hand to hand fight units

Depends on the spear, unless you think a stone tipped spear will actually brake tank armour.

Damn you and your petroleum bananas!

My point is it doesn't matter - spear or futuristic cutting tool; either is as useless as the other compared to non-melee weapons.

But to use the spear example - why melee with it when you can throw it (with unlimited ammo, to keep the comparison relevant), and make it more powerful in the process?

Ranged weapons have every advantage there is. Melee is a relic of human combat. Humans are "squishy" and lack effective melee armour due to the more pressing threat of bullets, and so become viable up close. Robots don't have these limitations, nor the same stealth abilities as humans, so being up close is never optimal.

My bananas will conquer all!

But getting up close does happen, so why not have a cheap way......wait, why do I even care this much to argue....It's not like either of us really has any proof of either case no matter how much one of us claims X or Y, and even then its a matter is whether I actually care about what you are presenting because that isn't fun to me.

:|

Look think what you will about all this hypothetical talk, I am going to stick with trying to get flame-throwers or lightning guns back into the game, because that's fun regardless.

This man trumps any flame thrower:



However I think a gun shooing shurikens and lightning will trump bananas.

... like using your ranged weapon up close?

Those aren't melee weapons, and are fine! You keep confusing short ranged with melee. Melee is "hand-to-hand", contact (non-projectile kinetic) weapons. Flame-throwers, plasma, lightning guns are examples of short range energy or projectile weapons. Very different.

All you need to do to see why melee fails is ask yourself these questions about it:
- Can the melee weapon effectively and easily take out armour as well as a projectile weapon can?
- If so, are the drawbacks of getting close outweighed by the benefits?
- Can said weapon be adapted to be used at range instead of up close?

No example in this thread can answer Yes to the first two questions and No to the second.

Other then a plasma cutter you mean?

Or a lathe reclaimer?

A melee weapon in the game sense is just a gun with 1 or 0 range, and is the only thing I care about rather then definitions of hand-to-hand fighting.

That is melee to me in games, a melee ranged gun.

Raevn, the question you should be asking is what are the gameplay consequences of having a particular type of weapon. It is always possible to come up with a suitable lore or fiction to explain away the properties you want. Realism is irrelevant.

So the real question is, if there was a weapon with those three properties, what would happen, and is that interesting to play with?

I don't see how either of those satisfies the conditions needed. The bananas are disappointed in you.

Because plasma can't possible be used in a ranged weapon :roll:. You run at me with your cutter, I'll hit you with a plasma cannon. And you can't say you can add armour to the melee unit so it can survive, because that equally applies to the ranged unit.

Already ranged.

It's not always possible to come up with lore or fiction that doesn't completely break immersion, without changing the entire lore and therefore the game. The lore of this game negates melee. If you change the lore to accomodate, you wont have the same game. The consequence of not fitting lore is a feeling of disjointedness - how many people thought the Cybranosaurus in SupCom 2 didn't fit, and felt strongly negative towards it? It fit the gameplay fine, but didn't fit the universe or lore.

If it fulfilled all three without being arbitrary (eg. giving a melee units loads of health because it's the only way to be balanced) then it's fine. Is it interesting? That depends on the implementation. I don't believe so, but that's just conjecture. The real issue is the breaking of lore that would be required, like seeing armoured pikemen in World War 2.

That is a bias example, you might as well have said you would throw an asteroid at it, and that because asteroids we don't need units.

Why don't you try a more even example like a missile launcher.

Strawman argument. I chose plasma cannons specifically because:

If it's biased, it proves my point - ranged is better.
The whole idea is why would you bother with a melee version when a ranged version is better in every respect. You seem fixated on wanting an inferior weapon, and haven't given any situations when it would be superior.

You dismiss my argument then ask me to use a cherry-picked one instead which you obviously have an argument lined up for? Let me pre-empt this by asking how come it would be better to use a melee unit against the missile launcher instead of some other ranged unit?

Fire rate, damage, amount of units?

But there is no point in arguing with you, as you are too stubborn to listen.

I think an AK-47 has a MUCH higher firerate than a sword and does MUCH more damage.

I also don't see why melee leads to more units, as those same units can be fitted with guns at little to no extra cost (but at the gain of range).

Melee comes down to a few things:

cheaper, faster and stronger units. This is an enforced buff and can be just as well applied to a ranged unit.

Closing in on the target to get out of the firing arc. This neglects that you have to get through the firing range in the first place

cloaks etc can just as well be applied to ranged units

cutting through armor is always easier with a gun. This is simply because if you apply a shitload of energy to a small object (like firing a bullet) you get a much higher energy density than armor can take. Also, armor needs 360 coverage with that energy density also limiting movement. bullets are cheaper than armor.


AKA: melee has no use.

Short ranged weapons definitely have use. For example, some kind of flame thrower or microwave gun could overheat a robot so it doesn't have to fight through armor.

Actually a sword can cut a person in half with one slice. Even a machete can if you swing hard enough and hit em below the ribs.

To cut somebody in half with an AK would take slow accurate shooting and an entire clip, possibly more.

Also turns out the CQC units got an upgrade.

Closing the range is now no problem.



HURF DURR MY TANK NAO HAZ SHEELD PEESING BULLOTS.

i must admit you're right ^^.
but i still think that it could be done

not to mention melee animations like that would be a ton of extra work

You'd feel differently trying to actually use reclaim in combat. The damn thing is practically melee range. Hopefully the agility of the "reclaim gun" is improved for PA, so that its short range becomes less of an issue.

Capture beams are notoriously close range, as it demands continued contact with an enemy. The only exception is the loyalty gun from Supcom2, a weapon that is incredibly expensive and uses a ton of base acreage.

Oh dear. Has this discussion gone full circle already?

Well, using micro isn't a good reason against it since having melee units doesn't necessary add additional micro to the game.

Take Starcraft II as an example (boo, hiss ). Take a group of zerglings (fast, squishy melee units) and attack move them towards the enemy. Done. No micro needed and if you have enough zerglings you can overrun and kill plenty of enemies. (Unless you run into their counter, but thats kinda offtopic.)


Also people using real life examples is pretty silly in this instance since its applied so selectively. Cluster ammunition easily deals with large amounts of small units, so why even have kbots? Long range artillery and rockets deal pretty well with everything so why even have short range weapons? (Yeah we don't only use them in real life since killing everything around usually doesn't make good headlines in the media but we're dealing with total war here.

Battleships in the sea? Nah, we will only have missile cruisers. And planes will shoot their ordnance at 80km distance and won't ever show up on anything else then radar...


Saying melee units couldn't be balanced against ranged units is wrong. Balance is just tweaking numbers and the numbers used for units are made up in the end anyway. (Within some reason ofc, usually smaller less hp and faster, etc.)

You could argue in the same way, why add a short range laser to a scout unit when the same scout unit with a bigger and longer range laser is so much better. No need for the short ranged one. And with an even longer ranged one, its even better!

Thats why you usally have drawbacks to increased power of units, better weapon makes one either slower, squishier, or more expensive, longer to build etc. You don't just take an unit and make it better and say: See, its now better then the old unit so no need for the old unit!



Also, does it work with the lore of the game and the setting it has. It works well in StarCraft 2. Zerg are monsters and monster bite, scratch and claw. Protoss Zealot are holy super warriors. Terran doesn't have melee units, they're the squishy meatbags after all.

Imo it doesn't fit too well in a PA universe, which is modelled after combat around WW2. (Ship combat from WW1, and planes probably from the Korea war.) With robots and lasers of course.



Imo as it has been said in this thread, the question for melee units is, does it anything to gameplay that makes it worth the additional cost of adding them? Melee units usually are pretty heavy on animation. Making a robot or tank shoot is easy to do, animating melee combat is much more expensive.


Although, having said that, some jumpjet bot that runs around slapping limpet mines on enemy tanks would be sweet. :mrgreen: