Can Fatshark/anyone confirm or deny if Gunners (and shooters by extension maybe) are supposed to be able to start and/or continue their shooting cycle if you’ve engaged them in melee (as in either came within x distance or close enough to hit them).
I just experienced opening up on two gunners from stealth, right next to them, only for one of them to start their chain shooting cycle and instantly 100-0%'d me even though I stabbed them in the face. In another scenario just today one continued to fire while I started bonking him.
Could have sworn their behavior from release until recently was to always engage in melee within a certain distance of a player-character but this is becoming extremely annoying if inteded.
Edit: Touched grass, chilled out, added more detail.
I feel like shooters come at me in melee either way but Im not sure now you mention it, I will pay attention over the next bunch of games and post after.
Small shooters will typically switch to melee in close range if your their focus.
Gunners tend to shoot or run away (the running is very annoying i always call them cowards), once they are opening up only a stagger weapon or kill will stop the shooting before they have to break for reload.
Shotgunners have a bayonet they will try to stab you in melee as well, once they shift from face blasts.
After testing in a couple games I found that normal shooters will stop shooting and engage in melee either way, although they seemed less inclined when I had my ranged out and I felt that some of a group would either run or keep shooting, typically the back line of the group, but that could just be exceptions as it was only a couple games.
Shotgunners didnt seem to care when I kept my ranged out which I felt was unusual.
Gunners I didnt test as Id rather just kill them, although Im still sure they wont really melee either way except for the occasional kick.
Tomoro I will re-install Solo mode and test on various difficulties, or I might take the chance to install a psykhanium mod to test enemies properly, Iv been wanting to learn how to kite a Daemonhost for a while too.
I believe gunners will almost always default to running away if you come into melee range (I think this is around 5m/15ft?) before they start their setup animation, or if you get right next to them they will try to kick/jab you. You see this mostly when a group of gunners runs right into you from around a corner, once they see you they just run away.
However if they start their setup animation because they are targeting you or a teammate, and then you run into their melee range they will just start/continue shooting, at that point staggering/suppressing them is the only way to get them to run away/start to kick you (I think I have seen them sometimes stop shooting when you dodge around to behind them but idk someone would need to test that). This usually happens when there are gunners generally far from your team, who are about to start shooting and then you run at them.
That is probably what you experienced when you came out of stealth, those gunners were about to shoot anyways and you were just unlucky enough to get out of stealth at the wrong time, grabbing their aggro as they finished their setup animation.
Riflemen will always default to pulling out melee when you get into melee range. But like gunners will continue shooting if already in the shooting/aiming animation, though once they finish a volley or are staggered they will pull out their melee.
At least that is my experience from basically exclusively playing charge zealot for the last two months. (Recently I like to charge down gunner groups and generally run around stabbing ranged elites, it’s fun sue me). This is all just my experience, if you want the perfect answer you will need to download the enemy spawner mod and mess around in psykhanium.
Yeah they never seem to run away and I have never even seen them have a melee attack. Weird since their attacks do essentially nothing in melee range, they have such a slow turn speed while shooting.
Yeah reapers. They might have the same behavior as gunners, where if you stagger them or get close to them before they start their setup animation they will bash you. But since they don’t try to run to cover they always instantly start shooting, and you basically always kill them before they stagger so I have no idea. I might load the enemy spawner mod for this highly important scientific research.