hand to hand fight units

Building a military force is a zero-sum action. When you are building a melee unit in a factory, you can't be building a ranged unit, and vice versa. This is a simple fact.

A logical consequence of the above. Also fact.

All else being equal, lack of range is a disadvantage. Therefore in order for melee to be actually useful in any situation, it must have some advantage to counteract it. I still don't see how this argument is "dumb".

Anything you can "magically" do to a melee unit to balance it can be done to a ranged unit. If you make the melee unit faster, have more HP etc, I'll ask why can't that be applied to the ranged units as well? The entire argument here is that melee units don't make sense from a military perspective. If you rely on arbitrary balance changes like bigger HP, much faster etc., you're breaking lore.

As I just explained.

If you take these mechanics out of their respective games, melee breaks and becomes underpowered. This is an example of the previous point.

As they don't fit in the existing TA/SC universe, therefore according to the above, it naturally follows that attempting to include melee will not work.

if someone is attacked on his base, and has no units in it (all dead); imagine that he can build in a very short time some hand to hand fight units as it will be close quarter combat in base. those units would have a lot of health.
it won't really be the best attack force, but a charge of plenty of them could change a battle

Why would something with a lot more HP (armour) build more quickly? That's counter-intuitive. And why wouldn't the opponents simply kite the melee units and kill them?
You would still be better off building other units because you could a) kite the opponents yourself (or at worst trade shots) or b) use your own buildings as shields to increase your units' lifespan (especially if you build an artillery unit).

Range is power. A melee unit sacrifices range to gain strengths in other areas. My god, it didn't take 5 pages to figure this out.

There really is a lot of noise and little substance going on here.

I believe ravens point has been that melee units costing less and having higher armour makes no sense from a fluff perspective and that you shouldn't add them in just because you can balance them okay.

I believe someone also made the destinction between melee units and units with very short range, one of which is cool and the other is hard to animate and serves no purpose in the battlefield.

Well, we have one side not liking melee units for this game (which I actually agree) but then they have to make up pretty silly arguments to justify it instead of arguing with style/lore/aesthetics which I suspect is their actual reason for not wanting it.

Its the same with silly units like the TRex in SupComII. You could balance it well but it doesn't stop it from looking incredible stupid.


I mean, just look at the following mess:

And if you build an artillery you don't have a tank. Artillery can kite tanks all day. Why, if you can make a tank have high armour and hp and move while shooting, can't the artillery have the same?

A force with tanks will have a weaker long range attack than without, a logic consequence of the above.

Therefore in order for tanks to be actually useful in any situation, it must have some advantage to counteract it.

Anything you can add to a tank you can add to an artillery unit. I'll ask why can't that be applied to the artillery unit as well?

You need to break some rules (oh the rules are made up anyway but we can't break them, no sir, they're eternal rules that haven't been stated yet anyway).

If you change part of the balance of some game, certain elements of that game suddenly aren't balanced anymore. Hm... Nobel Prize worthy or not?

Therefore if I refuse to balance melee, melee won't work. QED

This doesn't make sense because balance isn't so simplicistic to just look at hp/armour and dps output. When one balances an unit all its characteristics get taken into consideration, not just, oh it has that amount of hp so it has to cost that amount of metal.

And he's arguing that they can't be balanced okay, which is blatantly not true.

Wait... melee units serve no purpose in the battlefield, but short range suddenly do? Short range is never that much different from melee for that distinction to even work.

melee implies things like a sword, or an axe.

Weapons like flamethrowers (made of plasma) or thermic lances and similar extreme close range guns are effectively close combat but dont require you to swing a blade. The type of weapon that has massive damage output but its range is measured in feet. Even if you managed to somehow wrap a black hole into a coherent blade, wielding it like a sword only makes any sense if you are dueling with another sword, the main goal is to introduce it into the opponent as efficiently as possible so put it on a pole or a bomb and launch it at them. Its a stylistic difference true but it means you dont have to animate a sword swing or a punch. What do you think of as a melee robot?

Honestly, the only real argument here is between hack+slash melee vs. gunslinging melee. The former is more expensive to do and doesn't fit in with the aesthetic too well. The latter can fit into the game just like any other unit archetype. There are some challenges to make it work, but there's no reason to believe it can't.

also raven's "if you can make a super tough unit for cheap, why not have it dual wield pee wees instead of melee weapons"

I totally agree here with you, but now you're arguing about style and aesthetics.

But you can't say, melee units can't be balanced. You can say, I don't think this works with the game's theme.

(Just as a nitpick, things like laser swords or psi-swords from StarCraft are more powerful then the same thing ranged since its the equivalent of a pulse laser blast, but stabilized. Ie. a laser blast morphed into a laser beam, canonicaly explained as the only way to keep it stable. So the ranged variants, inlore, can't be stronger.)

I didn't say that, i said raven was saying that it didn't make narrative sense that melee units get bonus health for their cost cos melee unit balances that way.

I've been in enough debates for now so i tried to stay out of this one.

Everyone keeps spouting **** about HAND 2 HAND no work COZ STARCRAFT and WOSNT IN TA OR SUPCOM yet everyone ignores the fact that a portion of the devs have worked on those mythical 'other' RTS games some of which feature HAND TO HAND COMBAT UNITS.

What is so bad about a bot than can punch, kick or stomp anyone?

Nobody is asking for space samurai or anything like Gundam, despite other people claiming so.

If you have to ask then you really haven't been reading the discussion.

But what is so bad?

How does a robot punching break the style game?

What if the robots can do all those other things and still shoot?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jvLalY6ubc

Some bullshit about how Uber arent up to the task of animating it well enough?

Or you know how to better allocate the resources in the studio?

Once again, please read the discussion. All of these points have been covered in great depth.

THE AGE OF ROBOTS BEING ABLE TO HIT PEOPLE HAS LONG PASSED.

THE ENDLESS WHINING ON THE INTERNET CONTINUES INTO THE VAST DARKNESS OF SPACE.

BATTLES RAGE ACROSS THE COLD VOID FULL OF TANKS THAT SHOOT AND ROBOTS THAT SHOOT AND BEHAVE EXACTLY LIKE TANKS

COSMIC OBLITERATION FOR A PURPOSE LONG FORGOTTEN

TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN CAPTURED ASSIMILATED REFINED INTO BRUTALLY EFFICIENT KILLING MACHINES NONE OF WHICH PUNCH OR KICK OR SMASH OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT MIGHT BREAK THE COSMIC STALEMATE

No, it was not a general statement. A general statement would not need to reference a specific game, or how an implementation in a specific game works or does not work. Referencing a specific game, and how a specific mechanic works in a specific game and how that differs from expectation (or another implementation), is a specific statement. That's basic semantics.

Here is a general statement: a unit with a limited range weapon has to be able to get within range to a target to be able to damage it. If the target has a longer ranged weapon, it would need to be unaware of the attacking units presence, or unable to deal enough damage while the attacking unit closes (whether from dodging, from the attacking units health pool being too large, or from some other mechanic), for the attacking unit to be anything other than a distraction. In such cases (where the attacking unit is destroyed before being able to deal damage), for it to be operationally viable the attacking unit would need to have been intended only as a distraction, as part of a larger strategy.

You can provide specific examples (e.g. marine vs zergling, Pyro vs Bulldog, frigate vs battleship) to support or refute the general statement, but you cannot call the specific example a general statement, because it is not.

I hope you will also note that my general statement covers your position (melee is worse than ranged without mitigating factors). It does not prove that your interpretation is the only viable one though.

Here is a specific example to illustrate that even if restricted range is not bolstered in any way, and uses exactly the same standard balancing techniques as all other units, it can still be useful. You've scouted an enemy forward post, and it currently contains some non-defensive structures and mobile defensive units. You send in a few restricted range units; your opponent sees them, sees that they have less range than their units, and decides that because all their units have longer range, they'll just roll the defensive units back and kite. Your units are now doomed, but you have just got your enemy to deliberately move their defensive units away from a value point; this could be capitalised on by a bombing run (the defensive units are engaging your ground units now, not air, and are hopefully too far away to react in time), or by an artillery strike (the restricted range units are acting as forward scouts and a delaying tactic, as they are now between your artillery and the defensive units). None of this requires your units to have anything but shorter range than the defensive units. If your opponent has an obvious range advantage, they will instinctively be drawn to capitalising on that range advantage; if you have range parity (i.e. you and the opponent have similar range) it does not invite your opponent to kite, they are as likely to pick any of the available defensive mobility options. If you are using restricted range units and they do kite, you can even use your subsequent unit movement to coax them in a specific direction, in most cases, right up until they realise what you are doing.

Note that this scenario only works if your units have less range than theirs. It shows how the dynamic between disparate unit ranges is exploitable right down to direct range units. It also shows how a combat unit can be operationally valid even if it is never used to deal damage; it is a sacrificial piece to lure an enemy into a position where you have the advantage. You can trivially alter that case to reverse the range disparity but still lure your opponent into making a specific positional choice; use sacrificial artillery as the lure to get their units out of position (who doesn't go hunt down artillery?), to allow other attackers (e.g. other units with excellent DPS but less range than the defenders, who would otherwise get kited) in to the base to do damage. It also does not mentione melee at all.

If you can agree that range disparity between unit types can be a good thing, I'd hope that you can also see that melee is just a specific edge case of range disparity. It is also entirely possible for a unit to be operationally useful simply by virtue of it existing, and have significance due to its weaknesses (and its ability to lure opponents into making specific choices to exploit those weaknesses) rather than its strengths.

That, above, is why I don't think melee units in PA would be a bad thing. The melee part is effectively irrelevant, it is simply a different maximum range for a unit. Keep whatever favourite range / HP / DPS / other balance equation you want, apply it to every unit including melee or short range, and it will all work out.

Alternatively, just liberally apply handwavium and give robots a gun that shoots swords, and has a maximum range of 1 unit radius. It's not melee, it's just really short range honest! Problem solved?

Are you still on about this stuff? Wow.

It seems that you are unable to identify a general statement by its ability to easily apply to any set of units. The fact that I choose to use a particular set of units as an example is irrelevant. I could have just as easily have said swordsmen and archers or cowboys and indians. Or dropped in any other game with similar mechanics. Because it's, you know, a general statement about mechanics, not a specific statement about units.

And melee is not an edge case of short range, it is its own completely separate thing. This has already been established in this thread. Also, you still haven't shown what melee could bring to the game that ranged can't. Aside from higher development costs of course. And you have completely failed to address any of raevn's excellent counter points.

Do you have anything useful to add to the discussion outside of semantic debate?

If I might?

What would a melee unit add that a short ranged unit cant?

That's a better way of putting it that would keep most people happy.

After-all a shotgun (A video game shotgun not a real one) easily compliments a sniper-rifle.