hand to hand fight units

K-bots have guns on arms (except for the core thud) and if you cant have the arm swivel up and down, whats the point making one?

That's my point, damage types would be needed to balance out the need for high damage against units, and the high damage against units is required because if the melee units need several attacks to kill a ranged unit then ranged units can be stopped once melee units catch up to it so that the rest of the ranged units can further increase the distance to the melee units while the melee units attempt to kill the stopped range unit.

Since most RTS battles primarily involve moving units buying melee units that are crap against them would be stupid unless the melee units were ridiculously OP against everything else, especially since most moving units would already be likely to be effective against everything else.

True to an extent, but you have to remember that in a game like SupCom or TA, melee units are only effective against stationary targets, but units like artillery are effective against stationary targets *AND* mobile units making melee units completely pointless, and putting in a completely pointless unit is bad game design. The only way to make melee units relevant in this sort of game is to either make them OP, or to introduce a heap of hard to show values like damage/armor types to balance them in specific cases, both of which are also arguably considered bad game design.

in WH40k, dreadnoughts can kill ennemies with one of their fist and they often have a flamethrower attached to this hand. The other hand is a bolter or a missile launcher or a chaingun

In WH40k a squad's ranged weaponry is disabled if any member of the squad gets engaged in melee. This is a silly kludge to allow melee to work. Against tanks that do not have this problem dreadnaughts fair very badly. They try to fix this with damage types by forcing you to choose between anti-infantry or anti-armor guns on your tanks but this is also a silly kludge. They also have arbitrary unit caps, especially on tanks, and unit "support point" costs which are both also kludges.

In a game with lots of varied ranged units kludges are the only way to allow melee to work without making it totally OP.

It never felt kludgy to play the game, though. It all seemed to fit pretty well. I spent a lot of hours on Dawn of War and at no point did "hm, this looks like a silly kludge" enter my mind.

Also IIRC that specific unit could only use melee on other units, but not buildings which is basically the same mechanic as a damage type, and didn't the Dawn of War games use stop to shoot mechanics anyway. But it has been a while since I last played those games so I could be wrong.

It varied from unit to unit. Most could shoot and run at the same time, though. Of course, most of them also had pretty nasty melee attacks so it didn't matter much if they got trapped in melee. Unless it was with a Dreadnought, then they were screwed.

I spent so much time just watching Dreadnoughts lay into enemy squads to enjoy the awesome. And it only got better in Dawn of War II, where the dreadnought had the really serious autocannon added to it

Ok, so far i've seen two potentially interesting types.

-the rocket-boosted unit
-some kind of nano/microbot swarm.


Can we do two assumptions from now on:

-basic swording or punching doesn't work
(i think that one has more than enough proof now)

-applying a buff to melee units is not possible.
(as i said: buff a melee unit and you could also add a gun to it and make it a better ranged unit)


SO, aside from the rule of cool and "i want it", can we get some more thoughts going on what a "melee" unit would look like and why it would be awesome to use one and enrich our lives?

I think the rocket-booster is interesting because i get visions of reapers from StarcraftII, who can jump up and down cliffs and move across terrain fast.

I think nano or microbots (essentially a killer swarm) is interesting because it removes many potential costs and investments, but i am not certain to what degree this is actually interesting.

Can we just work from the assumption that melee is a bad idea to start with and stop trying to invent reasons to shoehorn it into the game? You know, as the last five pages or so have proven?

I wouldn't really call it "proven" considering the number of examples of games that have it and made it cool.

Nor would I neccesarily call it a requirement for the basic version of PA, though.

I would call it proven. Unless you can show a way to make it work without kludges or making it OP that adds something to gameplay that normal units designed to fill specialized roles don't.

Cause I haven't seen a single example of that yet. Only of games that happened to have it "just because" that included kludges and workarounds just to allow it to work properly.

Unfortunately you've already claimed Dawn of War was "kludging" even though the whole game revolves around it, so it seems like you're not going to accept anything as proof anyway.

Because it *is* using kludges. Several of them in fact as I pointed out earlier. If you have to design the entire game around it just to make it work then something is wrong with the premise you are starting from and you may as well make everything melee. (Which Dawn of War did.) Without the "melee shuts off guns" work around the Tau would be stupidly OP just to name a single example.

Dawn of War is a great game. But it has its flaws, such as unt caps and guys that forget to use their guns when an Orc gets close. But its a micro game and is balanced as such. PA is a macro game. You really can't compare the two.

Orrrr.... you started with the premise of designing the game around it. You indeed cannot compare the two games, but that doesn't change the fact that Dawn of War is designed around the concept of melee/ranged mix, and just because you consider it kludging doesn't change the fact that they made a really good game out of it.

Yes but if I wanted to play a game that felt like Dawn of War then I would go play Dawn of War. And since you can't really compare Dawn of War to PA then nothing in Dawn of War can make a case for melee units in PA because the amount of micro needed in Dawn of War to allow the ranged/melee units to interact properly just does not translate to a macro game like PA.

It seems there is nothing more to be learned here. antillie is convinced that short range units can't work, and will not listen to the contrary.

Short range has worked in many RTS titles including TA, where the Pyro and Zeus have their spot on the front line.

Short Range != Melee (Short range is fine). For Melee to work, you need to design the entire game around it, and becomes a very different game to what PA is trying to be. Ergo, Melee should be out.

All the examples of why melee can apparently work are ways in which to modify units to allow it to work. I've yet to see an example in this thread of why they should work, that is, why a robot army would have any to begin with. The premise of the game is robot wars. That melee can exist in RTSs is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether the units fit the premise. Just because stat-wise they can be made to work does not mean they should be included. Honestly, melee robots is just daft.

If short range is fine, why not just use spears!

... Do I really need to explain the difference between melee weapons and short range ballistics or plasma weaponry? Or do you actually think a spear is equivalent?

I see your spears and raise you one angry man with a banana!