hand to hand fight units

Replace "currently" with "past 2000 years". Or well, actually, forever. Especially the English had a good taste of this at a certain battle against the french.

Actually, knight's armor could take bullets. It's just that for the cost of the armor and the guy inside, you could also hire a squad of unarmored gunmen.

The past 2000 years indicate that armor tech will keep lagging behind weapons tech.

I don't see melee working well. It's more a micromanagement style of combat, preticurly because in large battles you'd end up having to tell each one what to attack or else the targeting AI would continually be distracted for a moment when the player gave new attack orders.
It works in 40k because it is historically a turn based game. You have the time to pick and chose whom to target in close combat.

I'm not saying short range doesn't have it's place though. You get a flamethrower equivalent close to a group of infantry, they are going to be toast if they don't have heavy armour.
I say equivalent because lets face it, these are robots that can fight on the surface of a planet with no atmosphere. A little heat is nothing.

Well the French had it coming!

Depends on advances we come up with, but generally yes.

Still doesn't mean we can't explore the idea of a short ranged weapon right? Kinda like riot weapons from TA (Anti-swarm weapons).

depends on how short ranged.

For example, shotguns in games are commonly super-short ranged, but in reality they can shoot pretty darn far (100m+).

So yea, a shotgun unit would be interesting.

Remember that because of the way we understand how physics works, you can never invent something that is truly bulletproof.

But back to the original conversation, I like the idea of close-combat units, but they generally encounter problems in RTSes. Peewees, Zees, and Pyros were either too slow or too short-ranged to close the distance with their enemy before exploding. Peewees were really only useful as raiders, and Zees and Pyros were only useful as defenders. These problems were magnified if the units had to move through a field of wreckage.

Landown's Interface with it's frigging 5 Pulverizer Artillery Pieces comes to mind.

I might agree with the way pyros and zeus's struggled out of the raiding and assault role, but peewees are designated swarms and cannon fodder units.

Peewees (and Flashes) were in fact so good at swarming that in the core contingency and the community unofficial patches, the core recived riot tanks and T1 flame-thrower towers to try and get rid of the EMG rushes.

You guys obviously need to familiarize yourselves with this image:





With regards to hand to hand combat, Dawn of War did a great job - melee units had the nice side effect of disabling the ranged weapons of the squad they engaged.

But, the biggest downside to hand to hand combat is that in order to look good, it requires a TON of work. You need to create at least twice as many animations as a standard 'point, shoot, walk, fall over dead'.

Please go to funnyjunk to view this image?

As far as I heard armor could only take early fire arms shots after being coated in a special material, the smith would fire at the chest plate with a pistol to show it was tested.

Refinements over the next few years though quickly made all armor obsolete even with the coating.

As far as the material goes I don't remember. I think it was a layer of bronze or something on top of the existing piece.

The primary reason the firearm became so widespread was how little training was required to make a musketman. You could always buy or manufacture more guns, and there was basically a bottomless supply of men to wield them.

Weapons like swords or bows, while superficially cheaper, require extensive amounts of (expensive) training to be effective, and conscripts were virtually useless against well trained soldiers. A musketman only needs enough training to reload in battle, and how to mount a bayonet. And his bullet is just as effective against a man with decades of combat experience as against anyone else.

The second reason why firearms dominated was because a musketman or rifleman was also a spearman. The bayonet effectively turns a gun into a spear. Archers and cannons lacked this capability, and could get run down by cavalry. A unit of musket (or later rifles) could engage anything on the field effectively.

You grab a sword and some armour. I'll stand 20 meters away with a rifle. Let's see who wins.

Most definitely not the case. Real combat experience is invaluable in a real combat situation. Your ability to control your thoughts and actions (which quickly become involuntary in such a situation) can very quickly become a deciding factor.

Sure, the damage would be the same -- but an experienced man is going to hit more targets with less shots because he's used to handling the situation.

Curse me for not being familiar with metrics out side of design, but I do believe at that range neither of you would win. Not to mention a dude charging you in armor with a sword is going to wreak havoc on your calm (see the point above), and more than likely cause you to make mistakes.

What if he had a cloaking device?

At the end of the day all soldiers are still armed with knives, just in case.

Zurginator- we are talking about rank and file massed-volley musket battles here. Using guns with a maximum range of 100, maybe 150 feet on a good day. The biggest determiner of combat effectiveness of a group is whether they can manage, say, three volleys per minute. The gun is not accurate or reliable enough for user accuracy to matter. Skill is completely irrelevant.

Modern firearms are so powerful and so efficient that it is a completely different situation.

Depends on the armour, and the accuracy of your rifle.

Actually, you are ignoring a massive amount of variables that could affect this, so your little comment doesn't really prove anything.

Does that image not come up properly for other people? I just linked it from google...


My point still stands though - while fun and interesting, hand to hand combat involves a huge amount of effort for the dev team, and that by itself is enough to sink the idea.

So stick with shotguns then guys?

99.9% of the time, the rifle wins (this is true for modern rifles, but we're talking even more advanced than those in PA). Why would you use as a main weapon something that is only effective 0.01% of the time? Not only that, but when talking about robots, most melee weapons are even closer to 0% effective even if you did get in melee range.

I'm not against very short range weapons, just against melee attacks.

Remember that we're about futuristic space-marine robots here, not human beings. Robot A costs 1 mass and 1 energy, and has a standard recoilless rifle. Robot B costs 1 mass and 1 energy, and has traded its rifle in for slightly heavier armor, a bigger engine, and more robo-muscles. Remember that the two most expensive things for any robo-militants are armor and guns, both in terms of capital price and weight. Robot A gets a few shots off, but either misses or hits Robot B's heavier armor. Robot B closes the distance, rendering Robot A's bulky gun ineffective, and begins to pummel the **** out of Robot A. Robot B wins.

Of course, there are different variables. If there were 10 Robot As and 10 Robot Bs, then Robot A would most likely win as they could cover each other and spread out. Or, if Robot A was equipped with a Sniper weapon or burst Minigun instead, the inital volley would kill Robot B before it could reach Robot A. Or, if there were 10 Robot As with Sniper Rifles, they would probably loose because they would waste a lot of their shots, and Robot Bs would close the distance and nosh on Robot As.

My point is that melee combat adds a lot of complexity, coolness and depth, which can be good or bad.

Who says the rifle wins 99.9% of the time?

The gun could jam.
You could miss.
The bullet could be defective.

Or you know, my armour is worth a damn and deflects or adsorbs the bullet, otherwise what would be the point of having ineffective armour?

In RL you are correct, but that's not necessary true in every fictional circumstance.