64 replies to this topic

[Guideon Patch]

I too wish to be able to punch, kick and DFA. I have just recently started playing and was sorely disappointed when I discovered it was not an option. I have to rethink my tactics because it makes the Archer really suck when someone closes with you and your LRMs become useless and all you can do is ping away with medium lasers instead of being able to wade in and make them regret getting that close to you. This is one of my favorite tactics in the table top version.

Not sure if this deficiency ruins the game for me or not. Every battle so far seems to be just a grand melee of Red vs Blue with a few good players racking up kills while the rest of us get to spectate.

[MechTech Dragoon]

Knockdowns are completely necessary for this to be implemented. So are fixed collision physics.
Using jumpjets to land on someone and having it deal damage (death from above) is also extremely necessary.

However, my idea for this system would be....
For mechs with hand actuators-
Button to toggle hand actuators active, or not, during which time secondary button (left or right mouse button) will do a punch or grapple move, right for punch left for grapple. (atlases are well known to pick up mediums and chuck them)

For mechs without, the same activate hand actuators button will cause a ramming move.

For mechs with hand actuators, melee will slightly damage your arms.
For mechs without, melee will slightly damage your torso, split between center, right, and left respectively.

[Ade the Rare]

I *really doubt* melee could be effectively implimented in MWO, but I would like to see more thought put into collision damage. There really should be more of a scale between colliding with different weight classes; an assault would do more than chip the paint of a light!

I also think it'd be good to see assaults using JJ to squash lights

[Humpday]

Axeman!!!! Go!

Though you've have to have a life time on the physical weapon such that it is destroyed after X amounts of stikes, the "recocking" will have to be super slow, so you can't bum rush tko someone by hacking away like an insane person.

I'd love to take an Axeman out and hack at someone real quick and rip off an arm or heavily damage a torso.

[Rick T Dangerous]

I wanna see an Urbie go full Jackie Chan on an Atlas. 'Nuff said.

[Khobai]

They wont add melee to any of the existing mechs. Rerigging all the arm animations for melee would be way too tedious.

The only melee that has a chance of showing up in this game is on mechs like the hatchetman that have stock melee weapons.

[MechanicalWraith]

I see only one feasible implementation of melee in MWO, namely the reintroduction of knockdowns with a relative mass threshold. (So a lighter mech can't knock down an atlas without moving at extreme velocity, in which case the smaller mech also ragdolls AND takes greater impact damage).

This weight comparison avoids creating a tackling meta like in the beta (which I missed, sadly), rather it'll cause some respect for fatties in the brawl, forcing light mechs to stop facehugging and abusing arcade physics to kill assaults, instead let them require some evasive skill to engage larger mechs (like in lore).

From PGI's side this approach requires the least amount of work (probably too much, but we can hope). Requiring only that each mech has a ragdoll asset (already present), and a "Standing Up" animation to exit the ragdoll state, preferably one that allows for some aiming to be performed while lying flat on your back - and/or even a knockback resistance buff for a time after the fall.

Also, knockdowns need not require two mechs to occur, even running into a wall with a light at full throttle should be discouraged.

Edited by MechanicalWraith, 14 July 2017 - 05:15 AM.

[MasterW3]

on severasl occasions it was one vs one with nio ammo, turning into the most slow ramming session...
at least let them punch for 1 dmg with arm , and 1\2 damd witj no arm

[Artillex]

The way I understood it melee was a significant part of the tabletop game, and it just makes sense. Running out of ammo feels really stupid when your Kodiak literally has giant claws, and there's nothing more frustrating than being in an Atlas getting circled by an Arctic Cheetah at close range, thinking "Can't I just step on this twerp?"... In the boardgame you could, in the lore you could, and there's no reason you shouldn't be able to.

I'd also like to see dedicated Melee 'Mechs.

Edited by Artillex, 25 September 2017 - 12:04 AM.

[HammerMaster]

Melee WAS a feature of MechWarrior 1 and crescent Hawks inception. No excuse to not have it now. Yes it was bugged and got shelved. How many years ago and ZERO progress.!?

[Serpentbane]

God, no!!! This would be really really bad in this game, even if sounds cool in theory.


You say nothing about how this is supposed to be implemented. Should the Axe be what the Knife is to CoD, more powerfull than an assault rifle?

No matter how you put it, we are all ready fighting in a ***********, it's not like it's hard closing in on somebody. Are AXE mechs supposed to be kings of close combat, well, lets just leave the other weapons all together.

And punches? Are punches more powerfull than AC's? Pho punches hardest, a slow Atlas or a faster Shadow Hawk. A billion hits per minute is nothing if you dont have mass. Mass don't matter if you don't have speed.

What about damage to the arms? Actuators etc.

There are so many things that could break a game with a little to many issues all ready.

[Overkill C7]

Would be nice to be able to knock down a 20 ton mech with a 100 ton mech or at least punch/kick it. That'd stop some of the lights from doing the "run up where you can't aim down at me" attacks.

Also, it'd be awesome to see an Atlas punt an Arctic Cheetah 100 meters down the way...

Edited by Overkill C7, 25 September 2017 - 08:59 AM.

[HammerMaster]

Rules are already in place for TT melee. Some mechs have battlefists. http://www.sarna.net..._.5BBT.2C_AS.5D
And are better at melee. Hatchets do damage per weight. A 65 ton axeman does 13 points of damage (1 per 5 tons). You can NOT have fired any weapons in the arm of the mounted hatchet to use it.
And there is NO damage to the attacking mech for engaging in melee. I see no reason people keep insisting that it does.

[HammerMaster]

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Jump-Kick
http://www.sarna.net...eath_from_Above
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hatchet
http://bg.battletech...hp?topic=6788.0

[Damnedtroll]

Maybe just put melee for specialized hatchet or sword carrying type like the axeman, hatchetman, berzerker, etc

Would be far easier and faster to code and make these far more special ! It's not crazy damage and you need to be point blank but could be crazy fun ! Just put a switch to turnoff weapon and enable the hatchet to bring some kind of balance.

I would buy at least a pack of one of these, no kidding !

Edited by Damnedtroll, 25 September 2017 - 04:37 PM.

[KageRyuu]

Serpentbane, on 25 September 2017 - 08:47 AM, said:

God, no!!! This would be really really bad in this game, even if sounds cool in theory.


You say nothing about how this is supposed to be implemented. Should the Axe be what the Knife is to CoD, more powerfull than an assault rifle?

No matter how you put it, we are all ready fighting in a ***********, it's not like it's hard closing in on somebody. Are AXE mechs supposed to be kings of close combat, well, lets just leave the other weapons all together.

And punches? Are punches more powerfull than AC's? Pho punches hardest, a slow Atlas or a faster Shadow Hawk. A billion hits per minute is nothing if you dont have mass. Mass don't matter if you don't have speed.

What about damage to the arms? Actuators etc.

There are so many things that could break a game with a little to many issues all ready.

If you had any familiarity with the Battletech table top, all of your questions and fears would be eliminated.

But essentially melee is dependent upon a mech's tonnage, punches would deal 10% of the mech's tonnage, a kick would deal 20%, DFAs 30% while taking 20% in return divided between the legs, Charging/Collision should deal 10% of a mech's tonnage multiplied by 10% of it's speed while taking 10% of the target's tonnage in return, Hatchets would deal 20%, while Swords would probably wind up dealing 13% as they tend to vary between 15-11% (10%+1 damage). Only Charging and DFA should deal any damage in return, however the likelihood of an enemy not taking the opportunity to get a heat free attack in is basically nil, so one can expect retribution in most situations.

Additionally Punching and Kicking requires both arm/leg actuators to be present and in good order to deal full damage, otherwise it would deal half as much damage for each actuator missing, additionally hands aren't required for punching, only melee weapons, which suffer the same damage reduction with each damaged arm actuator. Add onto that that it is possible to destroy Melee Weapons through critical damage, they are less frightening then they first appear.

So an Atlas using a Hatchet or Kick would have the power of an AC20, while it's punch would have the power of an AC10, but could be used once each for each arm, and a Locust's kick would have the power of 2 AC2s and could theoretically deal 1 damage each with it's arms, but given how extremely short they are depicted to be, shorter than the actual torso, it's not likely to be able to punch at all, though if it charged it could deal up to 30 points of damage while taking anywhere from 2 to 10 points in return, most likely to it's legs and most likely only once before it risked crippling itself.

Lore wise, melee weapons came to the fore during the 1st and 2nd Succession Wars in the form of uprooted trees and girders used by desperate pilots fighting in apocalyptic wars of attrition, and by apocalyptic I mean little to no restraint on the use of WMDs. However eventually the hatchet which was essentially just a reinforced and hard mounted club would come out in 3025, only 25 years ago timeline wise, but hundreds of years after the last open use of WMDs, and upon it's creation signaled the first technological advancement in the Innersphere since the fall of the first Star League, and was installed into the Hatchetman which itself was the second new design since that time and a symbol of unity between the two halves of the Federated Commonwealth, the Federated Suns and Lyrian Alliance. Later on a larger hatchet would later be installed into the Hatchetman's bigger brother the aptly named Axeman and would become feared across the Innersphere for it's Head Hunting capacity, even if it's capabilities were sorely over exaggerated. Regardless melee weapons on mechs were still fairly rare, though surprisingly effective, at least until the Inner-sphere once again faced the conditions similar to the first two Succession Wars during the Jihad. It would be in that era that even the Clanners would design their own mech class melee weapons, namely in the form of battle ready Claws and Talons.

Now honestly there's no reason why they couldn't or shouldn't separate Collision into friendly and enemy lines then increase Enemy Collision damage to fit Charge damage or reintroduce DFA as it literally does not require them to animate anything, just some reprogramming of already present lines of code. Now whether or not they reintroduce Knock Down is another story, as they would have to work on their rubber banding to prevent obvious game breaking desync. While Punching and Kicking, let alone Hatchets and Swords, would require quite a bit of animating and some modeling, but personally I'd shell out another 100$ if it'd ensure the introduction of Melee into a Mechwarrior game, let alone all the fine mechs that rely upon it.

Edited by KageRyuu, 25 September 2017 - 07:06 PM.

[Serpentbane]

I know how this works in table top, and I know melee weapons place in lore.

However, porting that into a first person mechanized shooter and make it work is much harder than one might think, and the end result could be less than ideal.

Collision damage, in particular lights running into solids at 150kph, I'm totally behind..

[Koniving]

XkrX Dragoon, on 12 October 2016 - 09:01 AM, said:

Now, i know its NEVER been in a mech warrior game before (to my knowledge) But!!!! Battle mechs have hand actuators for a reason! its not just for style points! Aside from that, this would open up the options for a very wide range of melee dedicated mechs that exist IN THIS timeline already. Chopping up battlemechs with a gigantic axe? yes please.

For battlemechs with hand actuators, this could open up the options of punches, and of course grappling. As well as things like jump jet knockdowns, ect. Adding a WHOLE new dynamic to the game, that does fit in battletech.
Imagine driving your nova, jump jetting on top of an enemy atlas. grabbing that fat skull and blasting laser volleys into it.
Sprinting up to an enemy mech in your hunchy and superman punching it.
Shredding apart an enemy mech with the dragons battleclaw.

Its a massive shame to have hand actuator's, claws, ect. and never using them.

Battletech.

[Daggett]

Meanwhile in Reality:

[Damnedtroll]

Would be enough for melee damage is only for dedicated battlemech who have an hatchet.

Range 10m
10sec between uses
deactivation of ranged weapons for 5sec when you give it a go

I want my axeman!

Edited by Damnedtroll, 26 October 2017 - 05:45 PM.