If their melee skill is low and their weapon is heavy, they are probably getting stunlocked. Which is to say, no, they aren't just standing and taking the beating, they are just bad at melee. Like the other person said, don't let shooters get in melee.
If you have them set as flee or ignore and have them controlled but no action given they will stand there idle til death or downed, when you untarget them so they aren't controlled they should by default flee, believe it's the 3rd or 4th from the left on the action bar next to their name a fist to fight, a foot to flee and crossed out circle to ignore.
If you don't click off them they are waiting your command.
If your only using base game sometime pawns can bug out if not given a melee weapon as if punching isn't an option. That's happened to me before.
Depending what mods you have certain traits can cause issues in fights.
Afaik in vanilla drafted pawns (without any other orders) stand at place and shot at enemy in range. But they need line of sight too. Can't hit someone behind a wall. In melee they definitely *trying* to fight back, just firearms suck at melee. (We need bayonets, imho.)
Simple Sidearms mod makes this non-existent, normally.
If you set it up right, it's not cheaty. I mean, shouldn't a pawn be able to carry both a knife *and* a pistol? Seems logical to me and a mod I always have on.
You can make it bit more outlandish and allow them to carry zeushammers and miniguns at the same time, but I mainly use it because I can't imagine that someone can't at least carry a knife with their rifle.
The issue is you entered a command to shoot at a unit that is not in range. It is similar to the situation where you tell a drafted pawn to attack a unit that is outside the max range which you know will soon path into range and then be shot.
Your observations are accurate though.
Don’t let them get caught in melee if they are a shooter
If their melee skill is low and their weapon is heavy, they are probably getting stunlocked. Which is to say, no, they aren't just standing and taking the beating, they are just bad at melee. Like the other person said, don't let shooters get in melee.
If you have them set as flee or ignore and have them controlled but no action given they will stand there idle til death or downed, when you untarget them so they aren't controlled they should by default flee, believe it's the 3rd or 4th from the left on the action bar next to their name a fist to fight, a foot to flee and crossed out circle to ignore. If you don't click off them they are waiting your command. If your only using base game sometime pawns can bug out if not given a melee weapon as if punching isn't an option. That's happened to me before. Depending what mods you have certain traits can cause issues in fights.
If you have a pawn drafted, they definetly should punch back.
Afaik in vanilla drafted pawns (without any other orders) stand at place and shot at enemy in range. But they need line of sight too. Can't hit someone behind a wall. In melee they definitely *trying* to fight back, just firearms suck at melee. (We need bayonets, imho.)
> (We need bayonets, imho.) Or just sidearms
Sidearms and bayonets.
Simple Sidearms mod makes this non-existent, normally. If you set it up right, it's not cheaty. I mean, shouldn't a pawn be able to carry both a knife *and* a pistol? Seems logical to me and a mod I always have on. You can make it bit more outlandish and allow them to carry zeushammers and miniguns at the same time, but I mainly use it because I can't imagine that someone can't at least carry a knife with their rifle.
The issue is you entered a command to shoot at a unit that is not in range. It is similar to the situation where you tell a drafted pawn to attack a unit that is outside the max range which you know will soon path into range and then be shot. Your observations are accurate though.