25 replies to this topic

[Damocles]

1st. We know nothing about physics engines being used in-game. Due to this, I will not address charging or DFA although I hope they would be included. I also will not get into animations/damage modeling. All I want to address is possible mechanics to make this work. I will use some numbers as placeholders and will give possible in-game examples to spice it up a bit. Final note: Some of these ideas are here to promote diversity of mech choice and gameplay.


Basics:
-3 Buttons to control all melee interactions. We will call them; high attack (punches) low attack (kicks) and special (weapons/handheld items)
-Each use should have a cooldown attached.
-Falling should be a real concern. This is a major point that should stop melee from being spammable.
-Damage to be determined, but should be weighted by mech size.
-Punching without hands (Warhammer) should damage or destroy your arm mounted weapons.
-Picking up mech limbs only equal or lesser to your own mechs' weight
-Melee weapons obscure arm mounted weapons (unless designed ala Hatchetman/Axman etc.)


High Attack (That fist in your face):
1 button hit=1 punch
2 button hit= 1,2 punch
dmg = ???
Cooldown = 5-10sec. but you should be able to push it again with extreme risk of missing and falling on your ***.

Some additional factors to determine hit/miss%:
+%hit - You only threw 1 punch
+%hit - You are within 5m of target
+%hit - You have not fired arm mounted weapons for 5sec
+%hit - You are stationary
+%hit - You are traveling slower than 10kp/h

-%hit - You are further than 5m from target (derp)
-%hit - You have taken damage
-%hit - You have taken serious damage
-%hit - You are traveling faster than 10kp/h
-%hit - You just tried to use a melee strike!
-%hit - You have no hand actuators

Example Story:
You are finally the pilot of the beastly Atlas. Everyone is trying to get a piece of you and some Commando pilot strays too close for an SRM salvo. You tap punch once, saving your autocannon 20 ammo for bigger targets. Atlas swings and connects with the Commando, pulverizing an arm and sending him to the ground. You go to finish him off but a more worthy target steps up, a Stalker puts its big nose in your face. It has been a few seconds since the Commando went down you surmise and this beak needs breaking. Tapping punch twice, you connect with both of your mighty fists thanks to your low speed. Of course this isn't the most efficient way to put down the Stalker but clearly the impact has shaken up his pilot and he starts letting off everything he has at you regardless of heat. Your AC20 opens up again along with your arm mounted medium lasers, finishing off what your punches did to the Stalkers' face. You turn away to find more pests to swat.


Low Attack (Kickin you when you're down):
1 button = 1 kick
dmg = ???
Cooldown = 5-10 sec

Some additional factors to determine hit/miss%:
+%hit - You are within 5m of target
+%hit - You are stationary
+%hit - Your target is prone

-%hit - You have taken damage
-%hit - You have taken serious damage
-%hit - You are traveling faster than 1kp/h

Example Story:
You are locked in a Steiner scouting duel. Zeus vs. Zeus. LRM ammo is gone and it is up to your lasers to finish the job. Both pilots see the need to close range and slug it out. His 1,2 punch killed his PPC and missed with his other arm. This came just after you nailed him with your own large laser which has upped his chance to fall. The poor s.o.b. goes down on his back and you angle your mech around towards his head and tap the kick button. The Zeus cockpit always looked like it could fit a Zeus' foot in it anyway...


Special (Shiney):
1 button = Pick up/drop melee weapons and hit with them when you are within range of a target.
dmg = ???
cooldown shared with punches.

+/-%hit should be the same as punch.

Types of melee weapons:
Trees! (Break on first hit)
'Mech limbs! (More durable)
Hatchets (Durable+more dmg)
etc...

Other options for special attack:
-"Salute" animations for mechs without hands. These might have some utility in melee combat as well in a design by design basis.

Example: The Warhammer could theoretically cross his PPC barrels in front of his torso. This could be taken as a salute OR a way to keep distance between yourself and a punching attacker (block). Of course that should only work if both arms are on the Warhammer.

Example Story:
You are piloting your lovely Grasshopper down a broad avenue in a cityscape. Ahead of you is a Warhammer that has done his best at range to lay into your armor with charged particles. You use your jump jets close the gap and score a hit with your large laser that severs one of his PPCs.

He backs around the corner to put more distance and you need to decide whether to push the fight and hope those SRMs dont hit anything valuable or to turn and risk a range duel of LRM5+large laser vs. PPC. I personally have never known a grasshopper IRL to do anything other than fly right into my face so it looks like that will be my choice.

Before you turn that corner you notice the shiney long PPC barrel on the street. Tapping special key you pick it up and one of your arm mounted MLs goes black on your HUD. Bursting around the corner, and brandishing part of your foe as a weapon. Missiles pass your canopy and machineguns spiderweb your glass but you close the distance. Hit special again and that mech limb becomes a tool of death, slamming into the warhammers' left torso and starting a chain reaction of ammunition explosions that sends your enemy to the lobby. </end>



Fall Chance:
+% chance to fall - You have taken serious damage
+% chance to fall - You have missed your melee attack
+% chance to fall - You have been hit by a melee attack

-% chance to fall - You are standing within 5m of a reinforced building

Firstly, the inclusion of a chance to fall is an effort to balance out the idea that "Hey why use weapons when i gots fists" I have seen people in the past outright hate the idea of physical combat due to the Rockem-Sockem Robots factor. Yeah, falling on your *** would suck, yeah we are all trained pilots, but melee combat is not the primary role of a Battlemech (or at least not all Battlemechs). That is my main reason for including that concept.

Secondly, it is only a CHANCE to fall, based on very concrete reasons. The % of these chances I leave open to testing etc, but the reasons for falling that I list cannot be denied as primary reasons that you would go down, can they? Now if you do not want to fall, play with some skill and use the system as it is intended to work (however it is implemented). In this case; do what you can to make your hits connect in melee...and don't try to spam them unless you are feeling courageous haha. Do these things and you won't be on your back getting your cockpit caved in.


Critique is welcome. I may have left a few ideas I had last night out as well and I am trying to hurry so my gf and I can go get coffee Lol.

Cheers,
/Damo

Edited by Damocles, 23 November 2011 - 03:24 PM.

[Kruze]

How about grasping/throwing your enemies? Melee might be hard to balance though, I'd think self-damage would have to be a large part of it in order to keep it from being overused by mechs that aren't built for it. But I hope it's in, gotta have something to do when you're outta bullets, right?

[StonedDead]

I don't think so, just my opinion though. These are Mechwarrior battle mechs, not Gundams or something. These are not designed for melee with the exception of elementals(if they have them). Elementals had a grappling claw or a very short range weapon. Something like that may be in order, like a physical blade or some kind of souped up battle jackhammer kind of thing. Most mechs in this game do not even have hands and things to melee fight with. Again, just my opinion.

[StonedDead]

Just thinking about it, in most MW games that I have played, the enemies blow up big time when you kill them doing damage to yourself if you are within range. Any type of melee or CQB weaponry would most likely be as fatal to you as it would to your opponent.

[Damocles]

I agree that these battlemechs are not gundams and I don't think they should be portrayed as such either. But close-combat is a part of battletech and many mechs DO have hands. In MW4 we saw many of those mechs-with-hands replaced by models that didn't have them like the Victor, Hunchback and some others (not looking it up atm).

I do not feel that close combat should be the go-to for people, it is a last resort and should be used in desperation. With a high risk of falling associated with taking part in melee combat, I feel that it could be balanced out and add diversity to the game which has never had it via these means.


@Kruze:
grappling/throwing i think is part of TT, but I do not see how it could be done without being abusive to players. Self-damage should be a major part, and as I said could be shown via dmg to own arm mounted weapons but the real risk of damage should be from falling. If you could think of any other ways to reflect this let me know.

/Damo

Edited by Damocles, 08 November 2011 - 08:39 PM.

[Malisinn]

This is a proper idea Damocles. There are already tons of threads on melee combat but this is the only one I've read through that tried to break it down.

[BarHaid]

Yes, quite thorough. I like your system; keeps it simple and primitive, like Mech melee should be.

[ChargerIIC]

Zekester81, on 08 November 2011 - 08:20 PM, said:

I don't think so, just my opinion though. These are Mechwarrior battle mechs, not Gundams or something. These are not designed for melee with the exception of elementals(if they have them). Elementals had a grappling claw or a very short range weapon. Something like that may be in order, like a physical blade or some kind of souped up battle jackhammer kind of thing. Most mechs in this game do not even have hands and things to melee fight with. Again, just my opinion.

Melee combat has a long history for battlemechs and inner sphere mechs in paticular. My favorite mech, the Charger 1A1 was one of several models designed extensively for close in melee combat. This link is some fo the melee based battlemechs:

http://www.sarna.net...lee_BattleMechs

I actually liked a suggestion put in this thread: (http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1) in which the melee attack would be context sensitive. If the aiming recticle was high, then the mech would punch/use a melee weapon. If the recticle was low. than a kick would be performed. Adding collision tech to allow for charging and DFA and you would have a pretty nice package.

Melee combat feels like a must in the urban heavy environments we've been promised. There's something satisfying when you mech's last ditch melee assault manages to take down one last opponent before some PPC takes off your head.

[Damocles]

Thanks for the replies, all.

@ChargerIIC;
I dig that suggestion also, having to move the reticule to get a physical attack in would = having to compromise weapon aim and would be a good balancing factor. If they couldn't work that sort of thing in I really hope that the ideas I have are something that can be worked with.

And melee is definitely a MUST in urban situations!

/Damo

[Psyche]

Honestly, it wasn't supported in the Battletech Centers either but that didn't stop me from doing it (Charges and DFA despite the difficulty). Unfortunately it also had a tendency to crash the servers in the original build so I think they reduced the physics model in later builds (I was one of the Original participants - they usually referred to us as 'Test Pilots' instead 'Pilots' back then.

You could probably use some sort of Camera lock on system and use that to alter what kind of attack based on position, facing, button/command pressed so it doesn't clutter up the interface and effectively regulate it (shared cooldowns so they can't be spammed) since, as other posters have pointed out, this isn't Gundam/Armored Core/etc. its Mechwarrior/Battletech.

[Kudzu]

I'd be happy if they just set set up two hotkeys: one for punching (only one arm for balance purposes) or using a hatchet and one for kicking.

Give them a windup animation (arm or leg coming back) and if you miss you fall down automatically (to keep them from being spammed, not realistic with a punch but again, balance). Being punched throws your torso around, being kicked has a chance to knock you down. Use the same damage tables from the TT-- punching with a mech with no hands/lower arm actuator lowers the damage.

[AcesHigh]

Disagree completely with "fall down", that's just not the way it would work as a single step forward fixes the CoG problem while adding kinetic energy to the swing.

it's a simple mechanic to have melee weapons as a mountable and selectable system. cooldown linked to actual arm movement (completes when the weapon returns to start)

arms with ranged weapons could mount a .1-1.0t "bayonet" for melee.

Hatchet/Axemen could carry 5-10-15-25t axes, and variant to dual-weild with heavy armor for city missions.

Mechwarrior would finally catch up to every other combat game/sim out there.

[Yeach]

I like the idea.
If you get to a certain distance say less than say 30m, your mech goes into close-combat mode; most if not all of your arm weapons become disabled and then you will be able to throw punches (with a cool-down recycle time)

If anyone has played Virtual-On, you might know what I am talking about (although some of the Virturoids there used energy swords or this


Other than punching and kicking, what about a shoulder bash (like ramming)

[Karyudo ds]

Zekester81, on 08 November 2011 - 08:20 PM, said:

These are not designed for melee with the exception of elementals(if they have them).

So the giant hatchets the Hatchetman and Axeman have are just for show? The sword the Nodachi has? Why would you even give a mech hands if it doesn't use them? (never seen them ever used in any Battletech video game come to think of it)

[Xhaleon]

Karyudo-ds, on 23 November 2011 - 10:32 AM, said:

(never seen them ever used in any Battletech video game come to think of it)

I don't believe so. It's always up to you to perform these silly ineffective rams that don't even budge your target whenever you're out of ammo.

[AcesHigh]

just gonna say, if they do implement melee, and add this (IMHO silly) fall down on miss mechanic: Atlas vs Madcat II, the reckoning

Edited by Paul Inouye, 23 November 2011 - 04:32 PM.
Please do not post animated gifs/videos in suggestion threads.

[Damocles]

As I see much of the issue thus far has been with fall chance, let me explain my thoughts further on it.

Fall Chance:
+% chance to fall - You have taken serious damage
+% chance to fall - You have missed your melee attack
+% chance to fall - You have been hit by a melee attack

-% chance to fall - You are standing within 5m of a reinforced building

Firstly, the inclusion of a chance to fall is an effort to balance out the idea that "Hey why use weapons when i gots fists" I have seen people in the past outright hate the idea of physical combat due to the Rockem-Sockem Robots factor. Yeah, falling on your *** would suck, yeah we are all trained pilots, but melee combat is not the primary role of a Battlemech (or at least not all Battlemechs). That is my main reason for including that concept.

Secondly, it is only a CHANCE to fall, based on very concrete reasons. The % of these chances I leave open to testing etc, but the reasons for falling that I list cannot be denied as primary reasons that you would go down, can they? Now if you do not want to fall, play with some skill and use the system as it is intended to work (however it is implemented). In this case; do what you can to make your hits connect in melee...and don't try to spam them unless you are feeling courageous haha. Do these things and you won't be on your back getting your cockpit caved in.

TLDR; Spamming of melee strikes should = a change in balance that would add a CHANCE to fall. Not all misses would be falls.

And thanks for the feedback thus far

/Damo

Edited by Damocles, 23 November 2011 - 11:12 AM.

[Xhaleon]

Damocles, on 23 November 2011 - 11:07 AM, said:

snippy snippy

If you're going by the tabletop rules, only kicks would cause a check to see if the mech falls. With either percentage chance or physics simulations, the simple spamming of kicks will eventually result in someone falling on his ***, so no increase per attack is necessary to balance it. Punches were always the less risky, less damaging, less accurate attack that had a wider field of engagement, although I have no idea how they'd be simulated to be less accurate, that's just wonky.

[Damocles]

I used TT rules as a basis for much of this but the major intent was to work it into a video game. I agree that spamming a kick should put you down faster than punches but spamming melee in general should put you off balance.

to clarify what i mean by "spamming melee" i mean hitting your melee strike again before your previous hit animation has finished. Now falling might not be the way to handle this with punches, maybe diminishing dmg is a better option.

As far as TT punches being less accurate (and they are); it IS wonky. If I am within melee range of a target I should be able to hit him.

Now things like movement factors and taking damage should have an effect on that, but for the most part if you get in close you should expect a return on your tactical decision and your opponent should be shaken/hurting.

/Damo

[Kudzu]

Damocles, on 23 November 2011 - 11:26 AM, said:

As far as TT punches being less accurate (and they are); it IS wonky. If I am within melee range of a target I should be able to hit him.

Well, a big reason for that was the increase to a 1 in 6 chance to hit the head.