Of current, the intelligence stat-tree is an odd ducky.
Every attribute has two weapon skills, minimum. A ranged one and a melee one.
So no matter what stat you pick, you can have weapons of your own without having to branch into something else. Right?
Strength has shotguns and clubs/hammers. Perception has rifles and spears (and explosives) Fortitude has machineguns and fists.
Intelligence has stun-batons and robots.
Unfortunately, there's only one type of stun-baton in the game, and it requires parts, which makes it function more like a gun in terms of crafting.
To build a pistol, you require pistol parts. At the start of the game this prevents you from just specing into pistols, building your own pistol and then going to do your thing. You require a melee weapon. You can make a knife from bone, or a melee weapon from any other catagory from stone. Then you get the blueprint to make iron, then you finally unlock steel, and at THIS point, you have to use all of those machete-parts that you've been stockpiling for the whole game so far.
Same with spears (stone/iron/steel. Only steel requires parts) Same with clubs, sledgehammers, brawling weapons, ect.
Electrocutioner doesn't have this. You start the game, you get some skill-points, you put those points into Stun Batons.
...
...
...
Get yourself a club instead, and try to fight your way to the midgame until stun-batons start to drop in loot-boxes because even with the blueprint, you don't actually have the ability to build your chosen weapon yet. Not even a crappy stone version.
We need a stone and iron tier of stun-baton.
This is hard, obviously, because stone-age tools don't really mesh well with electronics, but we can rig something up.
A flashlight converted into a taser? Then the baton (which shouldn't require parts, as an iron-grade melee weapon) and then finally a steel-version. Like a sword with a battery hooked up to it, to shock dudes as you cut, or a big dumb telsa-cannon, if you don't care about mixing up your ranged and melee skill-trees.
Likewise, the robots tree is a little funky too, because it's clearly supposed to be your ranged-weapon tree, but... uh. It's not.
The little gun-turret seems great. I love the idea.
If only I could find or make one.
But instead i have this automatic sledgehammer, which... Is a really cool idea, but it's obviously a melee weapon, and a bad one, at that.
It doesn't let me shoot things. It actually has worse range than any other skill-tree.
I mean, it has problems of it's own. I love knocking dudes flying and it genuinely feels really powerful to use. (in that the sound-effects and animation look and feel powerful)
Unfortunately the reality is something different. I had three points in robotics and a quality 5 robotic sledge, and it did 15 damage. With mods.
That's weaker than a club. That's weaker than my stone-spear.
Placing it is... Honestly, I placed it once to block a doorway, but it doesn't have the range to actually impede a meaningful amount of zombies, and since it can't actually kill anything on it's own, it's more or less only useful for shoving dudes down the stairs.
To kill things while holding it, you have to 'bully' them. Knock them down and then slam them on the ground 5 or six times until all of their limbs come off and they die from it.
Also, a sledgehammer robot doesn't really feel stone-tier. It's clearly a work of advanced crafting and electronics.
I'd suggest moving the robot-sledge to the same 'tier' as the robot gun and raising it's damage to match, then replacing it as your starting-tier ranged weapon with... a Ballista or something.
In your hands it would function like a large but primitive crossbow. Made primarily of wood, slow reloading but firing large but simple bolts that are easy to craft (like how turret ammo only costs iron) that pierce through enemies.
When placed as a turret, it wouldn't fire on it's own, but instead have the same function that a shotgun turret has, where you can interact with it to aim and fire it manually.
Basically, you set it up into 'siege mode' and then have to actually sit in it and fire. This would up the accuracy significantly (give you actually sights to work with, unlike in it's 'travel mode') and speed up your reloads, but render you immobile until you get out and pick it back up as a tradeoff.
Travel mode is for looting and scavenging. Siege mode is for base defence.
... alternatively, if you feel that isn't thematic. A Pitching machine modified to fire rocks, and with a sensor to track enemies.
Functions just like the robot turret, but fires stones instead of robot ammo, and does worse damage.
This feels like something that should be fairly easy for an amateur robotics to cook up, in the middle of the apocalypse. It's not actually a gun, it's a more-or less intact machine that you just put a motion-sensor and a swivel on.
It's also way more boring than my bad-ass siege ballista idea, but probably more setting compliant. And it would explain why it scraps into Robot Parts, unlike the Balista which would be made mostly out of wood.
So, in summary.
Suggested weapons for Melee.
Primitive: Stungun. Made from a converted flashlight. High stun chance, low-damage, short-range.
Iron: Stun Baton (same as now. medicore damage with moderate chance to stun)
Steel: The Electrocutioner (electrified sword, good base damage, high chance to stun)
Ranged:
Tier 1: Ballista Turret/Pitching Machine.
Tier 2: Automatic turret + Robot Sledge
Tier 3: Flying drone?
TLDR: We need an entry-level weapon in electrocutioner, otherwise the entire skill-tree isn't useable until the midgame, and our entry-level weapon in Robots needs to actually be a gun of some type, in order to bring intelligence in line with other stats.
Every attribute has two weapon skills, minimum. A ranged one and a melee one.
So no matter what stat you pick, you can have weapons of your own without having to branch into something else. Right?
Strength has shotguns and clubs/hammers. Perception has rifles and spears (and explosives) Fortitude has machineguns and fists.
Intelligence has stun-batons and robots.
Unfortunately, there's only one type of stun-baton in the game, and it requires parts, which makes it function more like a gun in terms of crafting.
To build a pistol, you require pistol parts. At the start of the game this prevents you from just specing into pistols, building your own pistol and then going to do your thing. You require a melee weapon. You can make a knife from bone, or a melee weapon from any other catagory from stone. Then you get the blueprint to make iron, then you finally unlock steel, and at THIS point, you have to use all of those machete-parts that you've been stockpiling for the whole game so far.
Same with spears (stone/iron/steel. Only steel requires parts) Same with clubs, sledgehammers, brawling weapons, ect.
Electrocutioner doesn't have this. You start the game, you get some skill-points, you put those points into Stun Batons.
...
...
...
Get yourself a club instead, and try to fight your way to the midgame until stun-batons start to drop in loot-boxes because even with the blueprint, you don't actually have the ability to build your chosen weapon yet. Not even a crappy stone version.
We need a stone and iron tier of stun-baton.
This is hard, obviously, because stone-age tools don't really mesh well with electronics, but we can rig something up.
A flashlight converted into a taser? Then the baton (which shouldn't require parts, as an iron-grade melee weapon) and then finally a steel-version. Like a sword with a battery hooked up to it, to shock dudes as you cut, or a big dumb telsa-cannon, if you don't care about mixing up your ranged and melee skill-trees.
Likewise, the robots tree is a little funky too, because it's clearly supposed to be your ranged-weapon tree, but... uh. It's not.
The little gun-turret seems great. I love the idea.
If only I could find or make one.
But instead i have this automatic sledgehammer, which... Is a really cool idea, but it's obviously a melee weapon, and a bad one, at that.
It doesn't let me shoot things. It actually has worse range than any other skill-tree.
I mean, it has problems of it's own. I love knocking dudes flying and it genuinely feels really powerful to use. (in that the sound-effects and animation look and feel powerful)
Unfortunately the reality is something different. I had three points in robotics and a quality 5 robotic sledge, and it did 15 damage. With mods.
That's weaker than a club. That's weaker than my stone-spear.
Placing it is... Honestly, I placed it once to block a doorway, but it doesn't have the range to actually impede a meaningful amount of zombies, and since it can't actually kill anything on it's own, it's more or less only useful for shoving dudes down the stairs.
To kill things while holding it, you have to 'bully' them. Knock them down and then slam them on the ground 5 or six times until all of their limbs come off and they die from it.
Also, a sledgehammer robot doesn't really feel stone-tier. It's clearly a work of advanced crafting and electronics.
I'd suggest moving the robot-sledge to the same 'tier' as the robot gun and raising it's damage to match, then replacing it as your starting-tier ranged weapon with... a Ballista or something.
In your hands it would function like a large but primitive crossbow. Made primarily of wood, slow reloading but firing large but simple bolts that are easy to craft (like how turret ammo only costs iron) that pierce through enemies.
When placed as a turret, it wouldn't fire on it's own, but instead have the same function that a shotgun turret has, where you can interact with it to aim and fire it manually.
Basically, you set it up into 'siege mode' and then have to actually sit in it and fire. This would up the accuracy significantly (give you actually sights to work with, unlike in it's 'travel mode') and speed up your reloads, but render you immobile until you get out and pick it back up as a tradeoff.
Travel mode is for looting and scavenging. Siege mode is for base defence.
... alternatively, if you feel that isn't thematic. A Pitching machine modified to fire rocks, and with a sensor to track enemies.
Functions just like the robot turret, but fires stones instead of robot ammo, and does worse damage.
This feels like something that should be fairly easy for an amateur robotics to cook up, in the middle of the apocalypse. It's not actually a gun, it's a more-or less intact machine that you just put a motion-sensor and a swivel on.
It's also way more boring than my bad-ass siege ballista idea, but probably more setting compliant. And it would explain why it scraps into Robot Parts, unlike the Balista which would be made mostly out of wood.
So, in summary.
Suggested weapons for Melee.
Primitive: Stungun. Made from a converted flashlight. High stun chance, low-damage, short-range.
Iron: Stun Baton (same as now. medicore damage with moderate chance to stun)
Steel: The Electrocutioner (electrified sword, good base damage, high chance to stun)
Ranged:
Tier 1: Ballista Turret/Pitching Machine.
Tier 2: Automatic turret + Robot Sledge
Tier 3: Flying drone?
TLDR: We need an entry-level weapon in electrocutioner, otherwise the entire skill-tree isn't useable until the midgame, and our entry-level weapon in Robots needs to actually be a gun of some type, in order to bring intelligence in line with other stats.
acting as non functional stun baton with no charge 
