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Problems with Extended Melee Range

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Flashlight237

Flashlight237

VS Battles
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Hey peeps. So... I'm beginning to see issues with what is considered "Extended Melee Range." As it currently stands, Extended Range is listed as this.:

Extended melee range (ranges from 3 to 10 meters)

This seems QUITE iffy. Why? I'll show ya.:

Weapon Lengths
Now, the main issue involves the melee weapon parts. In "Standard Range," weapon examples are listed as "Knives/daggers, gauntlets, and short-ranged weapons." There, it isn't specified as to what is meant by "short-ranged weapons." I measured a few things around my house that could be weaponized and got this.:

Scalpel: 3.7 cm (blade length)

Steak Knife: 11.7 cm (blade length)

Chef's Knife: 20 cm (blade length) with 12-cm hilt.

Baseball Bat: 82.5 cm (excluding the knob)

Considering an arm has to grasp a weapon to in order to even use it, I measured my own arm with my hand in a grasping position and got 63.5 cm. Let's assume 65 cm for the length of a grasping arm. With the weapons in question, I can get values like these.

Arm w/ Scalpel: ~70 cm

Arm w/ Steak Knife: ~77.5 cm

Arm w/ Chef's Knife: ~86 cm

Arms w/ Baseball Bat: ~130 cm (1.3 m; both hands on hilt)

Note that leeways had to be given here because nobody would be stupid enough to straight-up grab the blade like a hilt. Why? Well, here's what was listed as examples for Extended Melee Range.:

"Sword/sabers, polearms/spears, and explosives such as a thrown grenade would qualify for this range as well."

One can safely consider a baseball bat to be a sword-length weapon. Note that the part of the weapon that DOES the damage is the blade of the weapon. However, it might be just as important to list the total length of a sword. Here's what I got.:

Bronze Age Sword (Naue II): 60-70 cm (total length)

Gladius: 60-85 cm (45-68 cm blade length)

Rapier: 104 cm (average blade length)

Falchion: 95.25 cm (80 cm blade length)

Longsword: 100-130 cm (90-110 cm blade length)

Claymore: 120-140 cm (100-120 cm blade length)

Zweihander: At least 140 cm (total length); grip needs to be a minimum of 25 cm long. Longest specimen known is 213 cm long.

Katana: 60-73 cm (blade length)

Not even the longest sword, a Zweihander reportedly owned by Pier Gerlofs Donia, can match the current definition of "Extended Melee Range."

Now, stuff like spears, polearms, and staffs are left out of this because they are either throwing weapons if they're light enough, jabbing weapons if necessary, or plowing weapons (ex. the lance) if they're too heavy to do the former two things. This level of ambiguity makes the handling of spears rather iffy.

What I'm Suggesting
Basically, what I'm suggesting is to lower the minimum requirement for "Extended Melee Range." Let's face it, nobody who has arms is ever going to hit a 3-meter range with a sword unless the sword is 2.5 meters long or more at the blade or if we all of the sudden mutate and develop arms that are 2 meters long (which would be very impractical if you're going grocery shopping with a cart). In terms of melee weapons, lances can go for 2-3 meters long, though like I said, those things are more along the lines of heavy plowing weapons. I'd like to see anyone defend the use of those things.

As for how low the minimum should be? Well, I'm gonna leave that up for discussion because swords are kind of a mess.

Conclusion
Pretty much the current ruling on Extended Melee Range needs to be modified. If this could get highlighted, that would be cool, because this might need quite a bit of discussion before anything can be done.
 
I suppose that this seems to make sense, but you should ask several other administrators to give input as well.
 
Yeah, this makes sense. I agree.

But like Ant said, you should probably ask a couple other admins to give their input on this.
 
Antvasima said:
I suppose that this seems to make sense, but you should ask several other administrators to give input as well.
Click to expand...
I don't think I should. It just seems to be a spammy way of doing things to me, and I'm not one for spamming.
 
Most administrators are not particularly busy with content revision discussions, and this thread is important enough to require their input.

You can tell them that I would appreciate their input via their message walls: VS Battles Staff
 
Through lunges and stuff you can extend the range a bit, but 10 meters is like 32 feet in American units, which is kinda iffy. However, Spears, halberds, etc are fine. Also some fictions give characters weirdly large swords, but that's it's own thing.
 
Pretty sure this wouldn't change anything, right? Aside from a change to the values on the page. Nobody has put a sword as standard melee range yet, I'd hope.
 
I see the point you're making though I don't have a good suggestion on what to lower the minimum distance to.
 
Swords are about 70 cm. Human arms are about 65, after measuring my own

How does a minimum distance of 130 cm sound?
 
@Crimson Is the sword length from bottom of the handle to the tip of the blade?

And is the length of the arm up to the finger tips?
 
Minimum would be like, bashing people with rocks or knives. A Max of like 2 or 3 meters sounds more generally reasonable, though ofc you get stuff outside that.
 
Sword length is hilt tip to crosspiece

Arm length is shoulder to centre of palm.

Those lengths were chosen as that is where the two objects meet
 
Yeah but you said that for a minimum when shorter melee weapons exist.
 
Oh, we consider that standard?

I'd personally go a bit lower. You don't swing with a full extention of the arm like that nor is a sword held in a way where you're gonna have a straight 130ish cm line. Also sldightly shorter swords, axes, hammers, maces, etc were all pretty prevalent as general purpose weapons, unlike stuff like knives.
 
Standard melee range (ranges from 1 to 3 meters)

  • Applies to fighters using mostly their arms and legs as weapons
  • Knives/daggers, gauntlets, and short-ranged weapons would qualify for this range.
Yeah we do, apparently. Also, I see what you mean about hammers, maces, etc. but the piece I just shamelessly copied references "short ranged weapons", so who knows what is covered by that.
 
I mean, you could argue swords are covered under that, but standard melee range should probably be shortened to better establish that it's for stuff like punching, rocks, short knives, etc.
 
I disagree with you re. the swing length point though. When swinging or stabbing with a sword, you will always reach a point when the sword is held out at maximum distance.

I messaged one of my mates, who fences. She told me that you'll always straighten your arm when thrusting or swinging, to get in behind your opponent's defense while trying not to put yourself without their swinging distance
 
Wokistan said:
I mean, you could argue swords are covered under that, but standard melee range should probably be shortened to better establish that it's for stuff like punching, rocks, short knives, etc.
Click to expand...
100% agree. It isn't worded well, and needs specification.
 
I kinda forgot thrusts were a thing lol, but that can't really be generalized to all types of swords. Swords more designed for cutting or slashing aren't really going to be held like that, which would be factored in to the average.
 
Crimson Azoth said:
Sword length is hilt tip to crosspiece
Arm length is shoulder to centre of palm.

Those lengths were chosen as that is where the two objects meet
Click to expand...
I think you meant "blade tip" to crosspiece. Then again, hilts are slightly longer than the width of a hand or two hands depending on how many hands are needed to grip the thing.
 
Perhaps close range charging attacks with weapons were included in the current approximation?
 
I mean I guess I could try to do like math and stuff tomorrow to find how large an arc would end up if you guys wanted. I'm about to sleep, so I can't really continue rn. If someone else comes up with something good, that's ok.

Yeah it probably included stuff like lunges.
 
@Flashlight Yeah I did mean "blade tip". My bad, thank you for picking up on that. But, most swords can actually be held with a single hand, and those that require two hands to grip are normally greatswords, and those bad boys are much, MUCH bigger than regular swords (think 1.65 meters)
 
Antvasima said:
Perhaps close range charging attacks with weapons were included in the current approximation?
Click to expand...
That's where things get a little more iffy. If we go from the sternum to the arm, you're just adding another 20 cm to the equation.

Granted, you have to lean your body forward to get a proper thrust in, but the thing is, there are three types of swords in terms of how to use them. There are the swords meant for slashing (scimitars and cavalier sabers), swords meant for thrusting (rapiers), and swords that can be useful for both (katanas).
 
Following on, there is only own sword that I know of, the No-Dachi, that would even come close to piercing the 3m minimum for extended melee range. And this is supposed to include all swords
 
Polearms would probably be more featured here, but like 25 feet seems excessive to me too.

Edit: wait tired me can't do math, it's closer to 10ish. It still seems out there, but eh.
 
To save ourselves from massive amounts of editing:

Standard melee range (ranges from 50 cm to 3 meters)

  • Applies to fighters using mostly their arms and legs as weapons.
  • This includes most standard melee weapons, such as daggers, swords, axes, maces, et cetera.
Extended melee range (ranges from 3 to 10 meters)

  • Applies to most thrown weapons such as grenades, shurikens, and darts.
  • Includes some of the longest melee weapons such as spears, halberds, polearms, whips, et cetera.
 
I like Dargoo's suggestion.
 
This does mean that sword-weilding characters, most of which were extended melee range, need to be downgraded to standard, right?
 
@Crimson Azoth

I suppose so.

@Dargoo Faust

Are you willing to update the Range page?
 
Yeah, I'm cool with that.

Thankfully we have categories for characters by what weapon they use, so it should be less of a nightmare to update the pages.
 
Okay. Tell me here when you are done.
 
Done.

I strongly advise everyone here pleast browse throught categories such as Sword Users and update pages.

Perhaps we will need to pull another Immortality thing and get together a team to mass-edit the pages.
 
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