A few days ago I decided to try going for a melee build, after seeing multiples of the new melee focused utilities added in alpha 11 during a previous run. I expected it to be more or less a challenge run, as in the past I have thought of melee combat as only a last resort, or perhaps a cheap way for flight builds to kill defenseless watchers and haulers. I never expected it to be something I would seek out as a viable combat option, but I actually managed to get to -2 with such a build! You should see my logs in the attachments if you are curious.
My overall strategy before starting the run was that I wanted to use hover as my form of propulsion, since it's the fastest propulsion that still gives you enough support for a large storage unit and various heavy utilities like armor and force fields. Speed is very important for melee because you need to close the gap between yourself and enemies quickly, and it also boosts your damage due to the way melee combat works. I also knew that I wanted to use slashing weapons; piercing weapons are probably better, but they are also rarer...and I have to be honest, I think swords are cooler, too.
The first item I found upon entering materials was a hammer! I was tempted to try and make this a "melee only" run, but after a few swings of the hammer I remembered/realized that impact weapons are terrible, and the hammer is the worst impact weapon, so...it's really not worth using, ever. Originally I planned to get some early schematics for swords through hacking, but I found out that doesn't quite work.
I stuck with guns until after entering storage, by accident. I know opinions on storage are mixed, but I personally like it - it seems to nearly always give me a prototype launcher, and it's always good to get one of those early. This time I found a cache of guided EMP blasters, which I've never used before but ended up being a ton of fun. Unlike guided explosives, you never run out of matter using EMP blasters, so you can really fire at will with perfect accuracy from a distance and around corners, an extremely effective strategy with sensors. They are particularly good at taking out operators, I ended up extracting 3 data cores. They are
also good at taking out drones, which is why I decided to go to recycling when I got the chance. I did end up being spotted a few times(surprisingly the drones don't always get one-shot despite being weak to EM), but for the most part it went well as I skipped a floor and entered factory. I soon entered lower caves, and on the 2nd floor, guarded by a mutant and right beside the data miner exit, I finally found my first good melee weapon; a makeshift sword! This weapon is actually pretty good; it's slightly inaccurate but has no delay, which is super fast compared to most melee weapons. After quickly getting some info from the miner I passed through proximity caves (mostly) stealthily. Right after getting back to factory I found a cache of advanced melee analysis suites, and right away I switched to melee then.(The guided EMP blaster was starting to lose it's effectiveness anyways, it's damage isn't very high) I decided to use 2 melee suites at once, since melee tends to be rather inaccurate, especially on the first attack. Personally I think melee suites are rather weak when compared to targeting computers and either they should be buffed or the melee accuracy mechanics should change so that you aren't punished with low accuracy when trying to take advantage of momentum. Anyways, after taking a load of imp gravmag systems from a hauler I started feeling pretty good about my build.
A second hauler kill yielded greatswords; I chose not to use one yet until I at least had a few of the new actuators to increase my attack speed, since they are so slow. I decided to head to extension, figuring that the tight hallways were a good place to test my melee combat prowess. I found a phasing saber with a bunch of disabled robots, which was a very nice find, but probably the best melee weapon I found that run, sadly. I ended up with a bunch of allies, including 07, and eventually met the behemoths. Originally I planned to quickly hover past them, but since I had allies to protect I decided to face them head on!
Before:
After:
It went surprisingly well, and it was a lot of fun hacking away at enemies 4 times your size with a sword! I realised that there was no way my build would be able to handle Cetus though, so I headed back to factory. Eventually I found the microactuators I was looking for(and a dangerous friend):
I was cutting up most enemies pretty good by this time thanks to the parts I found, the reaction control system was particularly nice as it both boosts my damage and is very useful on a hover build in it's own right. I attracted a lot of attention though, including enemy demolishers, thanks to my rather high alert level that was probably raised by having so many allies. I left factory just in time before getting blown to bits. Entering research, I quickly got some lucky hacks off and had some choices of where to go:
I had not been to either branch before but decided to go to the newer one, testing. I was shocked I actually made it to all the way to a new branch with a melee combat build! (I've only won once before, with flight) However, testing is where things started to fall apart. I'm still glad I went, as I found some very cool prototypes there that I won't spoil, but I also attracted way too much attention. As it turns out, some enemies in testing have stasis beams, which hold you in place and are basically the perfect counter to my build. Things started falling apart rapidly, but I got lucky with hacking again and managed to hack access(main) and run to the exit:
Sadly, some "special" enemies seemed to follow me out of testing, and I had no chance to recover. The run ended on -2 fairly quickly.
Still, I learned a lot and had a fairly unique experience. I haven't heard of many other people trying melee with the new version. Next time I want to try a similar build but with piercing weapons, although I suspect that will require even more melee analysis since the first hit is so important for piercing damage, and I'd like to try the new "force boosters" with that too. If anyone has any questions or comments, go right ahead! I'd love to talk about Cogmind. I'm nearly always in the discord chat as well even if I don't use these forums as much as I should.
