Melee Units

Why does it have to catch the tank before it gets off a shot or two? It doesn't have to be balanced exactly like a tank in close-range. It can do much more damage but be more difficult to get into a position where it can deal that damage.

I think most of your qualms would go away by not imagining a poor implementation. Company of Heroes uses weapons that excel in close combat, like flame vehicles, PPSh and flame infantry and they seem to fit okay despite long range mortar trucks and faster more powerful panthers also existing in the game.

All things will always be equal because all units use the same stuff.

Sure a sword might be half the cost of a gun but the tank with the gun will kill at least two bots with swords in a fight due to being equally armored, about the same speed, and kiting. So it just makes it a redundant choice. There is nothing that can be put on a melee weapon that can't also be fired from a gun and no armor that can be put on a sword bot that can't also be mounted on a tank.

And actually you can put small sized artillery guns on cheap bots. TA had one for each side. In FA t1 artillery was quite powerful due to its range.

Because melee can't do more DPS than ranged without totally unbalancing static defenses. Anything you put on a sword can also be fired from a gun. And it still doesn't address the problem of really fast ranged units kiting the melee things around all day.

There are good implementations of melee in RTS games. Starcraft and Dawn of War are great examples but PA is not supposed to play like them.

But they don't. Using your FA example, LABs were faster than tanks but also had less range. T1 Artillery had more range than tanks but that didn't invalidate tanks. We're talking about relative ranges here, forget the word melee for a second.

I think you're missing the point. The game can balance stats and cost however it needs to, it can be justified by lore after the fact - so arguing via realism or lore isn't sensical. But using a real life example, plenty of weapons do better in closer range - e.g. PPSh 41, Flamethrowers.

As I said in a previous post wouldn't this have more to do with how much damage a static defense can deal to a unit closing the range gap? And even if a certain unit beat static defenses what's wrong with that? Why couldn't another unit then be the effective counterplay to that unit?

I don't understand what you mean by that. There's plenty of reasons why a melee weapon may be more attractive, a ranged weapon may be more expensive or difficult to implement (e.g. english longbows). And I'm not sure why kiting is a problem, I'm sure it will exist in some form in the game. The question is of relative ranges and speeds. If we introduced a close combat unit right now to the Alpha it could have the same relative difference in range and speed with tanks as SupCom Bots and Artillery. Does that mean SupCom land was broken?

Relative range is not the same as melee and is a totally different discussion. Also the differences in range for general units of the same tech level in FA were really really small and even between tech levels the differences weren't that big until you got to naval, artillery, and tac missiles so the differences in speed mattered very little.

Making units and weapons out of handwavium is just annoying and ruins the feel of a game by reducing things to arbitrary rock/paper/scissors. Also I would argue that an M16 or is just as effective up close as a flame thrower in most situations. In fact even better in many.

Not really. If you buff static defenses to do enough DPS to the melee guys then the ranged units are useless against them. This is called rock/paper/scissors and its kinda boring.

Tiberium Sun did something like this with underground transports and pavement. It was very annoying and turned the game into rock/paper/scissors. Games like this can be fun but then they will not play like what PA is supposed to be.

I'm saying that the things needed to make melee work will make PA no longer be what PA is supposed to be. They will by necessity make it play like Starcraft or Dawn of War. And while those are great games we already have them.

Relative range requires that all units involved have at least some range. Melee does not fall into this category. I am suggesting that none of the land units in SupCom where close combat units.

That's my point though, it is the same thing. A melee unit for all intents and purposes is just a ranged unit with less range. If you scaled down the models and ranges of units in SupCom, bots would appear to be close-range while artillery would appear to be normal range.

Now you're moving the goal posts, your argument was that it couldn't be balanced. And having counterplay is different than contrived armors or mechanics. Artillery is the counterplay to static defense, combat units are the counter play to artillery and static defense is a counter play to combat units. That's by definition rock, paper, scissors but it isn't contrived - it's a natural balanced that came as a result of weapon ranges, speeds and damage. Also it's kind of silly to suggest weapons and units aren't already made of "hand wavium", why couldn't you just put wheels on whatever weapon the T1 Point Defenses used in SupCom?

Melee and close-combat in most games are treated as ranged units with small weapon range, at least that's how it worked for Company of Heroes, StarCraft, Zero-K, Diablo 2 and Path of Exile. Maybe not in DoW, you've brought that up but I never played it so I can't say.

Are you against units with melee weapons or close-range weapons in general? The latter is relative and I don't think we should dismiss anything that can add depth and unit variety out of hand.

No they are not. X/1 = X and X/0 = ?. Zero and one are not the same thing. Numbers do not scale like that.

My argument is that it cannot be balanced without stupid kludges that would make PA not play like a TA spiritual successor. This has not changed.

But they aren't hard counters. T1 arty can beat tanks and tanks can beat static guns depending on the situation and the tactics in use. Seraphin t1 arty was especially good at this via kiting. With melee these complex interactions start to break down due to the introduction of kludges designed to keep melee competitive with ranged. Counterplay is fine but hard counters are not.

Its not silly if the amount of handwavium breaks immersion or natural balance. T1 pd in SupCom was a bit overpowered tbh.

And all of those games that are RTS titles need arbitrary kludge mechanics to allow melee to work. Starcraft being the best example. And while these mechanics don't prevent fun game play they do dictate the style of game play. And they push it to a style that is not consistent with a spiritual successor to TA.

I feel that close range units like the Zeus and Sumo are fine as natural weapon dynamics allow them to make more efficient use of their more limited range and thus compete with longer ranged units depending on the situation. Its just true melee units like Zealots and Zerglings that I take issue with.

This is really all that I care about enough to interject in this argument.

Just because I have to physically hit you doesn't mean my range is zero. I can punch you from a few of feet away, therefore my melee punch has a range of a few feet. Not zero. Don't skew the definition of range: "The area of variation between upper and lower limits on a particular scale." In other words, upper limit - lower limit = range. I can hit you from anywhere between 0 feet from me, and a few feet from me. Therefore, my range is a few feet - 0 feet. That's a few feet.

Something I'd like to add actually regarding melee units, is perhaps they shouldn't deal damage at all, but serve as sabotage units. Temporarily disabling enemy structures/vehicles in some way via a taser. They are robots after all.

You miss the point. The less range that a unit has the less it matters how efficiently it can use said range. You need at least some range to be effective. You can't just have a range of 0 or 1. It needs to be enough that your greater efficiency can act as an effective force multiplier on your range and not as its own separate mechanic.

I like the idea of EMP or whatever disabling units. But there is no reason to limit the functionality to melee or close range. TA had units that did this.

No, I understand the point. It just bothered me that you said a melee unit had a range of zero. I'm a math guy and I have OCD for things like that.

The only problem with making that long range is how easily abusable EMP is, unless there is something that can resist it. And then it goes back to rock/paper/scissors. That's why I personally like the idea of little taser bots. You'd have to amass them, and then send them out. They'd be fairly weak, and relatively fast, much like the t1 bots now. At that point, the way to stop them is with shear volume of force, not necessarily magnitude of force. This avoids R/P/S and gives a variety of ways to solve the problem.

Fair enough.

Yeah EMP is a good candidate for a short range unit like a light tank or a unit that can't be used very often like a strategic missile launcher to prevent abuse.

Melee units might hold the upper hand in tight spots, like fighting in tight spots between mountains and such, because if the narrow mountain pass is curved and such, the range units wont really be able to fight.

In such situations Melee units would really dominate.

Its all about giving players the units to make different play styles possible.

Where as range units prefer the big open field.

Melee units would, however, become cannon fodder the moment they left those close passages and say... Walked right into an ambush of Levelers backed up by Scampers and Shellers.

I love the extra strategic depth it could possibly add, ESPECIALLY if FoW gets LoS support. I am in favor of melee units, so long as it isn't gundam-grade melee with giant spiky penisbots swinging around swords larger than their torsos.