In a Sci-Fi setting, why would you use a melee weapon over a gun?

Traditional weapons used for cultural reasons.

Weapons used by navy and marines to prevent hull puncture on ships.

Shock troops that can counter gun users by dropping into their formation and overpowering them in melee combat ex. Assault marines

Because it looks fucking cool

Awesomeness

There is almost no excuse for this with one notable exception: a knife in the neck or lung is an extremely quiet way to end someones life.

It MAY be that radiant energy weapons, like lasers, would be silent as well but I suspect the burns they would cause would bring a yelp from their victims. Also, if they transmit enough energy to the target to be instantly fatal then it's likely there would be an explosive sound as the hit flesh flash boils away.

Plasma weapons have every likelihood of sounding like plasma on earth so sneakily dispensing thunderbolts could prove problematic.

There is, of course, the trick of using sub-sonic bullets with a suppressor. The little 'chick' sound of the action might be missed in the hum of life support systems on an orbital habitat.

Again, melee weapons are not likely to have much use in a sci-fi setting. Much like they have little practical use in our modern setting. That's not to say they might not come into play but it's unlikely anyone would use a melee weapon as their primary weapon.

I considered this but any habitat that expects to survive for a long period of time will have patch kits for use in micro-meteor strikes and those will work equally well for holes caused by firearms.

I have no idea if guns of the future will entirely change this but in some situations a melee weapon will beat a gun.
Example:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=ckz7EmDxhtU

Depends on the setting.

It doesn't run out of ammo.
It doesn't jam.
It doesn't care about getting wet.
It doesn't care about getting covered in mud.
A broken sword can still cut.

because a gun is useless when your enemy is bashing your head in with a rock.

If you're close enough, guns are just too clumsy. Say you're struggling with a guy who has just jumped you from a dark alley, going for your gun would probably just cause you to get grappled and disarmed, then mugged, captured or killed.

Assassins always have use for silent, close range weapons. Considering stealth suits are probably a thing in your sci fi setting, sneaking around is likely still feasible.

>half of the list answers in the thread include "Because it's cool"

Muh Anons.

Forever War.

All of that applies to the modern day but I don't see anybody arming their military with halberds.

The Pope.

That is pretty tight.

I don't think you would, unless you were fighting in confined spaces. A bit like the hand-to-hand combat that occurred in Fallujah in 2004.

Actually, let's plenty realistic in the universe.

Cyborgs have become so advanced their skin and bones are able to shrug off most man-sized firearms with ease and it takes heavy tankbusting equipment to take down the higher grade cyborgs.

And that's if you manage to hit, most have cynthetic nerves that allow them to react in nanoseconds and dodge or deflect bullets as easy as people hit tennis balls.

In MGSR, the best weapons are literally super fast cyborgs being deployed via firing out of jets with weapons that can cut almost everything.

Or a two man team of a super fast cyborg and a super heavy cyborg, the super fast cyborg armed with a ribbon or lassoo or something that can't be cut through to bind the target, and then the super heavy cyborg deploys the giant fuckoff pile bunker.

What is bayonets and hand-to-hand combat training.

Or you're just a fast slippery BR with a super suit and a vibroblade folded over one million times.

The OP specifically asks why you'd use a melee weapon *over* a gun. Bayonets are attached to fucking guns. Nobody sends in their soldiers without a gun because it's okay they received training in hand-to-hand.

Maybe if you had a citizenry composed entirely of Tony Jaa or something.

Quite simple really. The effectiveness of armor in the period is better than the penetrating power of the guns, whatever they may be. It's why there is melee in Warhammer 40k, other than it just looks cool.

The halberd guys are just for show. The real protection is the SWAT teams hidden around the place.

something that almost never comes up in the actual real world

Halberds, you say?

Suppressed weapons aren't really that quiet unless you use incredibly specialised captive piston bullets, which require a special gun.

Not unless you are British you fucking colonial.

Yeah no. You've obvioulsy never carried a rifle.
Afghani issurgent attacks we with a rock. Either he hits me from behind and then its irrelevat what im carrying. He attacks fron the front. I hit him with the butt of my weapon, take a step back and fire.
On top of that, a bayonet. Stick a foot of steel on the end of you perfectly good rifle and you have the best of both worlds.

As for stealth suits? You can build a suit that makes you invisible and sikent, but you can build a low velocity projectile weapon that doesn't require gunpowder or another loud explosive.

Even in falujah the general rule was to make space, raise your weapon and fire. You would never abandon your rifle to hold a knife.

The melee weapon isn't so much a weapon as it is a repurposed tool in the hands of someone with no other alternative. Alternately, it is easier to get away with a pipe wrench equivalent than it is a pistol equivalent, so those who want to be armed but not draw attention disguise this intent by carrying heavy tools useful for patching up an area.

Oh, and also you have to consider the potential of running out of ammo on your future gun. Melee weaponry has no such issue.

This experiment clearly shows that for melee fighter to have any chance against firearm user the former has to be pretty close and keep his weapon already in hand.
Now, if attacker has the gun, defender would not have time to reach for his gun and will be shot instantly.

I am british you twat

That's true, but it's not unreasonable to carry a knife or something to addition to a gun, and use it in preference over a gun in certain situations.

Like If it's too cramped to bring your rifle up, and you've already unloaded your pistol into a bunch of dudes, and more keep streaming in; then it seems reasonable to start stabbing them.

There was a bayonet charge ordered in Iraq by british chaps. They got ambushed, so the captain ordered a bayonet charge to shake enemy morale. It worked, and he got all his men out alive and the enemy fleeing.

Just search bayonet charge iraq in google.

Armour has become greater than the effectiveness of ranged weapons, but melee weapons have been made that beat the armour, but are too expensive to throw downrange at the enemy as munitions.

Imagine a guy with a fusion backpack and a phased particle sword and ultradense powered armour being pelted with DU rounds and then cutting through the similarly armoured enemy while they do nearly nothing to him.

Same reason as today: legal reasons, availability, ease of concealment.

Dune.

It's not just the British Army; plenty of other militaries still train and use bayonets while fighting in close proximity to the enemy and in built up areas.

In the British Army, it's doctrine for if you have the time when you're moving into a close assault situation or you're about to fighting in a built up area where you're close to the enemy to fix bayonets. There's these highly publicized events but quite frankly more common where clearing compounds where you fix bayonets before going in; more people have died on bayonets that way then in those big, media-hyped events.

Wouldn't fried flesh smell?

Thats why I specified sub-sonics. I suppose I could have mentioned that suppression isn't all that quiet but I didn't.
And sizzle.

Never hurts to have something to cut with on hand, and chances are that there is new applicable tech to the production of melee weaponry as there has been to our own, such as in metallurgy and general materials. Also, sometimes all you have at hand is something you can smack a motherfucker with.

Additionally:
>My gun is pointed forward.
>Someone is coming from my front with the intent to hit me with a rock.
>Pull trigger
>Glory in the time I live in.
>Be thankful I'm not some retarded shit that thinks attacking a guy with a gun using a rock is a good idea.

The British have been eccentric weirdos in every major modern war.

WW2 was the height of it. Virtually every wacky story from WW2 is the result of Brits being extremely odd.

my example explicitly stated you were in hand to hand combat with a guy after being surprised, in which case a gun is useless, but a dagger in your boot might save your life.

Also bayonets are very clumsy when you're grappling with a guy and he has his hands on your rifle. Bayonets are only really good on the offensive, or if you can see someone running directly at you. There's a good reason modern militaries dont use them, and I can't see that trend reversing in the future.
Knives on the other hand are always useful, if not for close quarters fighting, then for cutting away your parachute, or survival elements.

you can shoot an animal with a rifle, but you can't gut an animal with a rifle.

>your gun is pointed forward
>someone is coming from behind you
>realize too late what is going on (you dont expect to win initiative every combat do you?)
>grapple with guy who has a dagger
>get stabbed
>extreme pain, life flashed before your eyes
>die

Also fyi I have carried many rifles, and been in a few close quarter fights. Never at the same time though.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8252974.stm
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-19755107

Have a better demonstration.
youtube.com/watch?v=J_KJ1R2PCMM

Why not a gun that is also a melee weapon?

oh yeah, watch this video:

guy with knife stabs like 4 cops with guns while they're trying to shoot him

youtube.com/watch?v=75RTkGbiJpk

When someone is running at you and you're scared of getting stabbed, its a lot harder to cleanly shoot them in the head than you think. An assailant isn't always directly in front of you, running directly towards you with you prepared to fire. usually he's darting all over the place, and you're trying not to shoot your colleagues while trying to get a clear shot yourself, all while trying to avoid getting stabbed.

If someone is inside 6 feet, a gun becomes much less effective, especially in the heat of combat. To use a sci fi example, and aslan (from Traveller) with a broadsword in this situation would just decapitate this guy.

>in the head
goddamnit why

rwby had some good ideas, shame about the animation.

It's a bit less glorious when you actually know about the massive clusterfuck that was British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Basically in order to avoid making people think there was a war coming and to save money, the government of the time made pretty much no preparations and no major purchases of ammunition or anything of the sort. Battlegroups were being thrown together with scraps of equipment and little time to prepare. As the plan was to wait for the Americans to tell them how to reconstruct the country as they were the driving force, they just sat there, not sure what was happening as things began to go to hell. It was standard practice to send entire patrols out with only five rounds a man, less than in Northern Ireland, due to the lack of ammunition and unwillingness of political leaders to say it was a combat situation.

Now, it's not uncommon for Britain to find itself poorly prepared for a conflict, but thanks to the inaction and ineptitude of the various governments and the military higher ups to say "No, we can't", nothing was effectively done about this for years, leading to the British essentially pulling out of Basra as their situation was untenable due to lack of logistics and absolutely no political leadership; and as decision that previously would have been made at company or even platoon level were now being pushed up to Whitehall, this was nearly fatal.

So that bayonet charge was a desperate act that paid off, thankfully.

That said, the bayonet is still an effective weapon in FIBUA due to the nature of that fighting and the remarkable morale effect it has even against trained soldiers; it effectively creates a "Fuck off zone" where the opposition doesn't want to get close to 20+ angry squaddies with sharp knives strapped to the end of their rifles. Far more impressive is their use in Afghanistan where, as mentioned above, they were very useful during compound clearing.

all of these reasons.

-Power armour
-personal energy shields

My nigga.

>second one
>team still has ammo and just got the enemy to put their heads down with a rocket
>durpy durr let's run at them with bayonets instead of shooting them with our fucking guns that still have ammo
>Britbong gets an award for this instead of being slapped for being a He-Tard
Fucking brits man.

They still have bayonets.

Because the GM took stats from D&D so a (made-up future metal) dagger does equal damage as a shotgun and a fucking (same made-up metal) greatsword does the same damage as a plasma cannon.

>any habitat that expects to survive for a long period of time will have patch kits for use in micro-meteor strikes and those will work equally well for holes caused by firearms
Maybe those patch kits don't work on the inside walls. And anyway if the shot hit something vital you're gonna have to repair it under ennemy fire before it's too late.

>It doesn't care about getting wet.
>It doesn't care about getting covered in mud.
it does care faggot

>Shock troops that can counter gun users by dropping into their formation and overpowering them in melee combat ex. Assault marines
I'd think this would only result in those people getting shot into a meat slurry by the people with guns/lasers. Unless they're carrying some sort of super heavy body armor but then I'd imagine they would be shot by drones before landing or some shit.

THE SLOW BLADE PENETRATES THE SHIELD

For untrained combatants, being shot at is a lot less scary than folks screaming and charging you. The first might make you dive for cover, the second will make you run for your life.

When outgunned in an ambush situation, staying put and trading fire with an enemy that's flanking you from three positions is going to get you killed - this way managed to drive off the enemy.

No casualties tends to suggest his way was better.

The funny thing is that even on Dune itself shields eventually get outlawed and the lasgun becomes the most common weapon. People still get swordsmanship training but it sees barely any use. Even the Bene Gesserit start using guns if need be

>Advances in materials sciences allow blades to easily cut through even the toughest of infantry armour and possibly even stronger.
>Augmentng the body to the point that using a melee weapon is not only effective, but against ranged-only units is very effective.
>Personal shields that deflect projectiles are impractical to take down with ranged weaponry (might inversely make the user incapable of using ranged weaponry as well).
>Hulls are easily ruptured from the inside and boarding and repelling parties may not be equipped with EVA suits and don't want to rupture the hull.
>Non-lethally disabling a threat/Quietly disabling a guard.
>Dampening fields disable energy weapons and armour is too advanced to penetrate with ballistics
>Creatures with strange anatomy that make them resilient to piercing projectiles but less so to cutting and slashing (and energy may not exist/be ineffective).

>Advances in materials sciences allow blades to easily cut through even the toughest of infantry armour and possibly even stronger.
Then people would simply make automatic super-crossbows or some shit instead of fighting on close quarters
>Augmentng the body to the point that using a melee weapon is not only effective, but against ranged-only units is very effective.
Ranged only units probably wouldn't exist then. There would always be at least some people to counter the guys trying to get on close quarters and everyone would get some amount of training for it. People would also make bigger guns until the super soldiers can be killed
>Personal shields that deflect projectiles are impractical to take down with ranged weaponry (might inversely make the user incapable of using ranged weaponry as well).
This would probably just result in people using lasers. Dune even has to asspull lasguns out of the way by saying laser+shield = nuclear explosion and doing so would get everyone else to use their super-nukes to blow your planet to bits
>Dampening fields disable energy weapons and armour is too advanced to penetrate with ballistics
I don't think people could get past the armor then either

Armour designed to block ballistics is very different from armour made to block melee attacks. A riot suit won't protect you from a handgun and a ballistic vest won't do all that much good against a broadsword.
And man-portable energy weapons are usually impractical or impossible if the setting is "hard sci-fi".
Plus there's also the old science-fiction staples like mono-molecular blades which get around armour by ignoring it

Ok, here:
>portable power sources small enough to fit into backpacks can power personal shielding that protects from small arms, and can also generate a field that can break through such personal shielding.

>in order to pierce through someone else's shield, you have to hit them with your own personal shielding

You can't fit a backpack-sized power source in a bullet, so ranged weapons become ineffective against anyone with shielding, and melee weapons which can break through shielding work fine. Melee drones can also work effectively in this manner.

>Armour designed to block ballistics is very different from armour made to block melee attacks. A riot suit won't protect you from a handgun and a ballistic vest won't do all that much good against a broadsword.
Yeah this applies to real-world body armor that will technically stop the bullet but still leave you with a broken bone or two, or else be incredibly fucking heavy and impractical to wear under most situations and STILL only protect you against relatively light weaponry, not your example that makes you immune to guns
>And man-portable energy weapons are usually impractical or impossible if the setting is "hard sci-fi".
Hard sci fi would have a tough time explaining the armor as well, to be fair

>In MGSR, the best weapons are literally super fast cyborgs being deployed via firing out of jets with weapons that can cut almost everything.

Or a US Senator pumped full of nanomachines, son.

I'm only offering an explanation as to why someone would use a melee weapon over a ranged one in a sci-fi setting senpai.

We'll just assume that the armour is made out of bullshittanium that stop kinetic energy and/or heat energy from energy weapons dead and necessitates going through it with a mono-molecular, high-frequency, vibro-blade made out of self-adjusting nanites or just hitting around it which at range is too difficult to accomplish and forces people to get up close to the point that trying to aim with a gun is harder than just whacking the guy with it.

>makeshift weapons
>like toolboxes
>visions of Space Station 13
Floor tiles are okay too.

Because I'm out of ammo and my enemy has HUGE GUTS

I've always thought of cyborgs like Raiden as a military wet dream, because he's paradoxically an incredibly precise and quiet weapon of mass destruction.

>Armor is so thick that firearms won't penetrate it
>Firearms that do penetrate armor do penetrate the ship hull, and god knows whats inside the walls

Lazers that deliver enough force to be fatal or at least extraordinarily harmful would have a nice sizzle and crackle as the beam ionizes the air on the way to the target which also would make a relatively small bang sound at the suddenly expanding gases.
It'd probably be like a clapping your hands really hard together but the sound might last a tiny bit longer depending on distance followed by a secondary bang when it hits the target followed by a quiet sizzle from the air and target though the air would stop long before the target did.

You wouldn't, but guns malfunction or run out of ammo/energy, so it's nice to have a nice vibroblade or seismic tomahawk as a backup.

Also, shock and awe.

Outta ammo

>In a Sci-Fi setting, why would you use a melee weapon over a gun?
For CONVOLUTED reasons almost always dreamed up by people with romantic notions of swordplay.

And quite honestly, why the fuck would you use a personal fire-arm when you can launch drones, robots, tanks, plants, missiles, and orbital death lasers? Seriously, nuclear stand-off is what keeps major powers at bay. When we want to kick the shit out of a third-world country, we use planes and artillery. Guns are for police forces and hit-men.

But anyway, I liked Dune's argument the best. Personal shielding devices stopped anything with excessive kinetic force. The mechanics are never explained.

>a knife in the ... lung is an extremely quiet way to end someones life.
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK IT HURTS TO BREATH AAAAAAAAAHHHH whatthefuck why......

I'd think shooting wildly into your own squad at short range with automatic weapons would be a stupid idea.

>and a ballistic vest won't do all that much good against a broadsword.
Why do you think this?

I mean, it'll distribute the force and keep it from cutting you, for sure. It'll still be like getting hit with a lead pipe. Which is a bitch.

And guess what? Getting shot in an armored vest distributes the force, but it's still a punch to the gut.

You assume people wouldn't start getting training for exactly that situation if it was even possible

not that user, but there's a good reason that there's a distinction between ballistic and stabproof vests
while one will help against the other, it's never going to be as effective because being stabbed and being shot are fairly different

Because not everywhere you will be going to is Space America, and gun control (or futuristic weapons control) is a thing.

A good chunk of my last campaign was watching the players come up with increasingly clever ways to improvise weapons in places where the authorities are at least trying to disarm everyone from everything that can remotly harm a person.

I'm not saying war is a static thing, both sides would be racing to undo the advantage of the other.

They might learn close quarters fire drills, in response the close combat troops would start assaulting through the din and smoke of a grenade bombardment.

Because combat at the platoon level and higher involves extensive use of stasis fields that stop anything moving faster than 16.6 mph - including you. The only thing stopping you from death is your special suit. If it's breached gg.

>punctured lung
>screaming

It's a wheeze at best.

The shields also come up for another reason. Anywhere but Arrakis, where using shields is dangerous, people are conditioned to slow down their attacks slightly just when they enter the area that would be protected by a shield. Paul's shield conditioning prevents him from killing a Fremen because the fraction of a second he slows down is enough for him to parry even though Paul has practically superhuman strength and reaction times, so everyone watching assumes he's toying with him. They later play it off as him being hesitant to kill, gaining him the Sietch's sympathy

Rule of cool, faggot.

>they just sat there, not sure what was happening as things began to go to hell.

That's basically what everyone did.

The British politicians involved just saw the shitstorm coming and resolved to spend as little on perpetuating it as possible. Very few people in government or out of it actually wanted to be at war. It was a pretty shitty thing to do for their troops, but nobody in power actually cares about the troops. They care about economy.

A slashed throat is a very noisy and messy way to kill someone. Other stabs are much more effective and less detectable.

Suppressed guns, even with subsonic rounds, are loud enough that repeated exposure can cause long term hearing damage.

Some habitats will have gun control. A melee weapon, especially one that's legal as a tool, is perfect against an unarmed opponent.