None of my ranged characters are able to switch to their melee weapons when encountered by an enemy at close range. I wonder if there is a way to correct this

You have to do that manually.

 

There is no penalty to staying with ranged weapons while in melee combat so no reason to switch. It would be annoying if the game switched automatically.

You have to do that manually.

 

There is no penalty to staying with ranged weapons while in melee combat so no reason to switch. It would be annoying if the game switched automatically.

Really? No penalty for staying with ranged weapons?  Wow, I didn't know that. Here I've been busy giving people bonus back up weapon skills when leveling up thinking it'd help them out when they have to go into melee.

Really? No penalty for staying with ranged weapons? Wow, I didn't know that. Here I've been busy giving people bonus back up weapon skills when leveling up thinking it'd help them out when they have to go into melee.

Well, melee weapons do generally more damage, and let you equip a shield gor extra defenses so there is a reason to keep a backup weapon on some of your chars, but generally you only want to invest into one and rarely use the other.

 

There are exceptions, of course, like builds that start combat by firing multiple firearms in sucession before jumping into melee.