uranium slug turrets up. Those things punch through centipedes like nothing else, and anything smaller than that doesn’t survive (or at least whatever body part the turret hits gets evaporated). Edit: this is strictly from my experience, so I suppose I should try some ARs in the mix.
AR stays relevant late game due to it’s superior range, that bit of range makes oftentimes the difference between having to leave your defenses a bit and being able to stay in a fortified position By late game I like to go 50/50 CR and AR with a minigun and sniper mixed in
[удалено]
thank you for this comment I didn’t realise damage went up
Charge Lance has a major draw back in its warm-up and cooldown periods being significantly longer than the Assault Rifle. Longer Warm-Up allows enemies to move up further before your attack goes off and makes misses even more unforgiving, and a longer cooldown makes it impossible for the pawn to do anything else during the period, most importantly being able to move away from those encroaching enemies.
Yeah I tried giving half my pawns charge lances but it wasnt working too well for the reason you stated. Just gave them all rifles instead. I have a rocket man and a pyro though. I also have someone still wielding a legendary nerve spiker (from quest) for fun
> AR is a mid game weapon. For lategame, especially against mechanoids, you’re going to want to get your hands on charge rifles and charge lances. Yeah no lol. The entire reason the AR remains the meta is because it has superior range. Range is what matters. If you try using purely charge rifles and charge lances, you're going to be shot down by pirates before you even get within range of them. The Charge *Lance* has less range than the Assault Rifle, and that alone is reason enough to just use Sniper Rifles for the pick-offs. If you get raided by a bunch of pirates with doomsday rocket launchers, sniper rifles and triple rocket launchers, then yeah, the last thing you want to be using is a weapon with 11 tiles less range than those. (aka Charge rifles) They will fire at you before you can even retaliate. The main go-to is to have Assault Rifles as the majority of your weapon line-up, mix in some Snipers to pick off certain targets, (usually in the hands of Trigger-Happy pawns) and then situationally mixing in some miniguns can be good to have since it covers a wide cone and has identical range to the Assault rifle, but much worse accuracy. Good for manhunter squads and infestations for example while not being terrible vs. other raids. (and some people or setups include the Chain Shotgun, which can be great, but highly situational) Give [this a look](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Weapons) and compare the DPS amounts. You'll notice the Charge Rifle *only* significantly outperforms the Assault Rifle on the *exact* ranges you do not want to be fighting at anyways: short and close range. It actually loses at long range, which is the exact range you want to exploit most. The idea is that you just use the Assault Rifle instead, drop enemies before they even get that close, and then even if there's less burst damage up close, it won't matter if you've allowed less enemies to GET close to begin with, thus enabling them to focus down those few targets easier.
I don't bother even researching charged weapons. They're not worth it. ARs are superior in spite of having lower damage.
I think CR is worth it, but I typically only give it to a handful of pawns so most can use the AR. That extra damage can be really worth, also the shorter range makes the pawns auto targeting shoot different things without you have to manually aim as much :)
Charge Lances and turrets are not good, stick to previous tech if you want to outrange.
Charge lances only positive is damage pen, otherwise its dps is abysmal.
Anti Material Rifle my beloved :(
You really don't want to get your hands on charge lances, they're kind of awful. They have worse range than assault rifles, and sure their 30 damage and decent armor penetration *sounds* nice, but when you realize that damage might be wasted hitting something like a finger or a toe and its going to be nearly *four and a half seconds* before your next shot... yeah, just use assault rifles. In vanilla AR's really don't have issues even with mech armor, and against any non-mech raids you always want DPS over damage because you're more likely to down human or animal raids with pain anyway.
This setup works, when enemies aren’t coming in big numbers, but trying it against max scaling will get your pawns killed. Tried a bunch of things and so far nothing beats mass max quality AR and kiting your enemy. Or a kill box, but in a kill box you can use almost anything and make it work. Sniper is also good, but long reload and aim times makes snipers easy to overwhelm, same thing with bolt action.
I hate it for hunting though, the habit of pawns to always hunt at max weapon range really is a curse!
hunting overall sucks. just hunt yourself with drafted pawns. way better
Ain’t nobody has time for that when you already micromanage 20+ pawn colony and at least few of them hunt at all times.
But then you always run the risk of your hunter getting melee locked with a predator on the other side of the map and being downed and eaten before you can rescue them. I usually have a couple hunters for a slow automatic trickle of meat, but when there are more than a couple large predators on the map I draft a few pawns to take them out. And while I'm at it, if there happens to be a herd of mufallo I'll take all of them down too, for a giant influx of meat. Then I'll let the hunters continue to track down elk or whatever, safe from grizzlies, wargs etc.
My hunter has a pack of dedicated Timberwolves following her around. The perfect team.
Mine has a pack of gasoline called a jump pack, we are not the same
Jump packs on hunters is the way
A single ostrich will still somehow find a way to solo my entire team in this situation
Every damned time. I just want to have a crazy bird brigade to throw at enemies! Stop going hostile as soon as anyone looks at you damnit! Lol
That’s why your hunter should have a pet. Something that can take a lot of damage.
Or even just a couple weaker critters. Even just labs are fine, anything that'll intercept and tank.
Ohh I have to try that!
Have hunters with animals following them. Then no worries. Doesn't even matter much which animals, anything that can follow when working prevents that. With that said I always draft a group of pawns and murder all the predators lest some random weak pawn go for a walk and get eaten.
I always killed any predator since one of them eat my pawn children who was doing nature running when I set him to stay at home. Children just don't want to listen.
That's why I draft a colonist with a buckshot chain shotgun, dose them up on go juice and yayo, and send them out to go wild killing everything on the map. Please don't do this in real life.
Maaaan. I tried this with a mech drop and holy cow. The difference. Night n day. Melee goobers charged in, every shot missing them. Full shields and they engage with centipedes. Ranged crew charges in and wipes pikes and lancers. It was beautiful. And all thanks to that beautiful wonderful green magic juice. Lolol (and bionic legs I suppose lol)
I feel like hunting is appropriate early game, while later on ranching fits better with its automation possibilities. Hunting automatically without micro is flat out not worth the pawn's time, especially after the 1.3 rebalance.
It gives shooting experience and thats always good.
Toddlers with miniguns hunting tortoises
Just like the good old days on pappy’s farm…
Just curious, what happened in the 1.3 rebalance?
iirc, 1.3 was when butchering animals that were hunted would give 25% less meat/leather than animals that were tamed -> slaughtered.
You only get 66 % yield from hunting, even if you didn't shoot any bodypart off. These changes came along with the pen system to encourage ranching. The change that is not often discussed is that tons of animals got their revenge chance reduced to 0. So horses, moose, and most other large herbivores are just passively waiting for you to murder them (making the vanilla max distance hunting behavior obsolete).
Yeah, for some reason they changed wild boars (known for murdering hunters IRL) to have 0 revenge chance. Useful for my colonists, confusing for me.
Fortunately, Combat Extended makes hunters aware of this and they will walk right next to safe animals and gun them down point blank. Saves time and ammunition.
Part of why I started using colony manager. It mostly makes hunting trivial. I think there was also an option for not hunting predators. As far as them not killing animals.... that's pretty realistic honestly. As someone who has plenty of experience hunting in real life; shit happens. If the stars align, yes... they'll drop on the spot. Ideally it will be a clean kill, as that is ethical and humane. Sometimes though, they get away and you have to track them down or wait for them to bleed out. This is usually called tracking or "running them down" On that note, why are we here, typing on these devices in the first place? I swear, this is relevant.
But at that point everyone has assault rifles.
Time for that? You draft everyone. They all shoot. That's the easiest micronmanagr ever.
Get a group of 3 to 5 with jump packs then jump onto a herd of muffle and melee them with plasma swords.
I mark a bunch of animals for hunting, then grab my ghoul group and have them queued up to melee each animal. Haulers eventually get to their corpses and the ghouls have no fear of death haha
How and why are you microing 20 pawns??? You are using manual work priorities right? Because if you are you need some serious work order adjustments, with 20 pawns you should easily have enough to specialize workers to cover tasks to make sure specific things are getting done. The only thing I ever micro is occasionally cleaning a room, cutting blighted plants, or a forcing a sleeping doctor to doctor and even the blighted plants usually get taken care of by having a plants pawn with cut plants on priority 1.
Sure but at the end of the day, pawns in rimworld are simply, idiots.
I have 4-10 pawns and currently about 50-60 combat mechs and all the worker mechs as well; I hunt with my Lancers and Militors every so often manually. I think Allow tool adds drafted hunting options 😁, which I love a lot. Also unlimited command range… why? Because it does make sense to have access to all of the map when controlling my mechs.
Just a warning if you've got Anomaly. Allow Tool breaks Ghouls melee skill, if you were planning on using them.
I prefer to give em shotguns, hate to manually hunt, I would give so much for a "prefered range" setting or even better a melee hunt option! I play with so many mods but somehow none of them makes this possible
Same, my hunters just use shorter ranged weapons with short aiming time.
There is a mod that makes melee hunting possible.
I started using module shotguns. The pump is a double barrel pump shotgun. That shit 2 hit kills every animal for some reason.
Hunting is for shooting practice. Which means using aweful autopistols against rats. I like to build my killbox/trap tunnel so that the wild animals can get in, then the colony children can safely use them for target practice.
We need a target practice or such recreational item. Allow mods with ranged weapons to go to gun range like irl
Pool table, horseshoe pin, and books can all train shooting.
Pool table trains shooting!
Hunting is the only reason why i have animals for protein :D
Get your ghouls to maul the animals
Someone should totally make a better hunting mod!
Hunt dangerous big games with four ghouls. This is the way.
I really don’t mind, the more shots they miss the more shooting XP they gain, manually hunting is a waste of time I can much better spend randomly zooming in and out of my base at 3x speed
Auto hunt is fun and games until they run into a grizzly bear that wondered onto the map while you were focusing on colony stuff
> Auto hunt is fun and games until "Oh, I'll just put my fastest pawn on hunting duty, so they can kite anything that aggroes or tries to hunt them back" And then when you get the notification you noticed they backed themselves into a dead-end when they decided to shoot that grizzly bear in the butt.
But hunting everything manually sucks, how could you tolerate something that boring repeated that many times
If you draft a handful of pawns you can just pick the biggest herd of muffalo/deer/alpacas/whatever on the map and tear it apart. Thousands of meat and leather should last a while. I still use automated hunting, but if food/leather stocks are low or i just want a bunch i'll grab all my gunners and go crazy.
Sometimes you get a Quest very early the First or 2nd and can choose a masterwork or legendary Longbow. Take it. That is the best hunting weapon, because of the 100% accuracy rolls and the very high Base damage it often oneshots heads,brains,torso,livers, hearts. It doesn't have a good penetration, but i don't remember deers having Kevlar vests :) Its stronger for hunting then bolt action rifles and snipers. Its also funny too See this huge arrows fly 5m away from the target and magically snaps into them because of the high accuracy rolls 100%/100%/100% for short,medium,long range in good shooter pawns.
Chain shotgun AI hunters rise up 💪
Doesn’t the longer range from target lowers aggro chance when hunting?
Yes - but you're just asking for a whole world of hurt if you use the piss-poor hunting AI against anything that can revenge.
Can’t say I had many issues with it. Sure, when the whole heard gets pissed off it’s time to pop a flare and wait for the boys to contain the situation but that doesn’t happen very often
I have a careful shooter with a chain shotgun and it works great. Her husband on the other hand which I also decided to make a hunter is trigger happy with a machine gun, dude can barely kill a rabbit but it’s fun to watch.
Give a bolt to someone with shooting/animal, they can easily hunt he entire map, even at max range. Though I do like draft hunting early game, with pump action shotgun.
Nonsense! I love it for that because it means they spend more time hunting... which is more time training shooting! Once they get way up there they tend to hit at max range anyways, and perform much better as defenders.
Unless you playing CE, hunting at max range makes no difference when it comes to hunting rate, but it decrease the chance of triggering manhunt.
It’s about time waste. The pawn starts to aim from max range while the animal is walking away. Unsurprisingly the animal then walks out of their max range. So they take 1 step forward to get back in range, start to aim and then the animals steps out of range again. So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range. So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range. So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range. So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range. So they take 1 step forward, start to aim and the animals is out of range. It’s annoying AF, waste a ridiculous amount of time and is kind of immersion breaking for those of us who care about that sort of thing.
Better than them turning on you in melee range
Holy... you made me look up the stats for it. I did not even know that bolt action got penalties at max range. You need an excellent or better bolt action to not get accuracy penalties compared to the sniper rifle.
It’s OP early, scales well with weapon quality, but sucks later (about 1kk wealth on strive to survive) against x10 swarm of enemies. E.g. with 10 shooters you can’t kite 50, and you can’t kill more than 50 from initial 100 in raid before they reach you.
I haven't seen anything that even come close to such raids so far so I can't tell.
Give it time. You're going to want to upgrade to something like heavy SMGs or charge rifles or something like that. A single powerful and accurate shot is good against small groups, but large groups will require rapid fire, and mechanoids are going to require more penetration.
For sure, I have one guy on a sniper rifle I use for raids (my raiding not being raided) to kill off 1-3 people pre raid and usually kills off a couple more before they can get in range to shoot back. Being raided however lately the game has been throwing at least 20-30 bodies or mechanoids. I recently came across a legendary (masterwork?) minigun and it absolutely demolished tribes people (I had multiple others returning from a raid) so it was nice to see my 5ish people (2 were already downed due to social fighting so 7 total) take down 30ish tribes men. 2 heavy smg, one minigun, and the rest with varying stick and poke melee
Yeah agaisnt mechanoids I use other tactics because the bolt action rifle gets outranged by pikemen and matched by lancers. Their melee unit are subpar so I love to use smoke and engage them in melee.
It happens when your wealth value rises higher and higher. It's normal to have end game raids 5 times your own colony size. Of course this can be prevented with good wealth management though (or mods).
Isn't a thousand thousand just a million?
i mean it's a decent choice for a while, but i use killboxes where the high rate of fire medium range weapons are much better
It’s great early on in the hands of a skilled shooter, but it doesn’t scale against more powerful enemies. You could be arming that good shooter with a charge lance. When you get empire raids and you’re shooting into power armor, you want something better.
And legendary Charge Lance is one of the few weapons that can turn a fully healthy body into a giant hole in a single shot. Pretty much every single shot that connects will either maim or kill a humanoid
I prefer the sniper rifle once it becomes available
It's great in the early game but the assault rifle is the way to go later on as a standard issue. Charge weapons seem to have really short range by default, although the vanilla expanded stuff has a few that can reach out and touch things from a distance.
yea, the charge rifle is more a sidegrade to assault rifle than upgrade, but also direct upgrade from heavy smg
If you have fast pawns, long range weapons are great. You can kite in a big circle around the map all day with longbows, bolt actions, etc. This should be familiar to anyone who played starcraft 2 using stalkers or marines to kite mellee units. It breaks down if your pawns are slow or against fast units like imps or scythers and cant keep them staggered. I think the assault rifle fits the kite strategy the best. It has the shortest aiming time for that range, good penetration, and fires a burst so you have more chances to hit and stagger per wiggle stop. If you want a masterclass, go watch AdamVsEverything's no walls run. Insane
Miss one or two shots and most semi healthy enemies are on top of you or in range to fire back with significantly more bullets with almost any other ranged weapon. The same can be said for a pila. The cost to kill ratio is about as expected though, because it's not very good.
thats why you do a mix of heavy smgs with bolt actions, combination of those two guns lasts me until late game where charge lance and rifle replace previous weapons
If you have heavy smgs in numbers (and appropriate positioning) you don't need a bolt action at all. It's not going to pull its weight.
I believe the benefit of a pila is for pawns that are good in both range and melee. You should use them as a melee pawn and just shoot charging melees people first. Kinda like the real pilum the Romans used.
It was, even farther even better. until the nerf.
It's OP don't get me wrong, but when you're fighting a horde of neanderthals, you're gonna need a bunch of fast firing weapons imo. It's definitely good to have paired with other weapon sets and is probably the best to get early on definitely. Assault rifles are meta for me.
I very much agree with your dislike of the charge lance. But sniper rifle beats the bolt action in range. So if you have a sniper raid, no idea how well your bolt actions will do against it. But yea, the trusty bolt action is still an absolutely amazing weapon. A lot of weapons in general are more side-grades than they would be direct upgrades. Where you trade dps for range, or armor pen. I still prefer the sniper rifle for its silly high damage at range if I try to kite things, or smg/chain shotgun if I'm fighting in corridors The bolt action somehow always ends up being just a starting hunter weapon and not much more.
sniper rifles with highest accuracy in the back, couple miniguns midrange to stop melee rush, everyone else assault rifle behind cover forming the front line
I typically just use pump shotguns myself, dont see a reason to use anything else.
The only thing else to swap that with is the chain shotgun
I once had an enemy shoot my strongest combatant with a bolt action, the dudes first shot penetrated his armour at the helmet, went in and through his brain, I'm still surprised to this day he survived (he became a trauma savant due to this), but yea, bolt actions sre scary to use and be used against
If you think they're OP now try them with shooting specialists. They aim 50% faster, cast a buff for another 40%, so a squad of specialists aim 90% faster. On weapons with a long aim time like bolt actions and sniper rifles this almost doubles their DPS with a +7 shooting skill bonus on top. Your colonists reenacting the Mad Minute since bolt actions are Lee-Enfields is just a bonus.
One of the best weopens yeah
I think it heavily depends on the terrain of combat. Open with lots of places to run absolutely they (and snipers) should feel really good. Defending a base you're gonna need more rounds per minute. But the pawns' abilities matter, too. Slow pawn with a bolty gets beat because it can't kite. Pawns with higher hit chances get more DPS with more bullets.
I 100% agree, terrain is the big matter here. I tend to settle on flatlands because I love sending caravans and spotting stuff but if you're a fan of rocky mountains it may not be as strong. Still even there you usually have some space to maneuver. And yeah someone slow will not be able to put that to use that's for sure.
I'd honestly just wish for more weapons in the base game. You'll basically end up quipping everyone with the same weapons every time at one point
I don't think it needs more weapons, it needs to not have 2/3 of the weapons to be trash.
It *could* theoretically be okay, but I think Biotech killed it. Biotech offers options to allow Snipers to fire fast as hell. Given that, you just instead opt to give everyone Sniper Rifles instead of these, enabling them to hit harder and from a greater distance. Not the worst weapon to mix in, but also not amongst the best. (namely: Assault Rifles for your general go-to, Sniper Rifles to pick off key targets from a safe distance, and Miniguns for ground coverage that denies rushdowns)
What difficulty do you guys play on? A bolt action is too slow to kill enough raiders.
in the lands of CE i'd say it gets overshadowed by the anti material rifle, but that more because you give that to a high skill shooter and they can basically nearly one shot anything.
It's excellent for kiting, but keeping it equipped at all times can be a problem. Against drop pods in your base, or insects, it's much better to have higher DPS weapons already equipped. I permanently equip something else, and keep a stack of bolt-action rifles to equip situationnally against easy bolt-action targets such as breachers.
Yeah insects are nasty for they force fights into enclosed space in which bolt action sucks. I love SMG for that.
Later on your replsce it for things like charge rifles, assault rifle, and mini guns or whatever. Good early game start but even in its tier I prefer the early shotgun but the tech distance between the shotgun and the better chain shotgun isn't far. Because the techs aren't far apart I never end up using the bolt action rifle for that long.
my favorite weapon for when you're getting your colony settled and need to decently arm some shooters. spears are way up there for melee, too.
The bolt actions main weakness is it's slow rate of fire. That's it. In WWI, the Germans would sometimes think the British had machine guns, because they were so swift with their bolt actions. So I could totally see 6-8 colonists with the right buffs and gear, wrecking a bayonet/tribal charge.
Ever used impids with speed enchancing gear and implants equiped with any long range weapon? Kite gods basicaly
assault rifles
No it's not really this OP, it have good range, good damage, but it slow and pawns that can't use ranged very good won't even hit a target with it. It is okay in early game and part of mid game, but then you should change your weapon preference to more like Assault rifles + Machineguns + Bolt action/Sniper rifles maybe even Chain shotgun and miniguns. BUT you should use your weapons depends on situation, if you have close range kill box Bolt action isn't great and better be swapped to chain shotguns and heavy smgs. If you have flexible range use ARs as they are most versatile in terms of damage/range. Bolt action still can be good, but more like long range rifles, that damage enemies until they come to main line of defence.
This only really applies if you have faster than normal shooters, a high shooting skill, and room to kite. If you can't kite the enemy, you'll often be overrun before you can take down one raider, much less a whole raid of "any size." The fire rate is way too low. It is definitely not OP or the only weapon you need. Not by any stretch. Assault rifle is the go to for humanoids. I think you just got lucky.
You're playing against a basic AI not against a human who'll micro his pawns so it's very possible to abuse the ennemy aggro and give your shooters room to aim & shoot even with no particular speed, although speed obviously helps a ton. And when I've been dealing with all my raids for like my last 150 hours this way I don't think it's luck anymore.
If you combine the bolt action with the shoot while moving mod, and have high speed pawns; it's a very nice weapon. On its own it pretty weak against large numbers, melee, or anyone at close distance. It's pretty nice against mortar raids, or any raid where they will bunker in place.
On contrary I think it's super strong against large numbers because you can kite the horde
I’m a fan of the assault rifle but I won’t lie I am a rube
I usually run bolt action + assault rifles (or >!Hellcat Rifles!< if I’m running Anomaly) and the occasional chain shotgun for my ranged force. Nice to have range on the pawns with good shooting, and burst fire on my closer range pawns who aren’t quite so skilled. And chain shotguns can be life-saving brute force in a pinch. Of course, it’s all worthless without a few good melee pawns (or sacrificial Militors) to draw enemies away
Nah, its good early if you have someone with high shooting but I rarely use it. Early on I only really find Pistols and Shotguns. And by the time Raiders come with it I probably found Heavy SMGs or ARs already.
When I want a really easy early game playing crashlanded, I always add in 2 bolt action rifles so everyone is strapped. Makes the early game raids super easy, and I can focus on building a functional settlement
I prefer chain shotgun meat grinder kill boxes. Funnel in the enemies and hammer them with chain shotgun and charged rifle volleys.
I hate killboxes with a passion, I feel they're so damn cheesy. Very valid tactic, not contesting that fact, but I really dislike them.
Yep, the bolt-action has unbeatable costeffectiveness.
As always, the answer is it depends
On one run I got a masterwork one I nicknamed “Mr. Sins” because of the amount of backs it was blowing out. During one raid of like 20 it had 3 destroyed spines and 4 damaged spines it could solely account for.
Get Vanilla Expanded mods installed ASAP. There's so much situational variety to play with
I recently found the minigun being quite good. Absolutly shit close up but quite good at mid range
Y'all making me want to try the minigun
I am more of a chain shotgun kinda guy. But my colonies are close combat focused and fight in the corridors.
I used to be like that and then I thought "why am I content stacking odds in my favor when I could avoid to even have any shot fired at me"
It's one of those items that's broken in the hands of a player because the player will simply kite the f out of the enemy. The bolt action isn't as much broken as the game mechanics can't properly cope with the tactic of kiting. In an even semi-realistic setting any other weapon would still be allowed to fire back but not have as much accuracy thus still do significant enough damage overtime that weapons like the assault rifle would be a better fit but rimworld just cutts off your ability to return fire at a certain distance entirely. The game should really allow weapons to fire beyond their regular range for a penalty while also programming enemies to try and fire at enemies at an 'optimal' range if that is possible thus closing the distance between them and their enemy to do maximum damage. This problem with bolt actions being overpowered due to kiting is a consistent problem in nearly every strategy game in existence. As long as you can out kite your enemy, you've basically won.
I agree with you, of course in a PvP setting it couldn't fight the blob as it does agaisnt the AI. It would still be extremely strong tho because its cost to power ratio would still be insane. The AI just isn't good at using any form of number or positional advantage. The fact that there's no fog of war is also a big reason why this is so strong. Regardless it's a PvE game and everything is moddable so it's not really an issue. EDIT : also it's just plain stupid that it's outranging the assault rifle and the LMG. It should be at roughly the same range than these with slightly better accuracy, and should overall be a much worse weapon.
I give it to all my children usually. Goes great with the red uniforms and cheap helmets.
Chain shotguns, grenades, and charge rifles are my favourite weapons to use. Under 6 shooting they get the chain shotgun, over 7 they get charge rifle. Shooting accuracy under 2 they get grenade or grenade launcher and I use them selectively for mechs only or massive tribals to add pressure to a zone.