Melee Units

What do you guys think about close combat and/or melee units? I'm thinking at most 1 or 2 to keep it special.

As a mod; sure.

See this thread;

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=42246&start=0&view=viewpoll

Opinions are fairly divided.

Mike

That would be awesome! Would mean a whole bunch more animation though.

I'm imagining a fairly armoured walker with some kind of plasma cutter blade or plasma saw.

Would certainly add some interesting strategy options!

So they are, thanks for finding that.

I don't see any reason for one not to exist as a specialist, in the same way other quirky TA units exist. I had to double check, Zero-K has 1 melee unit. http://zero-k.info/Static/UnitGuide#unit-Jack

If anyone wants to talk further on the subject we should use that thread.

Would love some big freaking Melee units that just walks into the battle and start throwing things around

Seeing as the last post in that thread was in 2012, I don't think there's much point in necroing it now.

Generally, there's nothing wrong with a unit that tries to adopt a point-blank combat niche. There's plenty of ways to make it work in a satisfying manner. The problem with explicit melee has more to do with extra dev effort. Melee demands lots of animation work to look good. There would more likely be some type of weapon effect like a plasma cutter or point blank beam thingy.

IMO, melee combat would work very well underwater. Being land mammals, we don't have much variety in the way of underwater ranged weapons(which is why Supcom used torpstorpstorps all day). While more variety in water weapons would be nice, there's nothing wrong with clawing apart something you can't easily shoot.

Underwater melee units, reminds me of the Pistol Shrimp or the Mantis Shrimp. Would you ever guess that Shrimp are the big bullies of the ocean? I didn't think so either.

I am really an Empire Earth fan. There were a bot unit called the Furie. It was a small bot wich is fast has to big fists with can hit enemy units hard at close range and it destructed itself when got killed what was useful sometimes.
I mentioned it for its funny look.

I am sorry I could not find a picture of it. But its style seems to be perfect to PA if someone remembers its shape.


With friendly regards Paul von Hindenburg

Melee capabilities could be implemented, it would be nice to see in retail but I guess it'd only end up viable as code usable for modders.

Melee combat is an additional layer of complexity, you see. Of everything. Melee air drones? Melee naval units? Melee land units? Melee burrowers? Melee jumpers?

Melee can be applied to every unit type, the old-fashioned way of doing this was to set the range of a ranged weapon to a limited range (Warcraft 3 - and earlier iterations, at a guess - does this by setting melee range to 100 units or thereabouts). However, true melee implementation is more difficult and affects a lot more variables (see: Dawn of War, the first RTS to actually implement a standalone melee system that worked independently of ranged combat).

Yes, the question is "does it have a place in the game", but the game is so early in public development that that's not really a question. The question is "do the developers think it would benefit their game and/or the expenses they would have to pay to make it a reality".

Hah, I thought the same thing.

A rotating disk of death armed with a short ranged laser cutter would be simple enough to animate and add an interesting melee aspect.

I've spoken before about strategy can only truly come into it's own with a large variety of different unit types. The more different combinations for unit abilities and atributes, the more choices a player must make as to how they prosecute their war.

With that in mind, i would fully support their being one or two melee units, presumably with an obscene DPS to balance for them bringing a knife to a gunfight. It adds player choices, and it means that if you should ever bee unlucky enough to get some in an undefended part of your base, then you would be in for a world of hurt.

My mid range DPS tank kites your high DPS melee unit.

I'd hope the engine is capable of it without it being a horrible kludge. It has been said PA is partly a platform.

Unfortunately the only way to make melee work in an RTS is to resort to stupid kludges like stop to shoot mechanics or disabling a unit's guns when it gets hit with a sword.

While these types of game play mechanics don't prevent a game from being good, (See Starcraft and Dawn of War.) they do prevent it from being a spiritual successor to TA.

However mods incorporating these things could be very interesting.

I'm not really sure how kiting invalidates close-combat. If a unit has less range than another but more speed it can close the gap between weapon ranges. That is the basis for a lot of balance schemas in Spring.

Yes, if a close-combat unit is lumbering and slow it will be bad - so don't imagine a bad melee unit?

There is nothing keeping a ranged unit slow. My tank will always be about as fast as your melee guy unless the tank has waaay more HP. Same armor tech, engine tech, weapon tech, ect... Also, fast melee units invalidate static defenses.

Also since your melee guy and my tank have about the same hp to dps ratios when compared to their mass cost the tanks can stand still, get in a couple shots while the melees guys run up to them, and then just finish the job up close with their guns since the melee guys started the melee portion of the fight already damaged and the tanks didn't.

This thread has already happened. The conclusion is that while melee units are interesting the game play mechanics needed to make them work would make PA play like either Starcraft or Dawn of War. And we already have those games.

I'm not sure what you mean. We're talking about relative speeds and ranges, a unit with relatively less range must be relatively faster to not be invalidated. Otherwise we would only ever make T3 Mobile Artillery in SupCom.

How would a close-combat unit invalidate static defense? Wouldn't that be more a matter of DPS and how long getting into attack range took, relative its HP?

Edit: Saw your edits. It's true all things being equal you would prefer a kiting ranged weapon but all things are not equal. An artillery can't just be mounted on a peewee, it needs to be sturdier to deal with recoil. Furthermore we can't realistically qualify how expensive different weapons are to produce, maybe close-combat weapons are less mass intensive meaning more mass can be devoted to superior movement.

T3 artillery is silly powerful due to its range. Despite its high cost, low speed, and low HP. Range is just that good.

Because any unit fast enough to catch a tank before the tank got off a shot or two is also fast enough run by static defenses and into a base without taking any real damage. Unless its DPS is just terrible, but then whats the point of using it at all aside from scouting.