How do I incorporate swords and melee combat in a sci-fi / near-future universe?

You read Dune.

Chainswords.

>Excaliblasts
>cutting through everything
>the wielder is faster than bullets/lasers, so he uses a sword as a weapon
>status symbol
>magic focus

At that point with Modern armor you may as well use paintballs

as a hobby/sport

Or alternatively something that the scum in bad parts of the town uses to settle stuff. I mean here the gypsies usually have cheap knock-off katanas that they use to beat the shit out of each other but fail to actually kill anyone because the "swords" usually just break after a few hits and they aren't sharp to begin with.

Make it anime.

fun thing about lasers is that if you use the right wavelength and pulse you could actually do mini explosions with the quickly expanding hot gases that you make. Or to be more precise, you need to find the right wavelength and pulses to not do that. What I'm saying is that lasers could be very messy

this tbqh

>how do I fit the square peg into the round hole?
retard

I've been working on this myself. I'm thinking that for reasons of armor defeat firearms have become very dangerous to the bulkheads of starships, so melee weapons made a comeback with spacers, pirates, and marines.

After all, if you've created ship armor that can stop most microcomets and you're mining asteroids, why wouldn't soldiers get a portable version of that armor?

It's a logical conclusion I can live with.

Read Forever War.

easily if the round hole is big enough.
idiot

Drone swarms do the fighting, AI do the planning. Humans are only on the battlefield as ceremonial commanders, because humanity doesn't want to let AI totally off the leash.

Guns are useless except to civilians or gray ops pretending to be civilians. Soldiers still need something to hold the encrypted command keys for their AI. Some countries put the wireless USB key in a ritual weapon, and swords look appropriate and double as a backup weapon in the .0001% chance a soldier is in CQB with another human and there are no drones around to save him.

ceremonial artifacts and rituals of religious or cultural significance, leftovers from a bygone age.

>if you've created ship armor that can stop most microcomets and you're mining asteroids, why wouldn't soldiers get a portable version of that armor

Well...because whipple shields are super bulky and suck against low velocity projectiles?

>I'm thinking that for reasons of armor defeat firearms have become very dangerous to the bulkheads of starships, so melee weapons made a comeback with spacers, pirates, and marines.
contrary to popular belief, you actually doesn't NEED the air inside of the ship when you are capturing it. You just need the ship, excluding the crew. That means a few holes in the bulkhead is not a real problem that you can't patch up later.
Now the SYSTEMS, those are a different matter.

>why wouldn't soldiers get a portable version of that armor?
too expensive
too cumbersome/heavy
too big/thick
logistical nightmare
fashion
etc.

Personal shielding technology requires very expensive and somewhat heavy offensive technology to penetrate. You can put the offensive tech on projectile and kill people with guns just fine and it is far more effective then trying to hit them with your sword, but practically speaking, a soldier can only carry a small supply of this ammunition with them due to both the weight and cost, so every soldier carries a sword with the same offensive tech on it so that they aren't helpless when they run out of ammo.

Adventurers, criminals, and so on use swords even more due to the difficulty of maintaining a steady supply of penetrating ammunition compared to just carefully maintaining one sword. All adventurers and criminals that mean business will still carry a gun with a few penetrating rounds in case of emergency, but they would much rather deal with problems using their sword.

That's what I use.

Or just make a portable plot shielding that can withstand anything due to PHYSICS and the only way to do any real damage is hitting someone with a sharp stick.

Space Magic.

Captive piston + frangible projectile would work under those conditions.

It doesn't even need to be valid. Hereditary, near-superstitious dread of breaches on generation ships could get security especially vicious about punishing gun violence and your own gang ready to lynch you for making one.

Here's an idea:

Protective armour on soldiers has become fully resistant to most forms of firearms and bullets.
Any gun/firearm that can penetrate this advanced soldier armour is too expensive to upkeep with ammo or is a rare weapon.
So, the best way to kill soldiers with this armour is to use particular melee weapons that can penetrate/break the material but isn't nearly as expensive as a firearm. There, chivalry is back in the fold.

>a soldier can only carry a small supply of this ammunition with them due to both the weight and cost

Especially good if the generators are big/rare [anti-tank missile size?] so that only a few generator-based ranged weapons can be carried. They'd assume a role like flintlock weapons in samurai/piracy stories - plot points governments or organisations can use to control badasses resistant to being overcome through numbers.

>How do I incorporate swords and melee combat in a sci-fi / near-future universe?

Try

Cyborg ninjas that can cut bullets in half with their vibro blades.

Don't start from the technobabble.

First, decide what role you want melee combat to play and how you want it to fit in with the rest of the universe. Then come up with bullshit to make it fit in that way. Starting with the technobabble first is a mugs game.

In Ian McDonalds Luna series the Moon colonists simply never developed a gun culture. Knives for self-defense or brawling, explosives for war (very rare), and microdrones for high level security or assassinations.

Guns appear occasionally, but they aren't gamechangers.

You can have people who are really good at unarmed martial arts

Melee combat is more dramatic and carries a lot more narrative than just two people ducking and shooting with guns dozens of meters apart from each other.

only if you done it wrong

And that's a great place to start. You want your sci-fi setting to be like that? Awesome! Once you have an idea for the dynamic you want it to have, awesome heroic swordfights, just figure out some technobullshit explanation as to why. Although you don't need too much. A couple of lines is fun, if nitpickers try to wheedle on the details just tell them to fuck off.

>Melee combat is more dramatic and carries a lot more narrative than just two people ducking and shooting with guns dozens of meters apart from each other.

Nope. Each kind of combat can be bland or fun. How interesting and meaningful a fight is depends heavily on the quality of the writing, choreography, sound design, acting, and many other things.

>NECESSITY
Maybe you're boarding a ship and you need the thing intact, you don't want to risk damage to the fragile and expensive components you're surrounded by. Cue space germans with axes.
Or maybe the ground battle has been raging for a long time. The autofabbers are broken and can't supply your dudes with new ammo, and the solar chargers for your lazer guns are clogged with dust and clouds and shit. The enemy is in similar conditions. Time to get back to basics and break out the pointy sticks.

>HONORABRU RITUALISTIC MELEE DUELS
Maybe it's tradition, with two champions duking it out in arranged matches to avoid massive bloodbaths. Maybe the new tech allows for fun toys like strenth and speed augments, vibroswords, plasma axes, rocket-assisted hammers, monomolecule-tip pointy sticks, what have you. People on both sides are very curious to see what would happen to a dude hit by their sweet futureshanks, and arrange one-on-one duels to have some good old murder fun.

>SOMETIMES YOU JUST WANT TO STAB A MOTHERFUCKER
When there's a will, there's a way. You want to be driven closer so you can hit them with your sword, and by god you'll make it happen one way or the other.

In mine, laser rifles and such exist, and everyone has one due to being in the planetary reserves. But if you are caught using one outside of official military training or target practice, the punishment is extremely severe. So the citizens of the planet use melee or black powder weaponry to do their own dirty work. Outside of the capital city, the planet is mostly pre-industrial, so it works

Personal shields are capable of blocking the energy transfer (semi efficiently) of low to medium caliber rounds. Swords and other melee weapons, which never leave the user's hand and are MUCH larger than munitions, are able to be "weighted" with an energy source capable of chewing through these personal shields. The energy source can be attached to the wielder's body, allowing for smaller, faster weapons, or they can be fitted directly into the weapon for a weightier attack utilizing the power source's weight.

>Cue space germans with axes.

Man those guys where pricks

The penalty for using a laser in the process is worse than the penalty for murder?

Dune nailed it 50 years ago and people still ask.

Dune explained it away through having personal shields that block bullets and make energy weapons explode, but can be penetrated by swords that come in slowly enough. I think Gundam has some similar excuse. But really, the best explanation is probably a cultural one. Ritual dueling and/or blood sport.

Not necessarily, but for the tribal north who just likes to raid other tribes, or people who are robbing shipments of goods, etc.

IRL, shooting a dude with a 9mm probably carries a lighter punishment than shooting a dude with a Panzerfaust so I guess that works

Here's Shadowrun's answer:

In an open battlefield, against hovertanks and combat drones and across open ground, you don't. That'd be suicide, chummer, and we're not in the business of getting ourselves geeked. But when was the last time you were on an open battlefield? If you're in an alleyway, or fighting through a cubicle farm, or up to your neck in ghouls underground, you're going to be in spitting distance of the other guy regardless. Why not get some use out of your cyberarms and use something quiet that doesn't run out of ammo?

Besides, people are nicer to you if you carry a sword. Swords are cool, and folk care about that even if you think you're above it all. Not to mention, wave a sword around in a mall and you're Floridaman, wave an assault rifle and you're Tango One when SWAT arrives. Carry a gun as well (everyone hates that one troll that thinks riot gear and an axe is appropriate gear for every situation) but get good with a sword and it'll be good to you, omae.

>The penalty for using a laser in the process is worse than the penalty for murder?
Do they get charged with possession or something?

Yes

Why not just have a shield that deflects all velocities?

Because that's not how shields in Dune work.

Also, the investigation for someone who was killed with a laser weapon would be far more intensive than someone who was murdered with black powder or a melee weapon. Might just be a local investigation with pre-industrial techniques, rather than a sci-fi investigation from the capital if a laser weapon is used

Have some people with genetic/cybernetic enhancements that allows them to dodge bullets/lasers and cut through armor with swords

The most convincing explanation I have ever seen is the Bunraku one: guns are globally outlawed by a totalitarian government and their manufacturing is heavily punished and under constant persecution.

IMO its better than trying to come up with contrived reasons why guns wouldnt adapt and dominate around other technologies.

Exactly this. Reality is weapons are used in context of environment. Look at lightsabers they can deflect blaster shots and slice through anything.

But depending on your world you may or may not wish to limit such weapons to one single class 'force users' Its your world so all the power to you.

Chads always go melee

>Well...because whipple shields are super bulky and suck against low velocity projectiles?
Can be, really depends. Dragon Skin functions on the same principle but with overlapping plates and high-tensile fiber weave supporting them.

>primary adversarial race has a cultural association between melee combat and respect, and thus uses ranged primarily but considers melee fights of high esteem, similar to "counting coup"
>Other species who are willing to meet them in melee are essentially given "respect" on the field of battle -- usually translates to "if some of your guys give us a fair fight, we'll let you pick up your wounded / haul your crippled ships home / spare your civilians, etc". Things that aren't really a combat advantage, but could be considered a sign of respect between combatants.
>Due to a combination of longstanding conflict against this species (along with possibly some occasional cooperation against other species), the PC's primary species (let's say humans) adopt sword and melee traditions and training, so their best can duke it out with antagonists fairly
>Bonus round -- the antagonist species is a species of large, thermally active lizards with wings

The gun control plebs finally won.

Now all melee weapons are considered legal, because that was the only way to stop the common man from going ballistic.

This. It's what Dune did.

Blades are more practical for space, lasers and railgun bullets keep going if you miss which can result in Kessler Syndrome.
As for a citizen of a dystopian future making a weapon out of junk won't be recorded or tracked unlike guns. (Probably faster too with the lack of paperwork)

A sword with a built in power supply and a current through the blade can hack through lighter plating and damage electronics within. In a battle against robots a trained swordsman could theoretically get a blade through the joints and the current would do enough extra to hack off a limb if not render the whole thing useless.

This isn't your only weapon against the robotic menace, obviously. Even if it may not kill immediately a rifle can poke enough holes for a shock blade to run the 'bot through and get the kill, or itself find a vital area for the kill. Magnetic grenades can warp heavier metal plating and destroy sensitive electronics. Heavier artillery can thin their numbers to make closer combat viable.

But a human fighter can always rely on their shock blade, either fixed to a bayonet or used as a sword, to stop Tommy Tin Man from squeezing him like a tube of toothpaste if he gets too close to comfort.

Huh. That is pretty much my setting. Although, the winged lizards are sort of the protagonists and instead of being thermally active they use SPESS MAGIC. Also Dune shields.

Unless you nerf Range over Melee weapons, The smart players well always use Ranged attacks.Now plating 20 Modern we learned due the melee classes getting a higher to hit made melee bad ass. Bt that was a from of nerfing Ranged attack

>adversary's thick hide and lack of leaky fluids make them resistant to the impact of bullets
>to save money on explosives and (slightly) limit potential for breaches, humans are forced to shoot swords instead

Oh nice. Sounds like a fun combo. Everyone loves space magic.

>LED knight
I like how you can see the exact point where the artist stopped caring about drawing the dude's armor

have guns be illegal obviously

Users with swords that are super fast would still prefer ranged weaponry.

Use explosive rounds, or shoot said melee weapons.
Ranged weaponry is just superior to melee in general, it's not about power.

Step 1 is you play Rrevengeance. Step 2 is you pretty much already know everything you need to know about futuristic swords, bar the part you're able to freely cut through bullets withour a Ref check or something, just so guns can keep their usefulness and lethality.

Yeah, on top of this these magic space lizards have developed a metal that responds to their powers like living metal. Its expensive, hard to make, and heavy, but is near impregnable to small arms and resistant to anti-vehicle. Melee or overwhelming firepower are the only two things that can get through, as it is slow. Most of the time.

Welp, didn't mean to quote but hey, it's a free (You) m8.

Play Traveller? Guns are generally better than swords, but there are plenty of worlds where you can't carry a gun. Also jumping around a bulkhead's corner and shanking an unsuspecting dude works even when he's carrying a gun.

>ctrl+f Dune
>6 matches
Why did I even come in?

Vibro blades

The slow blade penetrates the shield.

>In an open battlefield, against hovertanks and combat drones and across open ground, you don't. That'd be suicide, chummer, and we're not in the business of getting ourselves geeked. But when was the last time you were on an open battlefield? If you're in an alleyway, or fighting through a cubicle farm, or up to your neck in ghouls underground, you're going to be in spitting distance of the other guy regardless. Why not get some use out of your cyberarms and use something quiet that doesn't run out of ammo?

Finally, an answer I can get behind.

Beat me to it. Good taste.

Probably because not every argument or question should be answered by a book series that is becoming increasingly more obscure each day.
As it should be, honestly. Fuck Herbert’s estate for doing jack shit with his IP.

"Just shoot him in the eye holes" isn't really useful advice. If body armor really were to get to the point where man-portable firearms were ineffective against it, the rondel would make a comeback.

I rather wish the whole psionic powers and martial arts sed in the series would have become more popular in fiction. That could especially be good for fantasy but knowing how autistic westaboos feel about anything they precieve as anime would ruin it.

You make them impractical and risky as fuck to use, but if you use them successfully, your party becomes legend

>shoots someone with a Panzerfaust...
Yeah, just think of the size of your fine for littering on top of whatever sentence you get for the killing!

The westaboos aren't actually nearly as numerous in number as they make it seem, they're just a vocal minority.

There's no vaguely plausible armour that is immune to advanced man-portable ranged weaponry and vulnerable to medieval melee weaponry.
You'd need Dune-style shields or other soft sci-fi.

How about kinetic energy shields like in dune but instead of them letting slower objects through you give melee weapons mguffins that disable these shields. You can even make anti melee and anti range shields as different things.

Because then you'd be trapped in an impenetrable bubble. Shields go both ways, and they don't distinguish between things you want to interact with and things that want to interact with you. A shield that lets slow-moving things pass through it will let the ground pass through it so you can actually walk, pick up objects, and everything else you'd want to do.

The Government doesn't want armed plebs so they phase out projectile weapons in favour of more powerful laser guns that come with a 2 minute recharge time thus making a melee backup vital in actual combat. Kinda like a flintlock and cavalry sword effect.

The Deathstalker solution.

Psionic xianxia cultivation.
Everyone important can manipulate space-time
The difficulty and inefficiency are proportional with distance.
Projectiles useless because the defender will just warp space-time so the bullet misses. The attacker could try to counter-warp space so it hits, but that's an uphill battle.
It's way easier to simply swing a melee weapon at the opponent and hope you win the game of 4D Chess that is space-time warping.
This is also the reason they are immortal, can fly, know future, etc.
It also means conventional armies are worthless because a sufficiently powerful cultivator can literally split atoms to spam explosions and redirect the blast area as they will through manipulating space-time into beams. And you won't even have the time to react. They did it 5 seconds ago.

this
there are tons of reasons. exotic polymer blades that can be smuggled by by x-rays and scanners. avoiding ricochet and noise in close quarters. avoiding puncturing space station or environmental protections. high-oxygen atmospheres being deadly when mixed with firearms.
this is good too, especially if you have aliens or people with fucked up honor cultures. You can use a gun to kill someone, but everyone will shun you for being dishonorable if you do.

In space and around most asteroids, your average rifle is gonna be a thruster capable of escape velocity. There are ways to mitigate that with special guns, but they would be less effective than normal ones

Space armor is special fibers & ceramic plates. It makes guns pretty obsolete. Kinetics hit plates & space age kevlar & energy weapons get scattered & dispersed. A sword with a power field, chain blades, video, mono, etc. Have a better chance of cutting through the soft armor & some can even shatter the ceramics.

You can even have it where energy weapons are the norm & kinetics are barbaric. Everyone wears lightweight energy bleeding fiber armor in battle, & melee weapons just cut right through it. Kinda the reverse of the advent of firearms.

I think it would be easier to answer this question if you told us some of the limitations you feel exist in the combination of swords and melee into a sci-fi/near-future setting.

I can't help but imagine that, in a setting where large-population space travel is normal, they'd also have body armor.