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[Blackfire1]

Broken horse? Hell yes it is. But you know what? Its fun to think about. How would we make Melee weapons viable in MWO?

My reasoning?
I want to be able to charge an atlas in a hunchback 2SP wielding dual axes and small lasers. If I could put on jump jets I would be in heaven. Yes, I know Dual weapons isn't something you can use at the same time in Battletech. But damn it one of those are going to be blow up mid charge.
However I digress. So the question stands
"How will it be implemented?"

Melee combat has been a part of Battletech since its iteration. It is only until the last couple years that we've had the technology to be able to implement it in a feasible first person mode. 3rd person as we've know from brawlers has been around for awhile.
From what I've seen over the years there are 3 main ideas to look at this with.

Direction
A: One button actions (ex. knife is Battlefield/Ps2/Battle Tech Universe)
B: Direction control: Action button held down and the mouse is moved in a specific direction or pattern. (War of the Roses/)
C: Direction Buttons: One button for different melee attacks based on direction and power.(Age of Chivalry)

Power: How much effort you put into it. (Punch vs Jab)
-Charge and hold (Skyrim, War of the roses, Chivalry)
-Guaranteed amount (Battlefield/Ps2/Cod/ BTU)

What about Skyrim?
Skyrim is a hybrid directional control and Button. You only use one button to attack but your characters movement controls direction. Not the best thing when driving a bipedal tank.

One Button Actions:
These are going to be your general one keystroke per action style of game play.
This is fine and dandy if there are only one to two hitboxes. However once you segment the hit boxes ie Mechwarrior it starts to lose its tactile feel. While this would be the easiest to implement it doesn't help immerse the player.

Video example of one button action: About the :54 mark
http://youtu.be/rk1XKuhFqao

Directional Contol:
This is the style of combat used in War of the Rose and to a lesser degree skyrim.
WoTR you hold down the mouse and move it up, down, left or right to attack from those directions. Holding down the mouse button to charge the power.

This I could see working in MWO by having an action key that is held down activating melee mode and the mouse being used to "charge up" the swing via the direction you pull it back by.
This however would have to lock the cockpit and the torso to a lesser degree. I could see this being used similarly to the arm reticle except your not moving the entire mouse in the motion. Just picking directions and charging.

Example movie:


Directional Button:
This is what I've seen in games like Chivarly.
Each direction has its own specific button and the longer you hold that key down the stronger the strike. Chivalry uses mouse wheel up & down and the left and right mouse click. Obviously this would cause problems with MWO's combat system. However assigning specific keys would come in handy in the middle of combat.

Video example