What's your favorite trope that allows melee weapons to be viable in futuristic settings? A couple examples would be Jedi powers, the shielding from Dune, etc.
I'm thinking of just ripping off Dune because I can't think of a new, unique way to accomplish this and I want my sci-fi setting to allow usage of both melee weapons and guns to be viable, preferably without adding in superpowers like the Jedi have, since that would make a small number of people extremely powerful.
Another "solution" I've seen is that on a ship, you'd probably not want to use a firearm because of the risk of blowing holes in the hull, but obviously this doesn't apply on planets.
Yet another solution I've seen is simply banning firearms legally, but I doubt this would be easy to enforce in a sci-fi setting that is fairly large.
I think the energy blade from Halo is neat, and the justification of power armor and tradition is kinda cool.
Dune"s shields and their equivalents are all fricking moronic and make no sense thoughever. Really your only solution is space magic. It's the only way.
Also dumb. Projectiles are more destructive than melee weapons without space magic. Also, you know, range advantage.
I just finished reading The Forever War, and it has a melee situation similar to but not quite like Dune. They can use a portable generator that makes a fairly large stasis field which imposes an upper-limit on the speed of objects within. So bullets don't work, and neither do your neurons. You need a special suit to survive inside the field, and fighting on the inside is reduced to melee, thrown weapons, bows, etc.
Thought I'd mention it.
>Dune"s shields and their equivalents are all fricking moronic and make no sense thoughever.
Something that blocks things most strongly the faster they move seems reasonable enough. It wouldn't work in the modern day because you would make a projectile that was basically a tiny drone that crossed the distance very fast before suddenly slowing down right before hitting the shield, but Dune was written in the 60s...plus, no computers, so that would be hard to do in-universe.
The whole "shooting it with a laser causes everything to explode" was a cheap cop-out, though, and Herbert totally knew it.
Not sure why he didn't just make the shields laserproof/resistant.
Why he'd put a potential nuke in the hands of any dude with an infantry weapon made no sense when being laserproof was already good enough to get mostly the same effect.
Mystic martial arts in space is really the only way to do it. When you have that guy who is just too good with a sword or staff that they can survive guys shooting at them
Melee weapons are cool. You don't need to justify it more than that.
Cyberpunk 2020 does it pretty well, I think:
>Better and easily concealable bullet-proof materials
>Cyber enhancement can add armour and resistance on top of that
>Cyber enhancement can also push your speed
>Most of the game is focused on criminal activities rather than a battlefield, so typical engament distance is pretty short to begin with
This, despite being a game with an unforgiving gunfight system, where bullets do a believable amount of damage (basically: a single bullet from the smallest handgun can very well kill an unarmored character if it hits right).
But this
>Most of the game is focused on (whatever) rather than a battlefield
Basically is the only answer you need.
In any context where:
1- You can attack/be attacked by surprise at a very short distance (typically: in an urban environment, but it can be an alien jungle)
2- You don't have the possibility to have access to the most powerful weapons. For example, because it's forbidden, or may attract too much attention (if you are participating in shady/criminal activities) or because of limited ressources (post-apocalyptic world, or survival situations)
Melee weapons become a perfectly viable choice again. So basically: everywhere except a battlefield. Hell, even in modern battlefields you have a few occasions to get up close and personal, which is why some troops are still drilled in the usage of bayonets.
Bonus point:
3- (optionally) have units/characters/creatures that have either:
- Even a limited ability to limit the stopping power of a few bullets (xenomorphs, cyborgs..)
- Are fanatic/crazy/unfeeling enough to risk death without flinching (WWII Japanese soldiers, crazed drug-fuelled gangers, robots, hive mind bug alien drones...)
- Have melee combat as part of their combat doctrine (basically, if you are highly trained to use a sword in close combat, are you are equipped with one, you are more likely to use it in close combat, probably)
The issue woth this is how RPGs tend to reward hyperfocused character building, or alternatively punish versatile character bulding.
Even in Star Wars, if you only consider the original trilogy (the only one worth anything), it's pretty clear that the light saber is mostly a ceremonial weapon.
It's used against other jedi/dark jedi during ritual combat; and it can give a clear advantage in street fights if you are well trained in using it.
But presumably, even a jedi master would use regular war weapons on a battlefield (just like Luke uses space fighters instead of running around Hoth with his saber like an idiot, or use a blaster when escaping the Death Star).
It's just that Lucas shat the bed with the prequels.
Shut the frick up moron. That isn't implied one single bit in the OT. Luke used a speeder on Hoth because he is a pilot first before a jedi and was before he was trained by Yoda.
Prequel-loving zoomie homosexual. It’s literally stated explicitly that lightsabers are “elegant” weapons from a past age in the OT.
Given Kenobi referring to blasters as 'clumsy' and 'rapid', and given the tropes about stormtrooper aim, I want to go back and watch the original trilogy some time and see how accurate blasters really are.
It might be that they're the energy weapon equivalent of non-rifled.
Far enough in the future, there will be no fighting in open ground because of BVR and orbital weapons platforms combined with precision real-time scanning. You pop your head out for even a second and some satellite in orbit immediately pops you like a water balloon. Therefore, the only in-person fighting will be in areas those weapons won't be used, which will be a) indoors or cavernous environments, and b) high enough value that simply obliterating the area from orbit is a poor strategic move. So combined that doctrine with advances in personal defensive equipment, and ranged weapons including firearms end up becoming extremely situational and used far less compared to melee weapons.
But my actual favourite trope is simply alien cultural autism. They don't care whether ranged weapons are more effective, they just want the glory of the personal kill and the enemy's blood on their blade. Something that just won't go away with better technology.
Cyber ninjas/samurai whose enhanced reflexes let them deflect bullets with a sword.
Gay
Based
If your setting has augmentations and cybernetics or power armor, make it so that those defensive options are pretty cheap so most enemies have them and are therefore almost bulletproof but melee weapons are like vibroblades or high frequency whatevers like in MGR, where they cut through it easily. Bullets can be modded to have those properties but it's expensive as frick to do so for a whole clip, so that balances it out
>What's your favorite trope that allows melee weapons to be viable in futuristic settings?
Armour has gotten so advanced that conventional energy weapons and ballistics cease to be effective and combat has stagnated into barbaric melee due to melee weapons being made from the same material as the armour. The melee weapons are also heavy axes to hopefully dent and eventually penetrate the armour.
Steel melee weapons aren't particularly good at getting through steel armor unless there's a design element that gives them an advantage. A human can only deliver so much energy per strike no mater what the weapon is.
OTOH, your over all premise has some promise. Combat isn't about killing, it's about neutralizing; it's just that a dead enemy is pretty well neutralized. What if the armor itself was almost perfect? We could still tangle the enemy with rope, net, and chain weapons. We might be able to use a bang stick weapon on a joint to incapacitate the enemy.
The best kind of justification is just saying "It's just that kind of setting".
You can just have a dude dodge a bullet and kill a guy because it looks cool. Really cool guys with guns are harder to dodge and are also very cool and good at killing people.
In modern warfare, melee weapons rarely play a role. But it's "rarely", not "never." Combat knives, tomahawks, and shovels have been used to wound or kill enemies by the US military enough to have official tracking and statistical analysis done. As such, hand to hand training with these weapons is part of normal training for units that have high rates of this happening. (Yes, I said shovel. pic rel)
I would assume that in the chaos of combat, there will be times where combatants will be close enough to stab each other even when the capabilities of ranged weapons gets even stronger. I don't think that a sword or an ax would be a primary weapon for a combatant but if you had something like a light saber as a secondary it would be very believable.
Russian convicts defeated NATO with shovels.
Ok, I need more details on this one. When? Where?
I just like weapons that get super heated. Not energy blades, but like the Zaku Heat Hawk sort of thing.
i always liked the hand wave science behind the zeeks just getting their melee weapons really hot as effectively a budget beam weapon
the same as it always happened in history: as armor became more and more developed to resist damage from the newest weapons, it became essential to use simpler, smaller and melee weapons adept at pioking between the armor pieces.
Rinse and repeat in a sci-fi setting
jetpacks make melee viable
Just having them for close quarters. If the other guy can't pull his gun faster than you can run up and stab him, you're good, doesn't matter the tech level.
>lol Dune shields
Not everyone is wearing or using shield belts and people still carried guns alonside their swords and knives.
The other moronation being the idea that somehow bladed weapons don't work on people in the future or you need to justify an entire military unit of dudes who only wield swords running at guys with guns.
Just use fricking gun control laws. Bingo bango, you can still include swords but also not preclude some dumb bullshit excuse to include guns in your setting.
Gun control laws is a contrived dumb bullshit excuse to exclude guns from a setting. Unbelievably moronic take.
Everybody is too poor to afford a gun.
Basic scifi combat is done with metal pipes and rocks.
Powerful guns are too dangerous to use inside space ships, weak guns can't deal with body armor, so some kind of melee weapon is used in boarding action or conflicts inside ships and space stations, axes with monomolecular blades or plasma swords, etc.
Planet bound fights are ranged, in ship melee. I thinks this was the first excuse for lightsabers before they decided ro settle on something mystical like the Force
Guns and the equipment required to make them are heavily regulated. Future tech means a log chip in every CNC machine, AI gait recognition in every store, and a mandatory bioID scan at every check point.
Authorities can recognize intent to purchase or build a firearm 99.7% of the time, and the punishment is severe. Attempting to obtain a firearm is seen as equal to conspiracy to commit murder, or worse.
The only people with access to firearms are elite police units, terrorists, and the very wealthy.
I was going to suggest Project Moon setting approach
Same as real life: Situation. Consider WWI. Armies entered WWI equipped for engagements up to 2 km if the sights on some of the guns are to be believed. Even handguns were sighted for ridiculous ranges back then. But with that much ass moving downrange they wisely dug trenches, and trench raids became a different beast altogether. Grenades, handguns, and melee weapons quickly became favored for CQC, and some of the weapons from WWI look like they came straight out of some dystopian setting. Trench clubs (and mauls) were brutal, improvised affairs straight from medieval times. The US issued their famous brass knuckle trench knife. More commonly, you see the first modern combat knives. It's notable that the conditions were so cramped that people weren't even rocking large melee weapons, because there was no room to swing them. Even the French Lebel bayonets were too long and would be cut down to fabricate three trench knives.
You can definitely poke a ton of holes in it but I mostly dig the logic phantasy star online uses of "the bullet of a gun or rifle is a smaller laser then an entire blade so you're hitting them with less mcguffin particles and causing less damage and need to carry the equivilent of a rocket launcher or anti tank rifle which is obviously specialized hardware not everyone has access to" to justify its melee weapons being stronger then its spam-able ranged weapons but worse then its heavy artillery
Geneengineered human subraces with superhuman reflexes and speed making melee weapons used by another of them becoming the only threat.