hand to hand fight units

if a bot shoot at really close range another bot; this one will explode right? the blast of the explosion could also damage the 1st bot; whereas if this 1st bot cut it in two parts it will not be damaged as it won't explode.
i don't speak about samurai or gundam, just the ability to use a plasma sword in close combat, no need of hightly developped cinematics, only 2-4 different way to die by being cut in parts.


but i also think that antillie is totally right

Well if the units have combat shields (Like metal shields, which the Pyro flame-thrower bot had), then exploding deaths won't be a problem.

but not all the units have a shield, haven't they?
or am i missing something?

No, but then again the Zeus bot was bad *** enough to not care.

an army wasn't only composed by those Zeus units, right?
well, i never played TA(shame on me), but i'm a great fan of rts/rtt games.
i've played a lot of tem and i think that a good mix of long range, short range and hand to hands units is good.
my idea was to make a kind of bot, short ranged, that had a great efficiency in h2h combat

Seriously? That's the best you can come up with? :mrgreen:

I'm starting to think you no longer want to have a discussion over the merits (or lack thereof) of melee units and their place in an RTS game. What made you change your mind? Was it my last post? The one that contained a general statement about unit ranges and how they interact with game mechanics, plus a use case showing what range disparity already brings to the game (and which is as equally valid with no melee in the game whatsoever)?

Also, most tellingly, apparently nothing that you wanted to quote to directly respond to? :lol:

Please, educate me by dissecting my post and pointing out where I am wrong. Or don't. Your choice. :mrgreen:

Given your lack of any real arguments it was all that was needed.

I was quite interested in having such a discussion, about melee. You however, seem to be incapable of actually having one. If you need to use range disparity instead of melee then we are no longer having a discussion about melee. But are instead having one about balancing ranged units. This is quite different and outside the scope of this thread.

Once again your lack of any real points or arguments relating to melee units made it unnecessary. And you still have not been able to refute any of either my or raevn's arguments or show what melee could bring to the game that ranged cannot.

So I will ask you again, can you add anything useful to the discussion about balancing melee units in a TA style game? How would you do it? We have been waiting for an answer to this for several pages and nearly two days now.

I don't think I can educate you in any real capacity. I will let you figure out why.

Well melee doesn't bring in any thing else other then a different unit type, rather then 'adding' more.

Taking away from range allows you to redistribute the units effectiveness elsewhere, like damage (Riot tanks or Pyro flamethowers) or unit speed (Zerglings or Flash EMG tanks).

Of course here you can see me meddling with the difference between melee and short-range units.

But it's a trade off in the end, how much range when compared to another stat.

You mean these ones?

Balance by not kludging anything. Apply the unit design philosophy equally across the board, no special armour or rule breaking needed. Let melee be what it is so people can see it for themselves. I firmly believe that doing that for a melee unit in PA will work fine, and that no further kludges or handwavium will be necessary.

You and Raevn are the ones clamouring that melee cannot, definitively, work in a TA style game until you deliberately break something in the engine, then go on to provide examples of that from games that are not TA style games. You are the ones bait and switching irrelevant concepts, or providing circular reasoning, or quoting out of context so you can get a soundbite in, or providing opinion as fact. I'm pretty sure there is a name for that style of conversation technique... :mrgreen:

If you want to keep doing that instead of having an honest conversation about melee and it's place in the RTS genre, by all means carry on. I was hoping I could actually engage you in serious conversation once you realised I was just going to carry on anyway, but I guess I was hoping a little too much, and I can't be bothered trying to troll you back, I was never very good at it and it's against the forum rules anyway.

Oh, I already know :mrgreen:

Except that those don't add anything that ranged can't do to justify the higher development cost of melee. So what was your point?

No its not irrelevant. That's the entire point of this thread if you hadn't noticed. And based on everything that has been said in this thread, no, it won't just "work out" without breaking something. I'm sorry but no. You have been totally unable to refute any of the arguments made on this point.

You still have not been able to propose a way that it could be done without kludgery so by default you loose this one I'm afraid. This has already been demonstrated many many times to you but you seem to be unable to comprehend logic.

Given the length of this thread there is no way that Raevn and I are the only ones who feel that melee would make PA into something other than what PA is envisioned to be. We use those examples because they are only way to make melee work that anyone has been able to come up with. There is no "funny logic" here, you are just not able to understand logic. If you have a better way to make it work then the ones that have been proposed then please enlighten us with your wisdom. You keep side stepping this request over and over. Why is that? Because claiming that it will "just work" is not acceptable when that has already been shown to be blatantly false. Once again you have still not been able to refute any of our arguments with actual arguments of your own.

Except that you don't want a conversation about melee. You want a conversation about range disparity. Which as I and many others have pointed out is not even close to the same thing. As for the trolling bit I have always given you very well reasoned and written out responses and done my best to avoid personal attacks. As you can see from my posts I only blatantly troll when someone blatantly trolls me first.

Yes, I'm sure that you do...

You have outlined challenges and concerns that melee has to contend with. They are not a big enough problem to eliminate short range combat entirely. At the very least, fabbers represent a unit that fights almost entirely at short range. The lathe qualifies as a weapon no matter how it gets used.

You are completely correct. There is nothing wrong with short ranged weapons like flame throwers or lightning guns. However short range != melee.

This isn't an argument for melee. It's literally just saying throw it in the game (along with a non-TA mechanic) and hope it works.

This makes no in-universe sense. As a commander designing the perfect army, if you could add extra speed or HP to a melee unit, why wouldn't you add it to your other units as well? Note "in-universe sense". My argument has never been it's impossible to balance - that would be a dumb argument, as starcraft used melee units. But see the next point for why this doesn't carry over anyway.

There is no TA style game that uses melee that I am aware of. I don't believe this is a coincidence. But pointing out the changes needed in other games to allow melee to work in them is perfectly valid, as TA does not have those mechanics. The argument is simple: Melee requires X mechanic to work in Y game, X mechanic is not in TA, therefore melee won't function well.

I am a bit disappointed that no one has really considered the concept of short range naval vessels. Don't short range ships deserve a chance like everything else? It's not like shooting hot plasma through the water is easy!

Here is a post that answers your questions. Incidental to that it mentions melee, but it is not just about melee and also mentions range, unit design and balance mechanics. If this is unacceptable then I apologise.

I am proposing that it is done without kludgery. I am proposing that you just create a unit, give it a melee weapon, and balance the stats using exactly the same method used to balance the stats for a ranged unit. I am proposing that, apart from giving it a melee weapon, you do nothing else to a melee unit. No special powers, no changes to the engine, none of the kludges you insist are required for a melee unit. I am proposing that they are not required for a melee unit. I have said this in four different posts now.

How much more specific would you like me to be?

Where has it been shown to be blatantly false? I've seen nothing in this thread that definitively proves that creating a unit, equipping it with a melee weapon and leaving it at that won't work. I've seen many posts by yourself and Raevn claiming that doing so will make the melee unit inherently inferior to ranged, and that this inferiority is what proves melee won't work. But no proof it won't actually work, just claims that it won't work.

Melee being inherently inferior to ranged is a different argument. I'm also happy to have that conversation with you

When talking about melee units, and especially when arguing that there is no point to melee when you can just build ranged instead, you are comparing ranged to melee. The most basic difference between melee and ranged, and the one you keep referring to in your comparisons, is the difference in attack range (e.g. ranged units can just kite melee units).

Or, to say it another way, that the range disparity between melee and ranged, is the basis of the argument you are using to promote ranged over melee.

The only way to avoid the topic of range disparity is to never compare melee to ranged. You and Raevn have been comparing melee to ranged for the whole topic. Ergo, you feel that range disparity is important to this topic. So why are you berating me for talking about range disparity, when it is cornerstone to your position?

Strangely enough, it is because I was answering Antillie's request for me to provide a way to balance melee. Balancing methods are not an argument for anything, they are a method for balancing it with the assumption that it already exists. You cannot create a balance for something that does not exist?

An argument for melee would be: if your existing, TA style game has an established balancing method of "units with shorter range weapons get more damage for the same cost", then it is entirely in-character to build a short range unit, so you can have more damage. Otherwise commanders would never build a short range unit at all, and the Pyro would never have existed (the Pyro exists in TA, ergo short range units have a function in-universe). Melee is a shorter range than short. Melee, therefore, using the existing, in-universe explanation (this is the excuse used to implement the balancing method) for why short range units are somehow magically more damaging (or magically less cost, either is a function of DPS/range=cost), would somehow have better damage than short range. Using the existing in-universe explanation for why short range units even exist when they are demonstrably inferior to long range units, gives an explanation for melee units to exist. The Pyro already exists in a universe with Sumos and Freakers, when it makes no logical sense to build a Pyro when you can build a Sumo or Freaker instead; they are both longer range than the Pyro, Sumos have more HP, and Freakers are faster. Why does the Pyro even exist? If you can answer that one, you have also found a reason for melee.

Why are Freakers faster than Sumos? If you can make Freakers faster, why wouldn't a commander designing the perfect army make Sumos faster as well? It makes no in-universe sense. Answer: game balance mechanics. There is no in-universe reason why, the in-universe reason is the fluff that (sometimes badly) explains the balance mechanics, not the other way around.

Freakers are faster than Sumos because they have less HP (aka Freakers have less HP than Sumos because they are faster). Jethros do less DPS than Pyros because they have a longer range. This is defined by the balance mechanics, not the in-universe fluff. Your claim that a commander would add any beneficial feature to all units, and if this does not happen it makes no in-universe sense, is trivially refutable using just the units from TA. Unit stats are not defined by an in-universe explanation, and never have been. Unit stats are defined by the balancing mechanic used by the game designers. You are attempting to assign a natural explanation to something which is artificial.

If game designers can add extra speed or HP to a melee unit, they do so because they want to. It is related to the stats for every other unit, but it does not mean that the stats for other units are going to change, or even that the stats for other units should change. That's why it is called balancing. In-universe explanations come after the fact.

In order to ensure we have no further misunderstandings over meaning, I would be much obliged if you would actually define melee, as you understand it. I have seen Antillie post on innumerable occasions "short range != melee", which does not match my understanding of the term melee, so I would like to ensure I can converse on an equal footing. It should also ensure when I use the term "melee" it is meaning the same thing that both Antillie and Raevn understand it to mean. Hopefully that should help minimise any subsequent "well you are wrong" replies when I am using the term in a way that does not fit your understanding.

Regards,

numptyscrub

Melee or hand to hand fighting tends to refer to the use of a device that requires physical contact with the opponent, such as a fist or sword. This does not include things that project their damage over a short distance such as a tazer (at least in the definition people seem to be using). An implicit aspect of these weapons is that they require complicated animations that show the wielders skill in using the device.

Short range weapons tend to refer to weapons that have a short or extremely short effective range, such as flame throwers or thermal lances. They are essentially ranged weapons even though they have a range that is effectively close combat.

The kludgery they refer to was the concept that if you give a unit a sword and balance it accordingly, the requirements of balancing the units stats for melee combat creates the feeling that the units statistics were given to it for arbitrary reasons instead of narrative ones. Mostly the implication that if you can create a swordsman bot that is above average stats for below average price, but is balanced because of its range, why not have created that bot but with a cheap gun instead of a sword that would create a dramatically better unit or or why can you afford to create such a tough unit for such a low price or how can a unit that tough also be that fast just because it has a sword instead of a a gun. I believe they would like you to be specific in providing an example of a situation where the unit is balanced without kludgery.

Would you explain what a TA style game is?

So as an example, if you have:
Bot A, with a taser that does 10 damage, with a range of 1 meter
Bot B, with a sword that does 10 damage, with a range of 1 meter

What is the difference between them? What are the unique properties of the unit with the sword, that make it different to the unit with the taser? And most importantly, what extra rules and calculations are required in the game engine, in order to make the unit with the sword function, assuming that all the rules are already in place so that the unit with the taser works without issue?

My position is that from a game engine perspective, both are identical; a 10 damage, 1 meter range weapon deals 10 damage to targets within a meter. It's only the rendering engine that would need to differentiate between the 2. Antillie disagrees with me for some reason, and I'm assuming Raevn does as well. I would like to understand why they disagree, and to put into words what it is that seperates the 2 apart from aesthetics.

To be annoyingly tautological, balancing a melee unit without using kludges, involves not using any kludges when balancing the unit.

To use the 2 bots above as examples:
Bot A has a taser; this is a short range weapon, so balancing it is just a matter of using your normal range balancing mechanism. Since everyone agrees short range weapons are fine (both Antillie and Raevn have said so more than once, and I certainly agree), there is obviously a usable method to achieve an agreeable balance of stats for this unit. Say for instance that this method give Bot A 20 HP, a speed of 5 meters per second, a cost of 50 metal and a build time of 5 seconds. We would now say it is balanced with the other units in the game (this is an assumption).

I would give Bot B exactly the same stats. The numbers for the weapon are identical, put them into the same equation you use for "ranged" units. Only have one balance mechanic that is applied to all units, equally. This makes Bot B redundant, because you can build either A or B but they do the same thing. They have an identical effect on the game. There is no point in Bot B.

However, since Bot B is a "melee" bot, and Bot A is a "ranged" bot, there is apparently some intrinsic difference that I cannot fathom. Apparently there is something else that would need to be done to Bot B to make it "as good" as Bot A. I am very much interested to find out what this is

Full simulation based physics with emphasis on macro-over-micro control (lots of units rather than small squads), no research and very few if any upgrades. Logical/Physics based balance rather than Rock-Paper-Scissors. Basically the exact opposite approach to RTS than the _craft series.

The only games I know of that fit into this category are TA, Supcom and the various games that use the Spring engine.

So can the physics of arms and legs not be programmed into PA?