Melee weapons

Stray shots inside a spaceship might break something really important. Errant swings of a club or sword also could, but are much less likely to.

Lasers are less effective on a planet; if it has an atmosphere that will get in the way, and even if it doesn't smoke or dust would block the beams. Obviously this isn't a problem a projectile-based weapon would face, but you don't necessarily have those; a laser gun would be more accurate, easier to use, and, most importantly, wouldn't need ammo. Rather than go through the hassle of purchasing huge quantities of bullets, let alone the logistics needed to get those bullets to the boys on the (perhaps metaphorical) ground, the projectile-based weapon becomes a specialist thing; maybe one guy in the squad has a slug-thrower, and for the rest, you're in luck, the other guys can't shoot their lasers either.

Pike and shot.

Cybernetics or other post-human augmentation, or anything else that can enhance a person be it time magic or super powers, has gotten to the point it can enhance a person to the level were projectiles are too slow to be a valid threat and the only way to keep up with infantry. Alternatively strength/durability instead of speed, though that is harder to be limited to melee only as you can just use harder projectiles as well

>Stray shots inside a spaceship might break something really important. Errant swings of a club or sword also could, but are much less likely to.
Then why not use low penetration projectile based weapons, like tasers?

Really, was there any setting other than Dune that did it right(so that it actually had sense)? Everything other I know off just uses them because it's cool and even if it has any explanation it's very handwavy and full of holes.

So basically, Metal Gear Revengeance.

>"Report to the manga department, user."

Shit yes exactly like those. God dammit I forgot those existed.

They might have grounded armour

This is complete bullshit though. Why would melee weapons have more penetrating power than guns?

It's easier to let the barbarians i bought for shock troops use the various clubs and shit they had laying around instead of trying to teach them anything more complicated than "kill those people" or " work for me and you'll get a good meal forever".

Seriously everyone sees the horde of rampaging barbarians and doesn't notice my trained sharpshooters that actually cause the bulk of the damage.

BS particles that react explosibly upon firing. Work better in closed corners.

The AI overlords have banned firearms. It only allows swords and other weapons for sone reason.

The AI overlords have great taste then

>sci-fi
>Can't justify melee weapons
It's not hard, goddamn. "Armor caught up to ballistics technology" is all you need, Jesus.

In any setting other than real life it is incredibly easy to justify that shit.

...

>I want melee in my sci-fi so much, but I cannot imagine a good, realistic justification for their inclusion.
Personal, reactive forcefields. Dampen blows that come in at speeds of over a couple hundred feet per second, but let slower masses pass right through so you can actually interact with your environment.

Then spray them with high pressure liquid nitrogen. Doesn't hurt the ship interiors but sure as hell hurts human tissue. To be able to protect yourself from that, you'd need a grounded and heatshielded armor. Throw in some gas based weapons and you need your own oxygen supply as well. That would cost a lot of money.
Also, the protection of the ship would likely be a priority mostly to the defending party, meaning that the offense would likely employ more damaging tactics. It makes sense that if you're expected to wear a suit of armor that's basically a space suit already, it would be the most effective approach to go in, detonate something in a vital point of the ship and watch as your enemies get subjected to the vacuum of space.

Aren't there really any sensible ways other than copying Dune?

Common soldiers wear armor that provides some protection from rifle fire, and less from close combat weapons. Elite soldiers with powered combat armor are invulnerable to almost any ranged weapon a man can carry while carrying weapons able to tear down common soldiers. They use heavy melee weapons to fight other elite soldiers, while common soldiers must use heavy axes or contact explosive mines to hope to battle elites.

Melee weapons don't need to penetrate though. The most dangerous weapons to knights were blunt (or pickaxe like) for a reason. Just getting force under the armor already does the job.

Few reasons off the top of my head though: Armor becomes more chainmail like, great for blocking bullets / absorbing large force in small areas but can't handle slices / large areas being smashed. Ranged weapons have evolved past ballistics due to a mixture of effectiveness and logistics (where you putting all that ammo?) because of this armor became specialized at blocking laser shots, but a good clubbing remains effective. Combatants are fully capable of dodging fire, as such ranged weapons are rendered ineffective.

You can go both ways. For my setting, the widespread use of magnetically accelerated projectiles spurred the creation of a new kind of body armour (carbon nanotube mesh) which was quickly countered by the use of nanoscopic cutting edges, which made their way onto bullets and swords. Then they just threw solid carbon plating over the mesh to protect the mesh from cutting edges, with the end result being that to get through the mesh you have to either hit the target with enough sharp ammo to find a gap in the plate, or just whack them with either a suit of powered armour, or a heated tungsten carbide blade. Ultra high velocity projectiles can kill through the transfer of kinetic energy, but they have to be mounted on turrets, vehicles or suits. Infantry carry both swords, magnetic rifles, and both kinds of ammunition alongside more unconventional types (white phosphorus doesn't care what kind of armour you're wearing).
Basically, if you want swords in sci-fi, manufacture a need for them. Close-quarters fighting will always be a part of any battlefield, particularly in urban environments.

It's been done before because it kind of works.

Commonwealth of Man books. Power armor can withstand a hit from any ranged weapon that won't FUCK UP the inside of a spaceship, like heavy plasma cannons. Tearing apart hostile power armor with close combat weapon is much safer for the ship around you then taking a shot with something able to punch though power armor.

Well, high powered energy field causes destruction on a molecular level, allowing it to cleave through steel like it was air.

Now you COULD make bullets with power field generators, but the bullet would be huge, would keep going until it ran out of energy or the field overloaded, and the bullets would cost a fortune each.

Anons have already mentioned Dune, are you seriously going to make me explain what should already by totally obvious?

Maybe the armor technology is a really good kinetic dampener, but energy weapons burn through it with ease, however, ranged energy weapons disperse into the atmosphere before reaching the target, so energy swords are the only thing that works against an armored opponent?

There, goddamn. It's sci-fi and makes perfect sense if the lore is built to accommodate it. You're bellyaching for no reason, your standards are totally arbitrary.

Anything you want muscles for a gun type weapon can do faster and more powerfully.

So you could perhaps see ranged weapons phazing out except for the more powerful ship guns, and the rare high powered and expensive personal guns designed to breach shields.

But perhaps, when two fields are close together they destabalize in melee range, giving close quarter weapons a comeback.

So time for laser weapons then?

Too bad they decided to keep using the same ammunition and weapons after that, never improving or making new guns. Makes you think that maybe melee in sci-fi isn't meant to be justified, it's just there because star wars did it and it looked cool.

the only weapons capable of penetrating armor are either giant single shot plasma cannons or a specialized laser sword that is impractical to fire out of a different weapon

You in space, you don't want to tear up the inside of that ship/station you are trying to capture and make it useless. They don't want to tear up their own stuff either. Anything that can get through the armor might damage the ship. Melee weapons ho.

Time to buff everything up to a mirror sheen.

Close quarters

Not sure if you remember, but shooting a Dune shield with a lasgun results in a massive atomic explosion that kills everyone on either side.

Maybe the super computer is a weaboo

I did it and fucking ruined cunts thanks to the ac armor. Get close it and slash cunts apart with magical fun.

Yes, that's why you mount one on a drone or a conditioned slave.

AI is Verboten, remote control gets jammed and conditioning somebody so they can pull off the hit ain't easy.
Also, somebody exploits that property of shields in the very first book. You aren't smarter than Frank Herbert, user.

Not to mention that the spacing guild will immediately start devastating your ass if you trigger nuclear explosions

So... use bullets?

>that helmet with that armour makes no sense
> the way his arm is strapped to the shield means that he is supposed to hold it like that. With the longest side being horizontal to him.
I know im the only one who cares. back to topic.

although true, there's still hope he could be smarter than brian herbert

They don't freak out at a lasgun bomb like they do with someone going buck wild with the household atomics. It's still the kind of tactic that you don't want to do often though. Setting off huge explosions is one of those things you only want to do if you are the emperor, or if you are going to be soon.

Liquid nitrogen is basically just a flamethrower in reverse, and we don't use mustard gas and flamethrowers these days. Aside from the obvious human-rights concerns, both those weapons could easily come back on you, especially in a closed system like a spaceship.

If you're boarding a ship, the odds are good you have some motive besides just destroying it, or else you'd have just shot it with your ship. Maybe you're here to capture the ship, or someone on the ship. Maybe you want the cargo, but the cargo won't survive space, or just venting it haphazardly would scatter it, costing you time and fuel in trying to track it all down.

If you don't have combat-ready space suits, then venting shit is just as bad for you as it is for the other guy. If you do, then I would assume the other guy would as well, and at that point fucking up the ship at best does nothing for you and at worst just complicating things: oops, you knocked out the lights, now we have to fight in the dark. Oops, the computer terminals are jacked and now the whole ship is spinning. Oops, we opened a hole to outside, and now every door we open blasts us with a wave of escaping air.

>you can now make a long sleeve t-shirt that will shrug off everything up to elephant gun tier rounds
>it does this by reacting to the sudden force, like corn starch and water
>the threshold is low enough that you can still stab folks just fine

According to other people ITT that's just copying dune, but whatever shit works.

Read Dune.

>Liquid nitrogen is basically just a flamethrower in reverse, and we don't use mustard gas and flamethrowers these days.
That's right, we use guns. But if we didn't, they'd be viable alternatives.
>If you're boarding a ship, the odds are good you have some motive besides just destroying it, or else you'd have just shot it with your ship. Maybe you're here to capture the ship, or someone on the ship. Maybe you want the cargo, but the cargo won't survive space, or just venting it haphazardly would scatter it, costing you time and fuel in trying to track it all down.
That's a valid point. If your primary objective is cargo capture, it's unlikely that you would board at all when the enemy still existed and was capable of defending itself. Boarding makes you very vulnerable to attacks from the enemy ship, so it would be plausible that the goal would be to disable it before doing it. Which raises the question: Why board at all to fight? If you're deep in space, can't defend yourself, can't escape and with an enemy ship next to you, threatening to blow you to pieces, chances are you're going to come quietly.
And if it's possible to beam people inside enemy ships, completely removing the need to disable it beforehand, then why not beam weapons to incapacitate them instead?

The most common weapons are gyrojet based. They're really good at long and medium range but if you can get within 10-15 feet they're useless.

>But how on gods green earth can you possibly justify someone using a melee weapon in a world with guns

Pretty easily desu considering that's what things were like in our world

Barbarians with firearms AND clubs could do a lot more damage than barbarians with clubs, though

to be quiet honest, bullets are not that effective against objects that have a multiple layering thickness to them to soak the impact and to not allow them to penetrate through.

I image a plasma blast would further not have the piercing effect and just slam against the armor dispersing against it.

but if you have, say a chain saw sword that was weildable by some means,

or a heated axe.

or a lightsaber.

Armor wouldn't be able to protect much.

HOWEVER. Strength is a HUGE requirement as is the ability to maneuver and gain momentum for a swing. Probably the only people to outright be able to use such melee weapons effectively would either be Huge fucks or dex guys with super duper uber melee weapons.

Additionally, another common melee weapon that's often over looked is a taser. I know they come in projectile form too but Equipping someone with a big ole stun baton would be quite good. Gets through armor and what not.

If you're going with the whole "slow kinetic energy gets through shields, but energy-based weapons don't", one could argue that stun batons might have the same explosive effects as a laser.

Shields like in Dune. Personal shield provide absolute protection against kinetic projectiles. The only way to penetrate them is by swinging a sword through them relatively slowly.

He thinks any 'armor' that can be worn effectively by a human could stop a 30cal rifle, let alone a anything bigger.

He thinks user is limited by our current understanding of materials.
Depending on the setting and jargon they could develope t-shirts that 30cals would bounce off.

A line of arc welders on the edge of a sword would make a pretty good discount lightsaber.

Shields are literally just that good. Personal shields have outpaced nearly every single form of personal weaponry. It takes a fair amount of fire to bring down someone's personal shields, but they've invented melee weapons capable of disrupting them with ease. Ranged versions exist but because of the way Disruptor tech works, the amount of energy required to disrupt an enemy's shield increases exponentially with distance, so ranged Disruptors are big and heavy, maybe even big enough that they aren't wielded by a single person--but they're harmless to organics. A shield will repel the first hit of a Disruptor weapon and then immediately fail.

Actually, modern ceramic plate can take 30 cal rounds. Not many but they can.

You ate aware stab and bullet proof vests are two different things right? Because those weapons have radically different penetration properties, and entirely different sources of energy.

we're talking about magic space wizards, not everything has to be grounded in reality, light sabers sure as hell aren't

You do realize that you'd have to keep the liquid nitrogen liquid right? It might also not be as effective as you are picturing right now: youtube.com/watch?v=gjsMV1MglA4

Enjoy getting atomics getting shoved up your ass by FUCKING EVERY NOBLEHOUSE.

Unless it's a hard surface, it will be the warhammer verses chainmail problem; the chain will hold together but there will be lethal damage to the torso.

>pump magic into setting
>swords are relic weapons that can absorb and utilize magic
>guns can not

Alternatively
>guns don't exist
>guns are super expensive

or guns are exclusively siege cannons and handgonnes.

Power armor too.

And battle axes. In space.

Never read Dune?

Melee weapons make a lot of sense as a backup. If two people are fighting at point-blank range, one with a gun and one with a melee weapon, then the guy with the melee weapon has a huge advantage.

Having said that, if you're really dead-set on having melee weapons as your primary means of offing people, there are ways and/or means. First of all, you could go the 40k route and give them a NOT !power field, making them really good for getting through armor/shields/whathaveyou. That way, there's a risk/reward that will at least partially balance the inherent range disadvantage.

Also, melee weapons are great for sneaky types. No matter what kind of can you put on a gun, a good old sword/knife/etc. will always be quieter. Assuming, that is, the person using it knows what they're doing.

>But how on gods green earth can you possibly justify someone using a melee weapon in a world with guns, or blasters, or what-have-you?
Is pretty easy actually
When you're improved via cybernetics to be faster and react faster than bullets the best weapon becomes your body or melee weapons because they move as fast as you move your arms, which is faster than bullets

Everyone lives in a giant continent-spanning apartment complex or twisting tunnel system, so long-range and mid-range combat don't happen.

That's great if your bullets/slugs/bolts move at the speed of modern weaponry. What if they move faster? What if the main weapon is lasers?

>What if the main weapon is lasers?
Everybody laughs because that's a shit weapon

>he doesn't wear a phase suit and dodge lasers

laughingshrike.jpeg

Gun upgrades are easy tbf. Diluted HMX and various ETC mixes can boost velocities past 2 km/s, and even 1970s flechette rifles like the Steyer ACR broke the 4000fps mark.

I suppose in a magic cyborg setting, "gun" users could rocket-deploy reaction-jet-corrected EFPs from internal weapon hives and detonate them point blank, to get projectiles going around 3-4km/s.

My char in PF moves at mach 1, do you think arrows and old timey guns should be able to hit me? (they do because the system sucks at many levels being speed one but that's not the point).

>ctrl+f Deathstalker
>0 results

Man-portable energy weapons have a LONG cooldown period between shots, making them effectively as slow as flintlocks.

Solid projectile weapons have been forgotten thanks to a massive conspiracy by the Space Empire.

Egro, you shoot once (per gun, carrying several if you're clever), then charge into melee.

>all the Dune love in this thread
What are some RPGs where I can play a sickass knife fighter?

GURPS ;)

Perhaps in the setting, ammo is somewhat rare/difficult to obtain? For example you're on the run from a tyrannical empire that has a very strict hold on ammo.

This is literally how my motorcycle armor works
Soft enough fo move into, but gets super bouncy when you hit it
Pic related, shoulder and knee pads, back protector and elbow/shin "casts"
It's d3o plates, the jacket holds them like segmented plate armor and provides enormous resistance to friction
You can crash at 300km/h with these and walk it off like nothing

Problemi is they have shitty shear strength, so while a bullet would mushroom off of them, a blade would cut them

Reactive nanoparticles that divert the kinetic energy of the impact.
That would also explain the need for melee weapons in the setting since a bullet it just one big impact whereas a melee weapon apply less force over a longer time making the armour less efficient.

youtube.com/watch?v=WM33Hr94SKw

Ultimately the difference between them aren't that much that you're likely to see one fall behind the other too much.

Ultimately all weapons are just throwing energy at a target till it breaks, and while there are differences between how these energies work and optimizing how to stop them, they're not that radically different that ones going to supersede the other by a OoM.

>You do realize that you'd have to keep the liquid nitrogen liquid right?
Space is cold. Keeping a large amount of liquid nitrogen in reserve isn't thermodynamically an issue if you're in a spaceship.
>It might also not be as effective as you are picturing right now
I've actually done similiar things with liquid nitrogen as in the video. It's quite harmless if the contact with skin is brief, but god forbid if you get it in your clothes.

>Space is cold.
Not as easy when your soldiers have to haul it to the enemy lines
>but god forbid if you get it in your clothes
If people started to use LN2 "flamethrowers" enough they'd probably start wearing clothing that doesn't absorb liquids
(like rubber or something, or a sci-fi version of this: youtube.com/watch?v=7is6r6zXFDc)

>Not as easy when your soldiers have to haul it to the enemy lines
Why would they? They'd be better off using actual firearms. The use of liquid nitrogen would be confined to defending the ship against boarders. If your enemies attempt to board, you'd likely have plenty of time to arm the freeze squads. It's not exactly a sudden tactical maneuver
>If people started to use LN2 "flamethrowers" enough they'd probably start wearing clothing that doesn't absorb liquids
That's likely. But you'd still need additional protection for the parts of your body that are normally not covered (hair and head in general). It would make more sense to use somekind of riot foam to immobilize the enemy instead of relying primarily on lethal force. When your opponent is heavily armored, melee weapons are not very effective. Defeating the opponent would be easier by using weapons that incapacitate them followed by a killing blow against a defenceless target instead of learning melee combat techniques to achieve the same result less efficiently.

To anyone suggesting shields for ranged fire:

Do you not see how that MASSIVELY complicates how you take and receive damage? What, now every single PC and enemy has to have a completely separate HP bar for their shield number, and everyone needs to remember to calculate that in when using ranged fire, but melee just bleeds through it?

That would literally assrape balance.

Or it could just be a damage reduction or a bonus to AC for ranged attacks only