Melee units poll

In just curious where everyone stands on the idea of Melee/very short range units. I have no real opinion on it right now, I just want to see what other people think.

I like them but you'll probably be shouted down by the people who think this game shouldn't/wont have anything that wasn't in FA or TA.

rcix makes a point. diehard classicalists will hate this idea. however, I think it'd be an interesting change. especially for short-yet-not-melee units. fire solves everything.

The actual problem is that a particular weapon needs to be, you know, useful and appropriate.

Mike

It would be tricky to balance a unit so that it has enough health to get into melee range but not too much that it is unstoppable, not to mention how much damage it would have to deal for you to send such a unit into the firing line.

It's really not too hard. Loads of rts games have Melee units.

Zeus and Pyro bots in TA might be a better choice.

As for actual Melee bots, I would say that speed is a must, to make speed the units defense, so protected on the charge, but very vulnerable when attacking.

Voted yes, simply because I want to see what can modders do with it.

real melee: no
short ranged strong units: maybe

but tbh, we have high tech bots fighting each other, why should they develop melee if they can blow everything up from range.

Can't melee units just be deferred until Planetary Annihilation: Kingdoms?

Or cloak, like the Scythe in Zero-K. It's protected by its cloak until it attacks (or bumps into a enemy unit, or take damage), then it is de-cloaked and quite fragile.
Though the viability of this depends on if/how Cloak will work in PA.

That would be why I voted yes.

OK first of all it's not that people will shoot down anything that wasn't in TA. People are shooting ideas down that they don't think will work, and things they saw in TA have already been tested so they have been proven to work in the past. Propose a good idea and people will get behind it.

While I am not sure that true melee units would work, I could definitely see a short range high damage unit working fine.

And I think the real viability of melee units will depend on how well the flow field unit movement works. With the old pathfinding any melee units would end up dying in a traffic jam. However if they can slide around each other SupCom 2 style then they should be able to get where they need to be.

I will jump behind the concept of a short range high damage unit, it has potential. I don't think true melee will be a good idea though.

First you have to find a melee weapon idea that could be even vaguely considered to use over explosions, plasma and lasers. Then you would have to balance it. How powerful does the melee have to be to make up for soaking up all that damage just to get into range? Will it have to be fast to avoid damage? Will it be too overpowered in swarms? Every other ground unit in this style of game has a single mechanic for attack - just shoot when in range. The only variation of this is some units must stop before shooting. From the AI perspective melee units would behave very differently, with the weapon dictating the a lot of the pathfinding. You the player will be ordering your units to attack what? Attack-move to a position, how does the AI decide to deviate from that order? Attack a specific unit? Tell a group to do these and you have a bunch of bots trying to converge on the exact same point - and not stopping short because they are in range. A perfect way to undo all that flow-field goodness. How would you get around that? Create a new order type especially for melee, the "attack units in that area"? The only alternative is to go super-micro. Also, from an aesthetics point of view having a lot of units touching each other is a good way to ruin that design style that promoted easily identifiable units and clean layout.

*That all said*

There is one unit I can think of that may be practical. It would be an experimental, or at least a particularly large high-tier unit. Basically an armoured bulldozer-like metal munching machine. Moves rather slowly, on treads, and any small units it runs over get instantly destroyed. Larger units and structures mush be munched on a bit then they get destroyed. Also has a ton of health. And to balance it? those little walls you probably build around your first defence turret last time you played Supcom. Will other units will either blast them to pieces or go around them,, this unit would take quite a while to chew through them, giving the opponent the time needed to break its hull.

Just some ideas and thoughts. Whatever happens, there needs to be a very good reason to put a melee unit in. Its all for nothing if it feels out of place in the final game.

Because Ninjas are awesome aswell?!
Something like a little ninja unit in robotic style with less HP but precision and critical sword hits with a damn good speed.

It works great. There's a reason flow field is being used, and that's because it's the best game pathing there is.

Melee units need speed and special AI to work properly. It's not enough to run directly at the enemy. Similar to Starcraft 2, melee units have to pick out their targets in advance and not clump up on themselves. It's tricky, but probably not that bad to do.

Don't forget that suicide bombs are a form of "melee" unit. In TotalA the crawling bomb was painfully slow and pretty useless, but in PA they would find themselves quite lethal.

A high-speed, low-HP stealthed unit with a Halo-style sword might be a nice surgical strike unit.

But a walking bomb would achieve much the same thing, and TA and FA both tried this with very limited success.

If anyone here played Monday Night Combat (not an rts I know), they would remember some bots have melee, some have lasers, and some have laser and melee.

That being said, there could be some units with both (the default "blackjack"), some cheaper ones with just lasers or expensive ones that are still limited by only-laser (a stronger one though), and melee ones such as gremlins (cloaked) and bouncers (damage sponges with a bit of speed too).

Then there would be a combat utility with them. There would be a laser unit, a cheaper melee unit that would out-dps the laser one but would obviously die if not coordinated from uphill or something, and a unit with both (as to fend of meleers while still having a trusty laser).

Melee units are cool (probably my favorite is the Dreadnought from Dawn of War) but there's a lot of additional animation & timing work involved in making it look good. A LOT. A gun just shoots in one way. A big robot smashing his enemies with his fists may have 6 or 8 different ways to do it. And then of course you have to consider the reaction of the enemy being hit...

It's a lot of work for a game where you're not really focused on a unit vs unit level.

Melee support in the engine would be pretty neat.

How melee units would fit into the balance of the basic game is another question.