Are any melee weapons worth using?

[Tribarrel]

I've been playing this game for a few days and right now it feels like it's designed with a lot of trap options you're supposed to find face-first.

Melee, especially.

From what I can see, the main use of melee early-game is to knock out casters, and everyone else should be using bows exclusively until you can unlock Witchbanes or Crossbows. The videos I watch seem to support that.

I'd appreciate some input.

[smileyill]

You will eventually want a tank and some melee weapons give bonus tank stats - the tank will NOT engage in actually combat much - at least if you properly position and equip your ranged weapon survivors. When using auto resolve, DPS is more important thank tank stats - except against very tank opponents.

[listless]

A melee tank will absorb all the damage in an auto-resolve - allowing your dps units to do their thing without getting knocked out of the equation. Very useful for harder fights. Some fights that seem virtually impossible to play through, are doable by auto-resolving with a melee tank and one or two short-range tanks.

Melee can be tricky to play with, but melee tanks are great for choke points and ambushes. And that debuff against ranged enemies is useful if you can get the melee unit into position without getting torn to pieces. Generally that involves keeping your melee unit back until ranged enemies lock onto your ranged units behind cover, then throwing your melee unit forward.

[mooreshawnm]

I wouldn't sacrifice a rifle on the line for a guy whose only use is if they make contact. The goal is to kill them BEFORE they make contact or at worse as they make contact as they are already so beat up. It should be noted the bad guys are beat up because of your shooters.

[smileyill]

Originally posted by mooreshawnm:

I wouldn't sacrifice a rifle on the line for a guy whose only use is if they make contact. The goal is to kill them BEFORE they make contact or at worse as they make contact as they are already so beat up. It should be noted the bad guys are beat up because of your shooters.

Except ranged units never make contact - morax, fallen angels etc. A tank's job is to take that aggro and some melee weapons have great evasion and armor bonuses. The best is the scared sword, which gives 15% evasion and 10% armor.

My end game tank (the 1 that I used for a challenging science victory with no survivor losses) has 90.9 evasion(109.91 for melee attacks), 28.4 armor & 265 health plus 7 different abilities. My best dps has 102.5 dps (minigun), but only 73.26 evasion, 12 armor, & 247 health. My best sniper has 17.1 dps (guided sniper), 227.37 accuracy, 42.8 evasion, 0 armor, & 132 health.

With a strong tank I can focus on increasing the ranged survivors' DPS/accuracy and mostly ignore their defenses.

[JenDen]

Originally posted by Tribarrel:

I've been playing this game for a few days and right now it feels like it's designed with a lot of trap options you're supposed to find face-first.
Melee, especially.

Short answer is no. At no point in the game will you ever find a need to use melee weapons for combat. Even your tank can benefit much more from Beam weapon than any melee weapon available.
That being said, make sure all peaceful workers at your base are carrying daggers for that sweet +15% walking speed bonus.