I brought this up in another thread and thought I'd start a new thread on it to avoid derailing more than I've already done.

Combat physics for close combat.

It is for me 2 points, firstly it's been mentioned that like in Spacemarine people will be swinging their weapons in wide arcs and hitting multiple targets.

I'm not overly happy about this as opponents are solid and unless you cut them cleanly in half or knock them off of their feet then your swing ends when you hit the 1st target.

To hit multiple targets with one swing takes you out of a 3D environment and puts you in a 2D environment where depth and distance mean nothing or your weapon passes through people as if they are smoke.

This brings me to my 2nd point, solidness of characters and tanks etc, I'm hoping that all units are going to be solid (I've not found any information on it) so you can't run through your enemy to get away (or get behind them to stab them in the back).

Any thoughts?

First of all what I want is for enemies to be solid and friendlies to not be solid. I dont want to be stuck ina hallway or room because someone is trolling me by not getting out of the way. Of course in this situation FF might be actually needed and welcomed.

That is something that is both sensible and makes the game better, I can't stand PvP melee that consists of constantly trying to run through someone and turn 180 degrees to get a rear attack in.

If you wanna be consistent with ff for ranged classes you must be consistent with ff for melee ones. Every teammate is solid to all kinds of attacks or none is.

No the udea is to allow me to move to where i need to go without some jackass blocking the path. Enemies need to be solid so they can hold the line and not let attackers behind by just walkign through them.

Nope. No making things easy for noone, that's what ff (both melee and shooting) is for or we get rid of it totally with all the consequences.

I agree on a collision mechanic ofc, yet i feel cleave needs its place in this game.
If the game lacks this it will further incentivize the numbers game and having more units in melee combat spelling certain victory.

Example, a Terminator should arguably handle at least 3 boyz in melee. If the cleave existed he would punish them for jumping at him blindly and cut all 3 of them in twain. If we dont have cleave the boyz will just swamp em and murder him on the spot with faster attack speed as hes trying to kill off 1 by 1 rather than having a swing take them all out if they are careless.

In a cleaveless game the other 2 boyz are practically completely safe until the first boy on the swinging side of the Terminators melee arc is alive. The last boy living will without care spam his melee attack cause he is practically safe until the other two die.

Lets work it in a diagram:


Lets say the weapon of our termi is a instakill Thunder Hammer for these regular boyz. In figure 1 cleave exists, and the Orks will be punished for running headlong into a terminator cause he would swipe them all in 1 feel swoop. In figure 2 cleave is non existent, and the terminator now needs to swing his weapon 3 times to deal with this threat. The Ork on the far left is basically safe the entire time the other 2 Orks live, even if he changes swinging arcs that only means the boy in the middle is free of worries till his two friends die.

This issue grows the bigger the number of melee combatants is, and the side with the bigger number of bodies to block swinging arcs with will come out victorious.
In the above figures, with the cleave on the boys would have to naturally strategize and come against the terminator from different sides as to swamp em, without cleave that issue will be very negligible.

I see your point but I think you are looking at it too simplistically.

The terminator in question should have defensive skills, so he can block incoming blows with his CC weapon and/or his offhand, his hit's should be powerful enough to have knock backs attached to them, not to mention the one hit kill scenario and the fact that quite a few hits scored by the boyz would simply bounce off of his armour.

Let's look at your example again but multiply the number of units involved, say 3 terminators , 9 boyz. Both the boyz and the terminators have cleave, so all 9 boyz can potentially be hit once BUT now all 3 terminators can potentially be hit 9 times (instead of just 3 times) which means with the same ratio and cleave, but with 3 times the units involved the terminators are now in serious trouble.

Im not following your logic here, with or without cleave if the 9 boyz surround a termie they will all get their single shot in whilst the termi in the non-cleave scenario will only be able to take out 1 at a time.
The 9 boys will simply win without cleave, i find that fact in my eyes seeing cleave and non cleave in function in many games.

We cannot argue who will win in which situation cause we dont know the statistics behind these 2 units, yet it is very safe to assume that terminators benefit from the cleave in your scenario allot more than the boyz.
If they spread out the terminators will cleave them, if they focus on 1 termi the other two will cleave away the boyz off their brother, in the worst case he will die but all the boyz will be dead too.
In a non cleave scenario the number superior party will simply abuse the swinging arcs denial and win.