Melee attacks can graze/miss?

[Tomipapa]

Just rewatched the Vanguard let's play video, and i noticed that the Kir'ko Frenzied grazed one of its melee attack.(youtube video at 22:52). The Pyrx bomb had a side effect that gives the units -25% accuracy, so obviously this was the reason for that graze. But my question is, what would happen in a normal situation? Do melee weapons have a base 100% chance to hit, and you could only decrease it with abilities/side effects ect.,or just like for ranged weapons the chance to hit is 90% at best?

Second question: Can ranged units use their ranged weapons at point blank range? Are their any penalties?

These two things extremely affect the usefulness of melee units, and i'm a bit concerned how usefull they are. Can be a melee focused stack considered as a viable strategy or they just meatshields for ranged units?

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

Only devs can answer right now but I *suspect* melee is more dangerous but has a higher Base damage.

I.e. your units are more likely to die or be damaged but in return they do more reliable and higher damage.

And the Kir'ko seem to be about 50% melee based, including their flier iirc.

 

[Tombles]

Melee attacks have a base hit chance of 95%, and (obviously) are not affected by long range and line of sight penalites. Also, defense modes do not reduce hit chance from melee attacks. Other effects can reduce the hit chance, but the melee hit chance is almost always higher than the ranged hit chance. Melee does also do more damage than ranged (usually 2-3 points more, if you compare units of the same tier) and always have the stagger effect.

The only penalty a shooter has for point blank range shots is that the melee units next to them will get a free attack on them after they fire. A melee unit can only do this once per turn, and they lose this free attack if they're staggered, so usually if someone has melee units parked next to your ranged guys, you want to interrupt them with grenades (or your own melee guys) to save them.

Melee focused stacks are surprisingly effective in PvE situations, though you always want to back them up with some kind of ranged thing. They do tend tor have higher attrition though, so it's more important to have healers around to keep them alive.

 

[Tomipapa]

Melee attacks have a base hit chance of 95%, and (obviously) are not affected by long range and line of sight penalites. Also, defense modes do not reduce hit chance from melee attacks. Other effects can reduce the hit chance, but the melee hit chance is almost always higher than the ranged hit chance. Melee does also do more damage than ranged (usually 2-3 points more, if you compare units of the same tier) and always have the stagger effect.

The only penalty a shooter has for point blank range shots is that the melee units next to them will get a free attack on them after they fire. A melee unit can only do this once per turn, and they lose this free attack if they're staggered, so usually if someone has melee units parked next to your ranged guys, you want to interrupt them with grenades (or your own melee guys) to save them.

Melee focused stacks are surprisingly effective in PvE situations, though you always want to back them up with some kind of ranged thing. They do tend tor have higher attrition though, so it's more important to have healers around to keep them alive.

Thank you for the answer Tombles! As a melee fan, i'm glad melee units are effective

Another question while you are here, not related to this. Did you guys lower the psionic res of mechanical units? In the older screens mech units had 4 psi res but in the promethean dev diary both the Aegis tank and the Phoenix walker had only 2. Also in the Kir'ko video when the Tormented hit the Assault bike with the echoes of torment it took 18 damage. The echoes has 22 damage so with the standard 4 psi res for mech units the bike should have take only 14 damage not 18. You get this 18 damage if the res is only 2 not 4.

 

[Tombles]

We changed their resistance to 2, then changed our minds and put it back up to 4. We also removed the psionic mod that allows psionic attacks to do arc damage. We want mechanical units to resist things like psionic attacks, and both the lowered resistance and the arc mod were messing that up!

 

[Zaskow]

Melee attacks have a base hit chance of 95%

I hope we won't see too much situations like in video below. Right?

Melee focused stacks are surprisingly effective in PvE situations

Does it mean that human player can easily negate usefulness of enemy melee units?

We changed their resistance to 2, then changed our minds and put it back up to 4. We also removed the psionic mod that allows psionic attacks to do arc damage. We want mechanical units to resist things like psionic attacks, and both the lowered resistance and the arc mod were messing that up!

Sadly. Kirko with their biochem and psi damage will suffer greatly. Will they have any tools in right time to deal with mech units at all? In AoW3 Rogue and Theocrat played horribly vs. machines.

 

[Tombles]

In AoW3 machiens were utterly immune to spirit and poison damage, in this game they resist psionic and are immune to biochemical status effects. You can still damage mech with psionic and bio weapons, they're just less effective. It's a very different setup.

Also, if a Kir'ko player is worried about facing a lot of machines, they can take a secret tech to compensate for that. The split of skills is much more even in Planetfall, than in AoW3. In AoW3 your class was almost everything, now race is about 60% and secret tech 40%, so you have more options to compensate for things like that.

Does it mean that human player can easily negate usefulness of enemy melee units?

Not easily, but it's certainly possible if you bring the right units. Humans are much better at kiting than the AI is (the AI doesn't really kite much, since it annoys the player), and are also better at using things like chokepoints and hazards to prevent melee units from getting close to them. Used correctly, and with the right backup (e.g. artillery to knock enemies out of overwatch and destroy obstacles, or operations to blind ranged units) then melee units can defintely be effective againts humans, but going pure melee against an intelligent player would put you at a big disadvantage.

 

[Tomipapa]

Sadly. Kirko with their biochem and psi damage will suffer greatly. Will they have any tools in right time to deal with mech units at all? In AoW3 Rogue and Theocrat played horribly vs. machines.

And i'm glad they changed it back. With that lowered psi res the damage difference between hitting a human or a mech is so minimal that the mech units will cease to exist as anti psi units. I don't know why do you think biochem will be bad against mech units. One of the side effect of biochem attacks is that they are capable of melting armor, and after that, you can do full damage on them since mechs do not posses any kind of natural biochem resistance. Sure, those races with arc damage will be better against mechs, on the other hand they won't be as good as the Kir'ko against biological units. Since they showed Vanguard/Promethean first it is easy to see the game as mech focused, but if i remeber correctly actually only around 1/3 of the units ar mechs.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

I hope we won't see too much situations like in video below. Right?

Does it mean that human player can easily negate usefulness of enemy melee units?



Sadly. Kirko with their biochem and psi damage will suffer greatly. Will they have any tools in right time to deal with mech units at all? In AoW3 Rogue and Theocrat played horribly vs. machines.

Welcome back Zaskow!

Anyway I got the feeling melee units like the Ravenous (?) Are the counter to mechanical stuff.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

However good that you're asking these kind of questions.

 

[Zaskow]

the AI doesn't really kite much, since it annoys the player

I'd like to see kiting skilled AI on highest difficulty...

 

[Fenraellis]

Don't forget that Biochemical, which the Kir'Ko have, can be converted to Arc as well. Possibly armor-shredding Arc damage, if it maintains the attack's original properties? Obviously not as directly useful against Mechanical units as Syndicate having Arc directly, but still pretty nice, and could circumstantially be better.

Aside from that, if an enemy stacks armor really high on a unit(9 to 11+!), then you could use Biochemical to shred it, or just go straight for Psionic(possibly lower base damage, although some of those Biochemical damage numbers are similar to Psionic, if not lower) and simply hit against the 4 Resistance instead.

Of course, a large consideration that some are possibly ignoring is the unit applying the attack matters a lot, too. For method of application, certainly, but also for qualifying prerequisites for various unit mods. That, and, for example, the Kir'Ko simply don't have a ranged Psionic damage flying unit(or so it would seem), so that's not an option anyway.

 

[Jean-Luc]

(the AI doesn't really kite much, since it annoys the player)

 

[Dr_K]

I hope we won't see too much situations like in video below. Right?

I love the XCOM hit chances in a terribly frustrating but entertaining bad mechanic kind of way My personal favorite:


However, I'm glad Triumph did not go with pure hit chances across the board and went with guaranteed graze or hit when the chance to hit was higher than 75%.

 

[ashbery76]

I'd like to see kiting skilled AI on highest difficulty...

Interesting.I don't like A.I that is made weaker on purpose so having an option allowing it should be available.Not on highest as the cheats annoy me but just an option in the settings.

 

[Tombles]

It's not so much that I made it weaker on purpose, more that I never looked very much into adding kiting in the first place. The combat AI in Planetfall (or in AoW3 for that matter) doesn't actually respond to difficulty settings in any way. It always plays as well as it can, as limited as that may be!

In the future, I may try and add some kind of limited ability to kite melee units. It all depends on the feedback we get about how the AI works and what is needed!

 

[Zaskow]

In the future, I may try and add some kind of limited ability to kite melee units

Please do, sir!