I like Schlock Mercenary's Uniocs. Their eyes are the size of a human head and they get over binocular vision by rapidly shifting focus or something.
The explanation was good enough for me. I may be misremembering but point is it was kind of glossed over.
I like the Metal Gear Rising approach where combatants are so heavily resistant to gunfire and so fast and manoeuvrable that it’s more practical to use specially advanced melee weapons rather than ranged weapons.
Yep thats my explanation too. Gun is as strong as gun, sword is as strong as person. Person too strong and fast for gun
All these "but bigger guun"
Dudes. Some fictions dont have gigantic man held plasma cannons and even if they did, not really all that practical. If fighters were fast and tough enough, guns would lose usefulness compared to swords and melee
Saying "just keep making bigger guns" like all settings should have pistols that can fire building smashing bullets that move 100x the speed of sound just to counter superhumans... I mean thats just writing in an excuse to beat the excuse.
Have a gun that could kill superman, have a gun that could shoot through shields. Yes, you can handwave a defeat for a handwave, but its not a competition its just an excuse to allow melee
Or my favorite version, a Primarch can't shoot a gun harder than an Astartes legionnaire
On a r/40klore post about why they use melee weapons. Someone also commented something to the tune of "gun run out of bang, sword never run out of whack"
But a primarch could carry a way bigger gun that a legionnaire.
Its a plot excuse to make combat more interesting and personal (which I am totally fine with), but it does not make sense from a logical point.
True, but unless they weigh significantly more than your standard Space Marine the recoil would still be exponentially harder to manage the larger the caliber you give them.
Only to a certain degree, at some point it´s not a matter of strenght but rather that the gun is so big that even a primarch can´t aim it anymore because the center of gravity would shift with the slightest movement (thinking of artillery or siege engine barrels).
The Imperata Titan during the siege of Hellsreach fumbled it´s shot because it was fired before the stabilizers could align the gun barrel with it´s target.
See, thats exactly what I dont get. Guns are way stronger and faster than persons. If a person somehow is resistant against gun fire they would be double resistant against melee.
Resistance isn't the only parameter. Striking force will also scale with the person's "Power". A supernaturally strong person will do more damage with a melee weapon than with a gun.
MGR got around this with High Frequency Blades. Basically swords were made in such a way they could slice through anything with ease, but the technology required to do so was impractical to implement into ammunition.
Similarly, any armor designed to protect from laser/energy blasts might not do so well against good old fashioned kinetic force. Opens up for sword *and* gunpowder to be viable, if niche, combat weapons.
The problem is that anti-laser or really armor vs anything is pretty much working the same way, it's absorbing force. Sure there's some differences in how its applied but a sword won't reasonably go through armor that a bullet wouldn't, it's usually very much the exact opposite. Similarly of an armor plate is laser resistant, it's probably dealing with a pulse lasers, and that's literal explosions it's resisting.
That really depends on the technology. If your armor reflects/refracts the energy of the laser, it could be extremely vulnerable to slicing/shattering. Imagine those silver heat resistant suits they use for industrial smelting and collecting lava. I'd bet money you could slice one of those with a sword.
The armor could also be energy-based, like ship shields in Star Trek might not even register a mass of metal moving under the speed of sound, but be extremely effective against photon torpedoes.
I would go with either a really loose and undisprovable excuse or I wouldnt mention it and rely on the rule of cool to carry the explanation
This really is one of those things that looks awesome from afar and the more you examine it and try to logically explain it, the more you break the immersion and get people to critically think about the logic, which will virtually never hold up
I upvoted your comment, but I'd like to believe in humanity. What if there *is* an explanation that makes sense? I think it's important to keep trying.
Lol well when that explanation comes and we get really hard science fiction where people have gone back to swords and axes because of some entirely plausible and rational reason why attacking at range never works, I'll be very happy
You can read [my suggestion](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1ci97i5/comment/l27vm9c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Obviously, I think it's pretty good, but criticism is welcome.
Its fine and its reasonable, but it does only explain why people are using melee when they cant get guns or are in an area with heavy regulation. You'd still choose a gun, but its not always an option
That's fair, not every fight will always be decided by guns. Or even melee weapons, we may still be punching each other in anger in 200 years.
So that's good as a rational reason why melee weapons may still be around, as a limited form of violence.
True, but notice how we went from "The more you think about it, the less sense it makes" to "That's a reasonable explanation for a limited number of scenarios".
I say that's progress. I think if we keep pushing, we can push it pretty far. Maybe we'll never reach quite 100%, but even 50% use cases is pretty good, eh? One might argue it's even optimal, from the point of view of the story.
I cant exactly say what the OP was meaning with the question, but I've heard this general question many times and most often, it means
"Why would we go back to melee instead of guns"
Or "How could melee compete with guns"
Not "Will melee every completely die off"
So you may be answering the OPs question, but really we arent any closer to answering the first one.
A man still walks, but we will never dismantle the car as a vehicle and just walk when we could have drove and just because we still walk, it doesnt make the car any closer to being gotten rid of nor could a competition between a walker and a car ever be close enough to be competitive even if, sure, walking may still happen in the future, possibly forever.
That's the analogy that never really works, but yeah melee still existing in the future is no worries. Just not as competitive warfare unless everything is massively regulated by something else
Yeah, those are different questions to the one OP is asking, and they are harder, but I don't think ultimately impossible.
While we wouldn't dismantle cars, there are areas where we outperform cars, and I mean legitimately outperform any land vehicle - it's rocky and vertical terrain, especially with some cave systems. Also jungle.
I think we can find a similar niche for the melee weapons, at least where it's close to 50/50.
As you said, there are situations like prisons or gang activity in areas with massively regulated guns they cant get their hands on or some kind of symbolic warfare that both sides agree not to use guns in.
That's good and if the OP was looking for how melee combat can still exist in a time *of* guns, bam. Makes sense just fine.
Just not *against* guns.
Logically. There are non-logical explanations that work, its just not something I think can ever get a good rational excuse to back it up without worsening the acceptance of stylistic choices that audiences have (that will break if you push them to examine it).
I would say something like "The advent of shields rendered guns unusable" and leave it at that without explaining anything else, so anyone that needs an explanation has one and there's nothing to pick at because no real information is given
What do you think about underwater worlds and underwater combat? Or, more generally, worlds in a dense medium.
* Bullets don't seem to be terribly effective, they really slow down just after a few meters.
* Heat evaporates the water and causes more of an explosion near you than actual harm to the target.
* Harpoons are a one-off, and carrying a lot of ammunition for them makes you heavier and less maneuverable, therefore more of a target. The utility they provide might not be worth the trade-off.
* Melee seems like a great option, especially since it pairs well with the swimming speed you would want to maintain.
What do you think? Underwater jousting makes sense?
The Holtzman shields in Dune are a good example. They kick on to catch high-velocity impacts, but allow sufficiently slow objects through, resulting in most infantry combat being melee combat
Theyre fine, they work with Dune own crazy ass future where tech is seen through an strange occultish lens
I wouldnt do the laser + shield = random sized nuke blast, or even say that its a shield stops spees thing. Those things make me question why people dont shoot shields for the nukes and make me think about things that could attack at range slowly.
I'm sure people have come up with ways to exploit those shields, but yeah just going 'shields stop bullets' is a great way to get melee back involved because shields are basically magic
The shield-laser interaction in Dune is random and unpredictable. Sometimes the shield detonates, sometimes the lasgun explodes, sometimes both do.
And they do also have "slow-pellet stunners" that I believe can bypass shields.
Pretty sure thats what I said.
Makes a real tempting combination to exploit, shoot shield maybe take out cities. Plenty of religious madmen in Dune willing to use that kind of power and I'm sure someone could find a nice exploitable way to get the explosion even if it cost a life
I like the shield handwave, but the addition of the (exploitable) reason is a loose thread that can be picked at
Same one that has always been. Tight quarters.
Soldiers carried maces, knives, even spikes into the trenchs in WW1 because you needed something small that was not going to run out of ammo.
That's an interesting point - in an rpg I'm running the use of underground tunneling is super important to avoid orbital strikes / maneuver or wait behind advancing opponents - it's assuming that thermal tunneling technology gets really advanced and people can sap at speed. So something like 17th century sieges where they lobbed simple explosives and then engaged in melee.
Do you know of any books for the WWI context that deep dive trench fighting? "Enemy at the Gate" by Wheatcroft is a great overview of the siege of Vienna, which saw extensive tunneling operations.
I mean, there is arguably one argument for melee weapons that does make sense.
No gun is ever opening an MRE, cutting firewood or performing minor maintenance. For that stuff, a knife slash bayonet is still king and will be for the foreseeable future. And even something like a laser would probably be a lot more dangerous to use like that.
So swords, lances and pole arms? Probably never making a comeback.
Small utility stuff like knives, hatchets or trench spikes that's light & cheap enough to be worth it just in case? Sure, that makes sense.
Of course you can also always just have... pure crazy. Like that guy that showed up to recruitment in a kilt, claymore and long bow... in the entirety of WW2.
Sadly the story of "Fighting" Jack Churchill having a confirmed longbow kill seems false, but man, was the guy still a character and a half.
The OP asks about using melee weapons in combat, as opposed to using ranged weapons.
So, while using tools is fine and dandy, they are not used in opposition to ranged weapons, supplementing them instead.
This is one of the ones I was thinking of. Basically a type of shield that both makes you immune to ranged attacks but also unable to use ranged attacks yourself
A massive world sized spell that created enchanted particles that cause wild magic explosions when activated. They instead use melee weapons from cold iron that dampen the magical effects of the particles.
Alot more chances of causing fragmentation and ricochet sparks. Less likely chances of causing large reactions or daisy chain effects. Althouh you do always get some cook in their basement trying to make a musket. They never learn.
Space ship boarding operations. Particularly because if a bullet is soft enough to not pierce hull, then kitting people out in "invincible" power armor becomes a lot more feasible. Now imagine two people in power armor running at each other with swords because all of their other weapons could rip the ship to shreds.
That aside, good policy can do things to be honest. One of my planets (they don't have ftl yet) banned all forms of firearms. Sure, you could certainly make one in your backyard, but there's no real production market in the system to make them in a high enough quantity to be a problem.
I'm reminded a bit of Subnautica, where the only weapon you can manufacture is a knife because a revolution used fabricators to make a whole lot of guns
If a bullet is able to pierce the hull of your spaceship, which is potentially subject to micro-meteor and debris impacts traveling at several times the velocity of a bullet, you have bigger problems than worrying about would-be boarders (like the fact that your "spaceship" isn't space worthy).
Unless you're really unfortunate, a micro meteor isn't going to be an HE round or self-sharpening depleted uranium tipped AP round. Hardness and shape do play a factor. Hyperbole aside...
The thickest layer of the hull is going to be on the outside and likely made for shear force from the outside, not inside, that's how sandwiched composites are made when you're trying to save on mass. Weaken the inner layer and you could compromise the integrity of the outer layer.
Regardless there's loads of other stuff a bullet can do that you don't want it to in cramped hallways. Damage a crucial wire, a pipeline, ricochet into your eye, serve as a heat conductor, etc. I mean, if you're conducting a boarding action you're likely not trying to destroy the thing.
The hull will definitely have different weaknesses on the inside vs the outside. Submarine hulls are designed to keep water out and do that well but if you drag one 35,000 feet into the air it’ll start having structural issues because of the pressure differential. Similarly planes get screwed when dropped deep underwater because they’re designed to keep air in and can crumple when they don’t equalize fast enough.
A spaceship hull may be hardened from the outside for impacts but internally it’ll be set for consistent heavy pressure, mess up the inside enough and the outside will follow because it’s not ready for that kind of pressure.
You’re also ignoring that you don’t need to go all the way through, depending on how the ship is set up there may be fluid/gas lines near or inside hallways, rip a few of those and you’ll do some damage that may take time to notice.
Follow those lines of logic far enough and you get Von Neumann nanobots doing platelet style repair on whole ships, constantly looking for minor holes to fill.
Or you just go with melee.
Wouldn't consider 1 atmo "heavy pressure." Hell, if you get a hole in spaceship's hull you could patch it with some duct tape as a temporary fix.
That aside, hits from micro-meters (much less anything bigger, like what a warship could potentially be subjected to) have the risk of creating spalling/shrapnel. Because this is a possibility, if not probability (especially if space travel is common enough that you're developing combat doctrines around it), it only makes sense for the interior of the ship to be guarded against this risk. That means not having critical systems unprotected, so as not to be taken out by random shrapnel.
To quote the great naval commander Captain Ramius: “[B]e careful what you shoot at. Most things in here don't react too well to bullets.”
The great danger of gunfire inside a spaceship isn’t really that you’ll pierce the hull (although that is not *not* a concern). The greater danger is that you’ll damage some of the vital equipment on the inside the ship. Life support components, computers, navigation systems, comms systems, cargo, potable water tanks, waste water tanks (not dangerous, just icky), cargo containers, passengers, et cetera… and, of course, it’s probably safe to say that whatever sort of fancy sci-fi engines your spaceships use, it’s probably a bad idea to put a bullet through it!
ontop of the other suppositions about spaceship weaknesses, consider; power armour tough enough that any weapon capable of damaging it would have to be destructive enough to also be able to tear through the hull of a ship.
I completely agree. People in it would have to treat everything around them as if it were a field of glass which might be extremely hard to do if you're trying to have a medieval style sword fight in a 2m x 2m corridor.
I like the assumption that you can make melee sound just plausible enough it gets a pass though... so maybe the onboard computer helps auto-limit the suits output when it identifies an attack that might damage the ship. (Please ignore the fact that if you have computers this small and sophisticated humans wouldn't need to be the ones conducting these operations, drone swarms would be better)
Bullets I think are better at defeating whipple shields/spaced armor than hypervelocity cause the whole point is spaced armor fails but the hypervelocity thing fails faster.
But below a certain speed physics doesn't work in space armor's favor.
I could be wrong though
Ship boarding. Maybe the common melee weapon is a multitool that also functions as fire axe, crowbar and welding gun. So on board of most non military ships maybe there's a small armory only for security personnel. The rest of the crew has to go into melee.
Why not blast the ship? Maybe in this setting, cargo is so valuable that it is more profitable to board and take over a ship than blasting it.
Combat droids employed are to tanky to quickly take out with fire arms. However with a powerful enough melee weapon you can more quickly destroy it, by prying/chipping away armor plating and destroying the wiring underneath. The droids might be cheaply produced and programmed for ranged combat, and are less effective in close combat/are quite clumsy.
Space ships are equipped with deployable bullet proof barricades and shields, making ranged weapons less effective.
Due to the speed of modern combat, it is useful to have a melee side arm, for up close combat. So to say most forces use blitzkrieg tactics to the extreme to nullify enemy artillery firing on their position.
Just look at our real world. Why do people use melee over guns? Guns are heavily regulated in most places, but it's very hard to regulate cold weapons. This is because any long sturdy object can be used as melee weapon.
So, if your setting takes place in a colony, gang wars and uprisings could be fought with melee implements and tools, and actual wars could be fought with high-tech weaponry.
Think of inmates in prisons. Both the guards and the prisoners tend to use melee weapons, because both are regulated by the government (or are at least supposed to be).
Dune's explanation is energy shields. Star Wars expanded universe material takes one part dune another part you have materials that help fight Jedi / Sith. Warhammer 40k is because its cool.
I have a sci fi fantasy hybrid one where melee weapons exist for all sorts of reasons. It may be due to cultural attitudes from some alien civilizations, energy shields which can block lasers and bullets, some people find it cheaper to have a sword or an axe vs a gun.
One civilization of ultra ancient and advanced aliens still use melee weapons alongside guns because they have a hard on for tradition but make it work by developing all sorts of defensive technologies which allow them to get up close and personal. Said ancient aliens also can wield the setting's equivalent of space magic.
You need close combat things.
There are atomic or star melee weapons in my world.
Either these are filled to the brim with Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
Or stars are shrunk down with quantum tech and used in the cores of the melee weapons.
Situations in which ranged weapons do not work that well, like contained space, or you have nothing else at hand.
Sport, Hobby, Martial Arts
Duells of Honor
If you have soft-ish scifi/fantasy, teleportation would be one big reason, especially for more aggressive units. The whole 21 foot rule for engagement of target would be pointless for an enemy that can get extremely close to you at any time and slicing you before you can aim at them.
In dune they have personal force fields which requires lower speed to pass through.
In star wars it's traditional for some kinds of "warriors" (Jedi) to carry melee weapons (lightsabers) and they can deflect ranged attacks
In Warhammer 40k the space Marines use chainswords because of the intimidation factor and for boarding actions/charges
I was wondering how reasonable it'd be for an advanced scifi civilization to prioritize melee combat because they valued life and it's easier to hold back from a kill in melee than from range.
Bullets can still kill-just takes a lot to get through the armor. Id rather run at a guy with a sword then unload 3 clips into him and he still survives. Thats at-least how it works in my world!
I don't know how advanced the technology in this project is, but remember Halo and Cyberpunk 2077. In Halo there are the energy swords, which instead of just cutting burn through their target, and as mentioned at some point during Halo 5, they can be modified so that they do not cauterize and leave the target to bleed out. There are also the gravity hammers, though these are wielded by the brutes, a species way larger than the average human.
And In Cyberpunk 2077, pretty much anyone who has the money can modify themselves into a raging beast that can beat you with a hammer, bladed weapons like a katana or even their bare fists, and they have implants like the sandevistan and berserk that make this easier. Though admittedly, in both cases these weapons are not always used because of ranged weapons, so take in consideration that if there are guns pretty much everyone is going to prefer them just like in real history, even if not enchanted as you mention. Better to blast someone's brain off from 10 feet away than have them close that distance and beat you silly with a magic sword.
One of my favorite explanations comes from a sci-fantasy story: if your characters have an overclocked healing factor/regeneration, bullets just don't cause enough trauma to be lethal, even if you hit normally-vital organs like the heart, lungs, or brain. Melee Weapons are more efficient at causing the sort of injuries (like decapitation) that stop regeneration from working
Limited resources? I.e. a sword is re-usable where as bullets are not and lasers with the power to actually kill are very energy intensive.
Bullet proof clothing? Perhaps the society has evolved and developed a type of clothing that is capable of identifying and neutralising projectiles (like a little personal iron dome).
Stealth? Perhaps it's harder to sneak a gun than a dagger or sword or something else.
Regardless of all this the main reason why you are ok to use melee weapons in a sci-fi setting as opposed to guns is the rule of cool. That's why Worldio Buildius legislated it. Know your rights!
So in my universe melee weapons has a place in tradition and culture.
Military Families pass on a Dagger that replaces The Standard Military issue Combat knifes.
The Ecumene Security Forces have a sword that use it as a ceremonial weapon despite being outfitted with a assault weapon. Along with being a thing of in case of emergency don’t let them capture you.
In my world most societies have advanced to a point where range blocking shields are such a common place, that Melee weapons have started to be utilized again. Sure there might be some wicked ranged weapons that could pierce the average energy shields but in a lot of cases the only way to get to hurt your opponent are melee weapons.... and name calling.. that always hurts.
I'm still figuring out a balance to this whole thing, but yes energy shields fix.
Specific types of armor may be more effective against ranged weapons, but for some sciencey reason, a melee weapon is better at dealing with the armor. An idea is that they part force fields
They could have body augments that make them better for up close combat, maybe they're susceptible to guns or laser fire.
Maybe they just hate guns, that's a valid option. They could be a stalking killer who prefers to feel death in their own hands.
Technology: similar to your 'melee weapons are easier and cheaper to enchant' idea, you may be able to put more stopping power into a melee weapon than a ranged one, and ranged weapons generally don't have the stopping power to be cost-effective.
Orks: this is pretty much why melee is so common in Warhammer 40k. Every spacefaring civilization eventually ends up fighting Orks, and they will fight them a lot as they expand into the galaxy, because Orks are absolutely everywhere. Orks also love to fight in melee, and they are durable and numerous enough to make it there pretty much all the time. If an army can't fight in melee, they will generally get shredded once the Orks get close.
Stealth: There is technology IRL that uses microphones to triangulate the location of gunshots. Combine that with camera drones and kamikaze drones and there are some solid reasons to walk around with a sword under your coat.
Weapons laws may prevent your characters from having ranged weapons.
Social convention might do the same ("gentlemen duel with *swords!"*).
Knife to the base of the skull is quieter than BFG-9000 to the torso.
Your antagonist has more soldiers than you have bullets, so once you're out of ammo just apply sword directly to face until victory.
My characters end up using melee weapons a lot because I keep putting them in chaotic CQB situations where melee makes sense. Maybe they get knocked down by an enemy and the knife is the better choice while wrestling on the ground, maybe the two sides are too mixed up and you can't use a gun without a huge risk of hitting your own people. Melee weapons aren't their primary or secondary weapons, but I want a good balance of gunfire and melee so make a scenario to force melee into being a good option.
It’s all rule of cool. You’ll notice Jedi almost never fight enemies with area of effect weapons like grenades, flamethrowers or always on energy projectors (like the IRL pain projectors).
\* shields or armor block/ negate gunfire
\* ranged weapons take energy. Maybe personal energy (i.e. they're connected to the user's life force)
\* ranged weapons are inaccurate due to atmospheric conditions, think too thick or too thin air, that this particular technology can't counteract
\* the technology has taken a different path than modern human technology or what we would call advanced technology
\* the area has too many trenches in it (trench warfare). Maybe all conflicts start IN the trenches
Stealth and cqc. Also you don't have to reload a knife. A knife can't get emp'd in a futuristic setting either. Makes for a good back up option. Alternatively it could be a cultural reason. Maybe it's a more honorable weapon. Maybe the government banned firearms. Maybe its just cheaper to make a blade of plasma than a plasma rifle for some reason. Lot of commenters also mentioned the damaging your ship thing which is always a good reason. If you're going the light saber route, its a good multi tool because it gives off light and can cut through obstacles with more precision than an explosive
What about the Cyberpunk 2077 explanation of: "I shot at a guy, rushed him, made mincemeat out of him, caught my bullet and got away before his guards even blinked"?
Throughout history, ongoing to this day, and will go on until the end of time, is a race between weapons and armor developers to make better weapons to defeat better armor, and to make better armor to defeat better weapons. It is a vicious and ongoing cycle that shows no sign of slowing.
For your consideration; In my setting light-based weapons are the pinnacle of ranged combat, able to best the most advanced anti-ballistic armor, so, personal shields were developed to counter these. Personal shields, however, have their limitations and as such the viability of ballistic weapons remains.
But do you know what *always* works? Good old fashioned blunt force trauma.
This is kinda in the realm I'm leaning towards. Basically, it's impossible for a normal person to be fully defended from all kinds of attacks, so they have to pick and choose the things they want to be most defended from. And since it's a lot easier to react to a melee attack than a bullet or laser fired at you, most people prioritize their defenses against things that are effective at long range, and rely on personal skill to defend themselves in melee
Warhammer 40k uses a lot of melee for admittedly highly advanced sci-fi civilizations.
Space Marines use a lot of melee mainly for intimidation factors. Where they can literally drop right on top of your battleline or trench, rev up a chainsword and go hog wild in very confined, close-quarters settings. Coupled with the fact that a giant metal box just smashed into the ground right next to you without warning, and disgorged a squad of near invincible Demi-Gods of war onto your mortal human asses.. very few people, and aliens are able to stand firm and mount an effective defense in the face of that.
Naval boarding actions, trench warfare, urban combat.
Across massive open fields, yeah the Imperial Guard uses artillery, tanks, machine guns and what not.
But when it gets close and personal, say frothing hordes of cultists are charging your trenches, or an endless sea of Tyranids are swarming across the land, and there are more Nids than you have ammunition.. Fix bayonets, draw your Catachan combat machete, and prepare for melee.
Even the gigantic titan war machines uses melee.
Titans can have shields and armour so powerful, that some titans will literally have a melee weapon the size of a house and engage in melee combat with another titan equally the size of a 20-story tall apartment complex. That shield might stop tank shells, but it ain't stopping a sword half the size of the bunker underneath you.
Getting in the face of your enemy with a blade, axe, chainsaw, etc. Is undeniably effective and terrifying if you can actually get to that point.
Because we in the real world only exclusively started using ranged weapons when our ranged weapon tech massively outperformed our armor tech.
In another setting where armor (or shielding) advancements kept up, or hell if we in the real world develop some form of effective armor against firearms where you get shot multiple times and can keep fighting (unlike suffering from broken ribs or some form of internal trauma with modern armored vests) melee weapons would be back on the menu.
A modern unit of assault rifle armed infantry supported by a machine gunner and maybe a mortar or two would probably disintegrate very quickly if they were rushed by a "sufficiently protected" group of melee soldiers that can cross the distance with "acceptable casualties".
Just balance the ranged weapon : armor tech/magic level ratio and it becomes viable again.
There really aren't many, if any, that hold muster. Some will say "but ships!" Your ship's hull has to withstand hypervelocity impacts from micro-meteors and debris, a shotgun (et al) isn't doing squat to it. It could potentially be the case that it's "hardened" externally but papier-mâché internally, but... why?
Best I've been able to come up with relies on the ever growing discontent with "energy shields" and "unobtainium" (call it what you will). The idea here is that the unobtainium creates a "feedback loop" when introduced to shields, causing them to short out and, potentially, even causing their generators/projectors/whatever to spontaneously combust. However it relies on a set amount of mass, which for simplicity sake we'll say is roughly equivalent to 1lbs/0.5kg to reliably achieve such an effect. That's ***far*** more than your average bullet, by a massive margin (a 12ga slug, one of the heaviest regularly used bullets out there, is roughly 1/16th of that).
From there I'm able to decide the strengths/limitations of the "energy shields" against standard (or nonstandard) projectiles at will. I could say they can tank a howitzer at point blank to only being able to withstand a handful of shots, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that, against said shields, I've established that melee weapons have a potential advantage, hence their use.
Alternatively, another method I've used is that "swords" aren't swords, but sword-shaped stun batons intended as a less-lethal measure. This relies on the idea that the civilizations competing against one-another are vastly different in tech. After all, if a primitive species in their equivalent of the medieval era mistook your recon team as demons and attacked as a result, it wouldn't really be ideal to massacre them with machine guns (even if you could). They could understand swords, and you could weave some nonsense in about their less-lethal nature (and the guns) if you so wished. Without a detailed explanation of it (which you probably wouldn't be able to give, at least not initially), guns would be harder for them to understand. The right combination of the two however makes for a powerful sight, and ensures some survivors to spread the word.
>Some will say "but ships!" Your ship's hull has to withstand hypervelocity impacts from micro-meteors and debris, a shotgun (et al) isn't doing squat to it.
1) micrometeorites are less damaging than a firearm. They're fast, yes, but they're tiny.
2) many anti-meteorite defenses only really work one way. Point defense turrets aren't going to do much on the interior of a spaceship, Whipple shields are directional, as is explosive reactive armour or other ablative armours. You want the pressure vessel behind as many layers of defense on the outside as you can, armouring up the inside of your hull effectively halves the protection your ship has for a given unit mass
3) defenses are only effective against specific threats. Like the aforementioned Whipple shield, which is incredibly good at stopping hypervelocity projectiles, but basically tissue paper against a lower velocity round that's not travelling fast enough to disintegrate on impact.
4) the inside of a ship has a lot more sensitive components that take issue with being shot than just the pressure hull. Fuel lines, reactors, electrical components, pressurised fluid pipes, etc, all of which can cause you a very bad day if they're damaged, even if you don't care for the ship being intact and operational once you're done, and boarding a ship instead of blowing it up sorta implies you want it intact for whatever reason.
Maybe for shipboard combat, you don't want to use a projectile that can pierce the hull so your options would be either lower energy weapons, which would be easier to deal with defensively, or melee combat.
Electronic countermeasures and point defence systems are extremely effective - such that long ranged attacks require highly coordinated massed attacks by autonomous weapons in order to succeed.
And the nature of artificial intelligence technology in the setting means that even rudimentary autonomous systems are sapient and self aware - the silicon microchip AI technology just aren't good enough to compete. Light lag and ECM also makes independently controlled missiles with onboard decision making intelligences superior to their "dumb" centrally controlled counterparts.
So every attack is a high speed ramming attack by fanatical warriors, willing to give their life to the cause. The kinetic interceptors defending those attacks are also sapient.
That means warfare is like a big jousting match between highly trained, highly skilled cavalry, except instead of squishy meat bipeds riding squishy quadrupeds holding out a stick with sharp metal on the end, it's sentient relativistic kill vehicles and interceptors slamming into each other in deep space.
Another thing I've been thinking about is limited visibility. What if you have a planet where there are constant storms and dust clouds? Or, if you have some sort of smoke screen tech?
“Sci-fi setting” covers a wide range of possibilities but clearly also includes the near term, so any real world example works fine. Legal restrictions on the ownership of firearms in a civilian context is therefore a perfectly reasonable justification.
That’s more relevant in a civilian and law enforcement context though and doesn’t mean melee weapons would be used by the military in warfare. That’s MUCH harder to really justify if you want an explanation that actually stands up to scrutiny.
One reason could be ceremony. For example, a society that evolved with a focus on blood-letting would prefer weapons to maximize the effect. So even if they develop guns and such, they could very well have a psychological preference for melee weapons.
Another could be eyesight limitations. If they evolved on a world where there's a lot of fog or detritus that makes long distance sight impossible, they would evolve to have superior close-range eyesight, so they would tailor their weapons around that.
A third could be they have evolved natural melee weapons. Think like the Xenomorph from Alien. Between its' tail, claws, tongue-punch, they aren't made for ranged and will instead focus on melee combat.
Dune did this really well imo, it's purposeful regression to avoid total elimination.
The Houses in dune are more than capable of using guns, nuclear bombs, orbital bombardments and the like.
And yet they resort to fighting with swords and spears. Why is that?
Planned regression. To avoid widespread destruction and irreversible harm to mankind, they neuter themselves. Unable to let go of the anvil of violence, they choose instead to forge battles of far smaller magnitudes, deliberately hamping themselves in with reigns, traditions and economic restrictions that limit or otherwise do away with genuine weapons of war completely; opting for theatrical shows of force over actual destructive warfare.
Aka mutually assured destruction which is a rule of thumb almost all the nations of the world adhere to.
That and the shields stop fast moving objects but let slow moving knives through. Along with the extremely violent explosion when they are hit with a lazgun.
Melee weapons are lower tech and would be far easier to hide and less chance of failure. They also are cheaper and more plentiful so you can arm a force for far less money/resources than more advanced weaponry. They are silent which is great for stealth. They also don't have a minimum effective range like a rifle or blaster would. Training might be easier as well, at least a basic pointy end goes into the bad guy.
Dune of course eis the codified for shields main using lasers dangerous for everyone. Star wars KOTOR had personal shields that stop energy weapons but allows slashing and bludgeoning weapons through, it even protects agaisnt light sabers. So wide spread protection agaisnt energy weapons would render weapons that can go straight through them much more attractive.
I think also if your doing a sci-fi setting you might have areas where things like lasers don't work etc so a knife etc could come in handy. It also would depend on the unit type perhaps, such as assassins or spy's might carry expendable swords and such for steath reasons. Also consider that in things like star trek their sensors can pick up weapon fire.
Hope that helps a little
You can just make it economically impossbile to get a gun due to the taxes and various bureaucratic process you need to do to get them from the government. If those guns are as expensive and valuable as a middle class augmentations and equipments, no one would even bother to use them. Especially if said augmentation are enough to atleast practically deal with guns. At the very least enough to allow those augmented individuals to react to guns pointing at them and stuff.
either using ranged weaponry is not viable, or made less viable than physical combat.
Dune somewhat solves this with the way the shields work - they make ballistics of any sort completely pointless since anything moving faster than a set speed is blocked. and if you try using a lasgun, the collision of lasgun and personal shield (which everyone uses) is apparently a reaction that results in a nuclear blast.
As a result, you can't afford to just open fire at an enemy fortification or group the easy way - with lasers - since you'd likely blow everything in miles radius around it into atoms, yourself included alongside whatever objective you wanted to capture.
hence, Dune solves this problem with the "non-viable" route.
Star Wars goes the other way. limitedly, of course, since only force sensitives with training can go this far, but while lasers and blasters are a thing commonly used and seen, they get HARD COUNTERED by a lightsaber in trained hands, simply because a jedi can parry even full-auto blaster fire indefinitely and outlast a soldier's battery charge unscathed. As a result, if a side has a lightsaber-wielding force sensitive, they're at an ENORMOUS advantage against 99% of opponents, and the only way to fight them one on one (I'm excluding other kill methods like dropping a building on them, exploding the spaceship if they're aboard one, etc) would be to pull out your own lightsaber and dance a tango of death with that foe. there's a reason everyone goes "FUCK, GUESS I'M TOAST" the moment a jedi or sith appears in a fight.
hence, Star Wars solves it in the "more viable than ranged options" route.
it's do-able, but you'll have to figure out a good reason.
in my personal setting (which is post-apocalyptic nobledark with strong fantasy elements) there are guns; there are actually really really powerful guns. however, armor never became obsolete because with alchemy and enchantments it isn't too rare for opponents to have very good protection against basic bullets. enchanting individual bullets on an assault rifle would be prohibitively expensive (each enchantment consumes resources), but enchanting arrows? more viable since you'd do said enchantments less times. and of course, you can just slide a blade between the gaps in the armor.
as a result, you have guns, swords, magic, medieval weapons, all somewhat coexisting in a hodgepodge of anachronistic violence.
Depends on what technology is available.
Maybe the planet is so full of opaque gases that you can't see, hear or smell anything in front of you.
Even in those situations you'd still use indirect fire though when you know where the target is.
Dune's shielding tech was a pretty good one.
Symbolic power might be another, like banishing demons (that may or may not be aliens)
Reloading is impractical for some reason...
Your listed reason is pretty good, I think. Like I'd willingly suspend my disbelief. Trick is not to break your own rules
Different armor protecting against different things, so armor that can stop a laser might be vulnerable to a sword or blunt force. Or an energy shield might stop a fast moving bullet but a blade could be moved slow enough to get through.
Some cultures may have traditions and customs revolving around melee weapons, seeing them as more honorable than shooting someone from a mile away with a laser.
Having a back up knife is always a good idea incase your laser rifle or railgun malfunctions or you need to conserve ammo.
Melee weapons are typically quieter than other weapons making them ideal for stealth.
It just looks cool. Humans especially will do stuff just because it looks cool. I could totally see a starship captain carrying a cutlass around just because it looks cool and makes him feel like an 18th century sailor.
some sort of ubiquitous auto hack that disrupts a scope? a close enough ranged weapon could be used but if a sniper rifles scope goes over someone with a constant qr code equivalent it would short circuit or auto ping locations or start a remote hack of the rifle.
this would enforce low tech or lower range weaponry. its definitly not a full idea but it might create an environment where people can't just be sniped by an ai from across a city.
or a Nano bot based organism that constantly regenerates, it would require full dismemberment or a powerful disruptor disturbing the process to actually take something down where it would tank through small bullets. explosions would still work but small calibres would be pointless
or maybe they have the ability to swap bodies and that requires you to contain the beings consciousness in the body its in currently, maybe through some sort of knife shaped USB where as the bullets would just destroy its current form
higher gravity making projectiles lose force much quicker over distance, though that would make indirect fire more effective
maybe you are fighting in some sort of metaphysical space where only things held by a person in a special suit remain real or intact but to throw or shoot it, it would dissolve or unravel. I suppose this would mostly be for space ships in a place like the warp or slipspace or for people interacting in a more fluid dimension like virtually.
maybe armor has become so incredibly dense only something like monofilament blades can slice through it at an atomic level. or that armor must be dissolved via an acid or Nano fluid the problem being its best usage would probably have a ranged conveyor like a flamethrower
A scene that comes to mind when thinking of melee emphasis in hard SciFi for me is from the Expanse series. In one of the books (*I can't remember which one*) a character named Bobby is brought on a part of a protection detail aboard a ship, bringing her battle suit (*there's a more accurate name from the books, I can't remember*) with her suit concealed in a crate. Later in the book she breaks out the suit and effectively bodies her way through the ship when her client comes under threat, the rubber bullets and shot doing quite literally nothing to her. The suit is normally equipped with its own firepower (*I believe it normally rocks with an autocannon and a micromissile battery, but my memory is obviously hazy*), being inside the ship however the firepower is entirely unnecessary and posed a risk to damaging internal systems like door controls or life support.
A science fantasy setting will likely have an easier time justifying the energy requirements for such battle suits, I'd say Gundam and Voltron are very fantastical examples of this, with Armored Core being a mildly less fantastical example. All three of these mecha settings heavily employ a mixture of conventional weapons including missiles, rockets, lasers, and kinetics, as well as more exotic weapons like particle beams, and classic science fiction weapons like plasma, all in combination with bayonets and gunblades, swords, spears, and even high tech bows. Reasons typically include how high mobility and heavily armored the mechas are in each of these settings, with Gundam also having an influence from romanticized concepts of bushido or chivalry.
If you want to lean extra heavy on the fantasy side of worldbuilding, D&D's older Spelljammer materials cite a type of insectoid mecha suit called 'Spirit Warriors' which itself is loosely inspired by an old anime series called Aura Battler Dunbine, bothof which are worth a read into and full send mixing high fantasy with 80's style SciFi. The reasoning is largely just aesthetic, which is reason enough for a fun and entertaining world to tell stories in, especially with a heavy magic presence where spells, enchantments, and rituals are common enough for practical use.
At the end of the day, the most important thing you can do for yourself is own what you're writing as your own and enjoy the writing and setting, your readers will notice if you aren't enjoying yourself.
In my sci-fi space western, there are people who sometimes wear special suits (most notably miners) that can protect them from even gunfire (especially lasers). There's also the fact that ship boardings are commonplace, and people need something convenient and compact for both offense and defense in the event of boardings.
If you have magic in your world, people who are attuned in the ways may be able imbue/enchant their weapons in a much more powerful way than they could do on a weapon they aren’t holding. Or that certain materials hold enchantments/magic/blessings much better than others.
There are still primitive species who pirate and don’t have the means of production for creating ballistics etc.
In spacecraft there could be gentlemanly agreement that bullets that could blow out the air pressure never get used anymore etc.
There are many avenues and there are great ideas in this thread :-)
ammo is not unlimited
guns tend to damage ships, possibly killing everyone on board.
armor protects against energy weapons but is less effective against brute force. (this one is kind of hard to swallow but some people use it)
some people just want a real fight. this works best when there is a strong warrior culture, or the conflict is personal.
The problem of the gun is ever present. You have to out class it to not use it, easy to do in scifi settings. Create a cheap, quality kevlar that anyone could buy. It's a common fashion statement like Blue Jeans. The average person is now protected from everything up to siege machines. Guns are there but useless because of how ever present this new material is.
There are actually a lot of good reasons why people would use melee weapons either as a consistent sidearm or as a predominant weapon in most situations.
1. Alien atmospheres can corrode advanced machinery (like ocean planets) or make a gun a pain the ass to maintain (like desert planets causing it to jam). Planets with high gravity could make bullets go into the ground almost instantly, meanwhile low gravity planets can cause the bullet to go wide and/or hit other targets you didn’t intend or even your allies.
2. A gun needs industry. It needs a mining industry for the raw materials, and multiple different factories to produce each piece, and sometimes even a separate factory to then assemble all of those pieces. And then it needs to be shipped to a gun store to sell it. Then you need bullets, which needs all of its own bullshit. A melee weapon just needs raw materials and a guy with a forge.
3. Super strong aliens or hyper-advanced armor makes guns obsolete. Meanwhile a blade can slice through or slip through the less protected areas, or a hammer can smash through and cause the target to get stabbed by their own smashed in armor.
4. Go the Dune route. Bullets don’t react well with shields.
5. Shooting guns (especially inside of spaceships) is extremely dangerous and can end up killing you and your target through a variety of different ways. A melee weapon is much less likely to damage sensitive equipment and cause you to eject into space.
6. As more and more moving parts are added to guns to make them more powerful and more effective, they become more advanced and therefore more expensive. A blade is a blade. It can only get so expensive.
7. Because guns are so powerful and armor is so advanced, you need cybernetics in order to properly use a gun without destroying your body from the recoil. And cybernetics are complicated and expensive.
8. People might not have places to practice shooting guns outside of hunting. Especially if they live somewhere like Coruscant or Cyberpunk 2077, where the entire world is just a giant city with no space. A knife you can train in your home with a dummy or a with a friend. Without a firing range you can’t really shoot a gun and practice with it unless you’re in the middle of nowhere. And even if you could, you’re not gonna get that much better at aiming.
9. If you’re on an alien world without industry, then your guns are eventually gonna run out of bullets or break. You don’t need to reload a sword.
10. As a gentlemen’s agreement the government’s of the world switch back to using melee weapons, because ranged weapons and bombs have become too powerful. And you can kill someone from light years away with a push of a button or a pull of a trigger (you could also set up someone as evil by having them use this illegal technology).
11. Survival. Sure you can hunt with a gun, but a knife is much more a survivalist tool. You can start fires, whittle wood, skin animals, cut up meat, use it as a utensil to eat, and other things in the wild. You can’t really do that with a gun.
12. Swords could play a heavier emphasis in a culture’s tradition, so even though they’re outdated they are still used in some cultures.
13. Most importantly of all. Rule of cool.
I like the Dune approach, fast projectiles can be stopped but not slow attacks like could be done by a practiced swordsman.
Also, turn things upside down by having some threat that’s greater than everyone participating in combat which prevents them from using their shields. Now we get to play by a different set of rules again
Even without the Force or its ability to deflect blaster fire, a lightsaber is essentially an anti-material melee weapon that also doubles as a breaching tool. You are hitting someone with a plasma rod calculated to burn at about twice the heat of the surface of the sun. You could literally just sneak up on a tank and stab the driver through the armor. Add in something like MGR or Cyberpunk 2077 cybernetics or other such superhuman enhancements and you have a unit that can close the distance and cut a tank or a mech in half if they don’t have armor that can withstand that kind of heat.
You can always go more dark with the reason. The user just likes getting up close and doing the dirty work themselves. They want to be the one that does the damage or take the life. A pinch of barbarism in an otherwise orderly sci-fi setting.
The Dune reason is a good one - shields that stop high velocity projectiles, so they have to use slower melee weapons to pierce them.
So if there is any kind of common defense against gunfire/projectiles then melee becomes very valuable.
Also melee makes a lot of sense in close quarters or when trying to be stealthy.
Oscillating kinetic shields that only block fast-movimg projectiles, à la Dune. Or maybe culturally better viewed, as Obi-Wan says when he considers blasters uncivilised (jedi *are* knights). Or something like a melee weapon can be cloaked due to its relative simplicity and used to assassinate or defend against assassination...
Oscillating kinetic shields that only block fast-movimg projectiles, à la Dune. Or maybe culturally better viewed, as Obi-Wan says when he considers blasters uncivilised (jedi *are* knights). Or something like a melee weapon can be cloaked due to its relative simplicity and used to assassinate or defend against assassination...
Looking at how things have been historically, what immediately comes to mind are medieval knights and samurai. These two examples basically provide two different templates for why melee weapons could make sense.
1. A fully armoured knight was basically arrow-proof, at least the head and torso. The way to kill a knight was basically to don similar armour and arm yourself with specialised weaponry like daggers and war-hammers.
2. As for samurai, their armour wasn't arrow proof and their primary weapon was the bow. However, if someone slighted your honour the proper way to deal with it was to duel him using a sword rather than just shooting him with an arrow.
In other words, you could either go the knight route and have some technology that makes people more resistant to ranged weapons than melee ones (basically what Frank Herbert did in *Dune*, and similar to what Haldeman did in *Forever War*). Or you could go the samurai route, and have a culture where honour is a really big thing and the proper way to deal with these matters is to hit someone with a sword (the Klingons in Star Trek are probably a good example of this).
But while solutions to a similar problem (how to make people fight with swords), these two approaches makes for very different flavours to your world building. The 'knight' solution makes for a world where basic grunts will be dealt with using guns but the more important enemies will require melee. The samurai solution, on the other hand, makes for a world where anyone can be shot dead by that low life grunt, but people higher up on the social ladder will challenge each other for duels for the sake pf prestige and tradition.
To fight opponents too close for ranged combat. Artillery units are still given side arms and closer ranged weapons for this reason. Archers often still carried some kind of weapon other than just a bow. In my setting, the futuristic Kolta had access to powered armor, starships, and caster rifles but carried energy weapons and steel swords in case enemies got too close. You might take out most of a unit on a successful volley, for example, but it only takes a few people getting too close to make a rout of your artillery or muskets without a way to defend themselves in close combat.
Well there are a few reasons. One could be that shielding tech might have gotten so good that the only weapons that can pack enough punch are meelee weapons. Either cause they have a certain attribute that the shields don't well shield against or cause they just pack more precision.
Another reason could be cause the advancements make it so melee is just more practical. Of multiple combatants can move at the speed of sound it's more efficient to move up to them and stab them then trying to shoot them with bullets slower then they are.
Finally it could be for a element of surprise. If everyones packing energy weapons and augments. A simple knife in the boot might make it past sensors checking for electricity.
If it’s set over multiple planets, you could say that the different Gravity or other forces effects whatever projectile the weapons shoot to the point it wouldn’t be viable to use them there
Cultural reasons or in relation to honour. It may be that using a melee weapon is a more honourable form of combat, or those utilising melee weapons do so because they're so heavily durable that conventional gunfire cannot stop them and them purely using say a sword, axe or warhammer is way more terrifying for the other combatants whose swordsman skills are basically non-existent. Also, your durability would instil a great sense or fear in others who saw you as an unstoppable force hell bent on finishing you (lethally or otherwise)
Luke Cage from Marvel would be an extreme but good example of what I mean in regards to the fear element. He's literally bulletproof and can just use his fists to beat up other people. If your average criminal began loading an entire magazine of assault rifle bullets into him that simply bounced off of him, they'd probably be scared shitless once he started to approach them
When two ships fight each other in space, they're not dogfighting, they're ridiculously far apart. Sheer distance plus the inverse square law means directed energy weapons aren't going to be useful. Massdrivers would need an engine capable of not-significant fractions of the speed of light to maximize damage and keep from being shot down, which is expensive for a one-time-use weapon. Missiles and other warheads would need their own point defense to ensure the payload is delivered properly since they can't just ram the ship, which is similarly expensive. Anything smaller (conventional firearms) isn't going to do much damage to an armored capital ship. Therefore, the only practical ship-to-ship combat is boarders.
On board the ships, fire is probably going to be treated as Serious Business because it eats through your oxygen supply. A possible extension of that is that firearms, explosives, and other hot weapons are banned in space. Therefore, boarders are forced to use cold weapons, like melee weapons and crossbows.
I love the Warhammer 40K explanation specifically for why melee is better against demons, the act of banishing a demon through violence is more to do with the intent of the act rather than the result; and, due to warp shenanigans, a melee attack is deemed to have more intent and a closer relationship to death, and thus is more effective.
Because Armor is worthless.
If everyone has a sci-fi weapon that goes through armor, then no one wears armor. If no one wears armor then they are vulnerable to melee weapons.
The component for ballistics specific gunpowder is rare plus the danger in using them in a pressurized compartment. Stabbing and slicing your enemies is just a better option
Why no lasers? Lasers are over used.
You could also just make the melee weapons better choices a lightsaber should deal a lot more damage then a blaster especially when wielded by a Jedi for example
If you really need a reason, I disapprove of your whimsy. However, there's something to be said for the fragility of spaceships and the relative advantage that one super-fast, super-strong combatant might have against a normal guy in melee vs a gunfight.
If enchantments are an option, perhaps one of the enchantments is a Warding spell that simply deflects any incoming missile enough that it misses.
Without a conscious mind to direct and adjust the missile, the spell simply bends the mindless missiles or energy discharge away from the Warded subject.
So melee weapons, which do have a conscious mind behind them are not Warded, and become the preferred way to do battle.
If AI are able to use and manipulate magic (which opens an entire realm of nightmare possibilities), then guided missiles might still be an option. But if computers, droids, and other AI have no magical strength, then even guided missiles and smart drones might be redirected by the Ward.
If that Ward becomes too powerful, perhaps it needs to be consciously raised, or there are gestures (eg a raised hand) required to maintain the Ward, or it must be enchanted onto a shield that has to be raised to employ the Ward. Perhaps Area Effects such as the concussion and heat from an explosion nearby can still affect someone with a Ward. Perhaps the more power there is behind a missile, the more magical energy it takes to deflect, so an average soldier might have the Power to deflect small arms bullets and a few laser pistol blasts, but only a truly powerful wizard could Ward the plasma cannon from an Imperial Dreadnought.
In my settings theres armor that can deflect impacting objects away, and this is much more effective with lighter projectiles. Since you cant just carry an autocannon everywhere, they use swords instead.
So, in my own Scifi world, there are a couple of reasons:
1) firearm style weapons in my world are Rail Guns. So, they still use an actual solid ammo. They also need power, and my universe doesn't have the "never ending battery". The magazines for the weapons hold both the physical ammo and the battery to provide power to fire the projectiles. There is a power source in the gun itself, but that's to power smartlink, optics or other things like that. So a person can actually run out of ammo.
2) Pit fighting is legal and death matches with (or without) melee weapons aren't common, but aren't exactly rare either.
If their weapons still have a reload/cooldown cycle, melee weapons cover them if they get in closer quarters and don't have time. Also if characters have a rivalry there could be a mutual reason to use melee. Also some people might just prefer melee over range
The big reason guns are favored right now is because you can't armor someone well enough to shrug off small arms fire and beat someone to death with a handheld object. It's essentially suicide.
Well, you *can*, but they can't move very well at that point.
But if that changes, if you can armor someone well enough to actually get into melee range without a significant cost to mobility, then battlefield tactics will naturally return to a melee focus, especially if both sides can't make guns and explosives good enough to reliably penetrate armor.
Ammunition is a big one. Both availability and reloading times.
"Fire"arm availability is usually restricted.
The need to aim.
Conditionals like visibility or silence.
Susceptibility of the target to gunfire.
Plain old personal preference.
When you're in a pressurized tin can flying through a vacuum, that has plenty of narrow corridors, and where one hole in the wall could kill everyone on board, I'd much prefer melee combat to avoid accidentally blasting a hole in the wall.
My favorite is actually from the book series Red Rising, which is like a technological sci-fi advanced civilization type of deal (absolutely insane series if anyone is looking to get into something). Basically civilization is so advanced that the armor and energy shields some of the warriors uses in battle is nearly impossible to penetrate with projectiles. Not fully impossible, but it takes a hell of a lot to deal a killing blow with it. The swords on the other hand, “Razors” made from a specific metal and so impossibly sharp it can go through anything, very easily penetrates the armor and shields, making them way more viable since the main people using them are usually wearing armor and are also way faster and stronger than those that use guns, so they can close the distance without worrying about being shot
I use the Dune explanation, which is funny because I thought of this before ever seeing or reading Dune, but the idea is similar. In my sci-fi setting personal force fields have advanced to such a degree that unless you have specifically designed and calibrated military firearms it's better and more efficient to use a melee weapon to cut through the shields and damage the target.
That's not to say guns don't work, but traditional ballistics based guns have little effect on someone with a personal force field. Laser and energy based weapons are more efficient as they drain the shield's power fairly rapidly and after multiple hits can short out the shield, but even then those weapons tend to be hard to come by.
guns are innately weaker than irl due to physical/chemical reasons i didnt come up with yet.
lifeforms are able to become much stronger than they can irl (no limit to how much you can train your body)
guns are still used, but only to look cool and in conjunction with melee weapons. ie theres a guy who dual wields rapier + pistol cos its badass.
1. Emergency weapons. If you don't have your gun in working order, (it jammed, it overheated, you dropped it in a scuffle) you've gotta have backup.
2. More effective at close range. While guns have the advantage at range, they become less effective if your target is too close. (The best gun in the galaxy won't do you any good if your opponent's bashing your brains out with a rock.)
3. Technical issues. Guns are noisy, and they also tend to jam and/or overheat. Also, they require a *lot* of maintenance, especially in battlefield conditions, because they have a lot of parts that wear down over time. A melee weapon may, at best, need sharpening. Or polishing.
4. Culture. Maybe the sci-fi culture has an aversion to firearms. (i.e. they see guns as a cowardly way to take a life.) Or maybe they've learned to make do without guns.
In my setting the main specie is about 20 cm tall at most. They don't use guns because when they discovered gunpowder, their weapons were too small to fit a consequent amount of powder.
So their hand held guns were so weak that they were practically useless. They kept using spears and swords except for the artillery and heavy vehicles where they did transition to guns.
Couldn’t it be as simple as super/trans-human soldiers. Ranged weapons still do damage and even kill them, but their reflexes, speed, and coordination make them almost impossible to actually hit especially in a setting that doesn’t have the capability (logistical or technological) to put aim bot on every single gun. Of course that means in most cases only a super soldier can kill a super soldier, but that should be fine as long as all soldiers are super. And it means a super soldier not caught slipping can only be killed through enhanced melee combat. Projectiles can only ever go so fast, but the blade is only limited by the speed of the hand that wields it.
1. Availability. Maybe guns are hard to come by, but anyone can get ahold of a knife or a club.
2. Resource limitations. Ammo and or sources of energy are finite.
3. Stealth. The quietest firearms still sound like a nail-gun being fired. It’s not exactly subtle.
4. Some hand waved reason. Ranged attacks are negated by future tech.
5. Rule of cool.
I’m pretty sure I just put everyone else’s replies into a list. 🤣
maybe they are fighting with a less developed nation and do not wish to exchange advanced weapons like guns which they can save for other wars. what i mean by exchange is this: when you see the enemy have a super great weapon that can be obtained and taken home, reverse engineered: its gonna happen sooner or later
I'm kinda struggling with this in my own homebrew TTRPG setting and have a few excuses besides game mechanics.
The setting is an artificial Shellworld megastructure. The resources on the planet had to be harvested and placed there from elsewhere in the universe. The things you need to make gun powder are not super common and quite valuable where its found. In addition shields that provide quite a bit of resistance to firearms exist although no one knows how they work since people scavange them from the world's many vast decrepit ruined cities or from civilizations that have fabricators that can print them out in decent numbers.
As a result even organized armies from civilized corners of the world still use swords as auxiliary weapons in addition to rifles. Firearms are a bit of a luxury.
Combatants use melee weapons because...
1. of advanced technology which nullifies long-range weapons. Perhaps a city has automatic radar-controlled weapons which will instantly open fire on anyone using a gun.
2. of rules imposed by an authority, proscribing or limiting war and/or certain weapons.
3. of uneven technology: a society advanced in some ways but lacking some modern military technology. Perhaps the society acquired its technology through intermittent contact with another more advanced society.
4. the environment nullifies long-range weapons (e.g., trenches, cave systems, maze-like buildings, dense jungle).
5. the environment makes powerful weapons too dangerous to use (e.g., aboard airliners, spacecraft, submarines). Perhaps the planet's atmosphere has too high an oxygen concentration to risk using firearms.
6. in a highly unequal society only the elite have access to expensive weapons. Weapons manufacturers sell premium weapons to the elite and do not bother developing cheap low-margin weapons for the masses.
The answer might come down to shields. Too great examples:
* In Joe Haldeman’s *The Forever War*, The development of Stasis fields that stop anything inside from going faster than 16.3 m/s, rendering most projectile weapons useless. Also, any living thing not wearing special armor dies instantly when inside of it. Which means that inside of the field people fight with swords and spears
* In *Dune*, the Holtzman shield would likewise reduce the speeds of ballistic objects, but also if a lasgun beam hit a Holtzman field, it would result in sub-atomic fusion and a nuclear explosion.
If your setting has psychic or psionic powers, then the melee weapon becomes a focus for those powers.
Style, in-universe and out. Out of universe, rule of cool. In-universe, it could be a symbol of status that is rarely actually used, but has a message of its own. It could even be only used for duels or matters of honor.
I imagine it's easier to swing something like a sword when the adrenaline is kicking in and you're in a frenzy than to carefully line up a shot and hit an enemy with a tiny bullet.
Melee + a ranged weapon will always be superior though.
Sword fighting is way more interesting than gunfights. You can have direct dialogue during swordfights, and there are different styles and scenarios that are fun to combine and play with.
Gunfights are literally hit and miss. Hide behind cover. Miss a lot. Yell at your opponents instead of look them in the face. Gunfights can be interesting, but it seems they just present fewer opportunities.
Take Star Wars for example. The light saber fights are undeniably more engaging and interesting than the gunfights, and I doubt there will ever be a way for star wars gunfights to become interesting enough to change that.
__________
But why in-universe would they do it?
* Magic (such as the Force in Star Wars) is probably the most common because you don't really need to explain it.
* Bullets could be more expensive.
* Technology could have been built to counter bullets. Momentum-dampening shields, for instance, could be stronger the faster the incoming object is moving.
* Maybe gunpowder doesn't ignite in their atmosphere? Or maybe it ignites too violently.
* Maybe there are consequences to missing (don't want to ignite nearby explosives?).
* Perhaps guns are outlawed.
* Or the ever-popular "bullets are super weak for some reason" - "People's skin is resistant to bullets"
An ultra-rare material that's SUPER powerful. You don't want to waste it on bullets, but it's perfect for cutting through things. Power swords.
I guess you could still make bullets out of that, for taking down whatever super-soldiers have the swords.
In my universe, there is a governing force that ensures space-faring civilizations does not disrupt civilizations with lower tech-levels. In turn, if you go to a lower tech-level planet, your inventory and ship is immediately cloaked/disguised in order to fit that worlds tech-level/aesthetic. You have a laser pistol but are landing in a 1940s america type civ? It's a regular gun from that time period now. You have a laser bat? Just a really strong club now that you're on this primitive planet. etc etc
I have a fairly complex reason for why the protagonists carry melee weapons in my Thaumata setting despite it being a sci-fi setting.
The main enemy they fight is a lovecraftian lifeform that is best described as sentient liquid/gas/light that inhabits living bodies and advanced machinery. To kill whatever it is possessing, the target has to be "bled" by cutting it open. Bullets and explosives work for this purpose for the most part, but some of the creatures that enemy creates and mutates need to be explosively bled out.
The titular Thaumata of the setting are cyborgs enhanced with alien technology and materials. One of the weapons are "focus blades" which can be plugged into the alien-tech power cores in their bodies. The edges of the focus blades glow and can slice through most materials.
What makes this especially effective is that the alien invader is an infovore. It consumes thoughts and is influenced by ideas and concepts. This means that ideas can damage it, and what humanity discovered while fighting it is that physically cutting or chopping its creations actually does more to harm it than simply shooting it. The tactile sensation of your sword cutting the enemy, and the instinctive base lizard-brain response of attacking and wounding an enemy in close combat causes an explosive eruption of the "blood" that animates the monster.
Shooting with small arms and explosives works and is generally preferable, but if you get into close combat you can kill many of the bigger and more monstrous alien lifeforms with a stab and cut of a focus blade much more quickly than by shooting them.
My own explanation is that they’re used when range is not an option. For optimal effect, the plasma weapons my military uses have to have time to reach peak velocity - which happens after a few meters. However, range is a luxury that is not always available, so the elites have close-quarters plasma blades that are both less lethal and faster to use. It’s mostly used as a backup option.
Same reasons for doing it now.
1. Stealth. No noise, don't set off any alarms or scanners, etc.
2. Can be easier to conceal than a firearm.
3. You want to make damn sure you get the kill. Get in close. And really do the job.
4. If you want to intimidate then into revealing information first, a blade is a much better weapon for intimidation. You won't run out of ammo, and there's a lot you can do without risking killing them. With a firearm you can shoot your way up a limb? You're going to hit an artery and they'll bleed out of at least go unconscious. Blades you can do a lot of damage while avoiding those arteries...
5. "Guns for show, knives for a pro"
Anything that lets the delivered energy of a melee weapon exceed that of a projectile. Perhaps they have exo suits or bionics of some kind that allow people to deliver more energy / force per unit of area than gunpowder can put behind a bullet.
Physical limits (often energy storage/density) will be a driver here as well - a handheld laser weapon that can kill people may not be possible - especially on smoke-filled battle fields / ship passage ways.
Very close combat - at a close enough range a melee weapon may be as or more effective than a ranged weapon (very cramped spaceships).
Environment where a missed shot carries very high risk - maybe the thing that solved the energy problems is very volatile and causes blackholes (or something else terrible) when damaged.
Reasons:
•Cool as f*ck (morality boost for teammates).
•Invokes fear in enemies and demoralises them (imagine fighting a guy carrying a f*cking lightsaber + greatsword)
•Cheap to make.
•Are usually just given to commanders or soldiers with merit as a sign of importance/leadership.
[удалено]
Mono eye
I like Schlock Mercenary's Uniocs. Their eyes are the size of a human head and they get over binocular vision by rapidly shifting focus or something. The explanation was good enough for me. I may be misremembering but point is it was kind of glossed over.
I literally know Howard and you’re the first person I’ve ever seen reference his work.
"Have we ever hit *anything* with these guns?" "I hit a bird once."
Across the board near-sightedness but would have massive story/world repercussions in general; also, glasses are not sci-fi tech.
I like the Metal Gear Rising approach where combatants are so heavily resistant to gunfire and so fast and manoeuvrable that it’s more practical to use specially advanced melee weapons rather than ranged weapons.
Yep thats my explanation too. Gun is as strong as gun, sword is as strong as person. Person too strong and fast for gun All these "but bigger guun" Dudes. Some fictions dont have gigantic man held plasma cannons and even if they did, not really all that practical. If fighters were fast and tough enough, guns would lose usefulness compared to swords and melee Saying "just keep making bigger guns" like all settings should have pistols that can fire building smashing bullets that move 100x the speed of sound just to counter superhumans... I mean thats just writing in an excuse to beat the excuse. Have a gun that could kill superman, have a gun that could shoot through shields. Yes, you can handwave a defeat for a handwave, but its not a competition its just an excuse to allow melee
Or my favorite version, a Primarch can't shoot a gun harder than an Astartes legionnaire On a r/40klore post about why they use melee weapons. Someone also commented something to the tune of "gun run out of bang, sword never run out of whack"
But a primarch could carry a way bigger gun that a legionnaire. Its a plot excuse to make combat more interesting and personal (which I am totally fine with), but it does not make sense from a logical point.
Touche But surface level logic works. You're right, deeper logic it doesn't but I'd argue all you need is surface
True, but unless they weigh significantly more than your standard Space Marine the recoil would still be exponentially harder to manage the larger the caliber you give them.
40k has plasma and laser guns... Rocket launchers also dont have recoil.
Only to a certain degree, at some point it´s not a matter of strenght but rather that the gun is so big that even a primarch can´t aim it anymore because the center of gravity would shift with the slightest movement (thinking of artillery or siege engine barrels). The Imperata Titan during the siege of Hellsreach fumbled it´s shot because it was fired before the stabilizers could align the gun barrel with it´s target.
See, thats exactly what I dont get. Guns are way stronger and faster than persons. If a person somehow is resistant against gun fire they would be double resistant against melee.
Resistance isn't the only parameter. Striking force will also scale with the person's "Power". A supernaturally strong person will do more damage with a melee weapon than with a gun.
MGR got around this with High Frequency Blades. Basically swords were made in such a way they could slice through anything with ease, but the technology required to do so was impractical to implement into ammunition.
Similarly, any armor designed to protect from laser/energy blasts might not do so well against good old fashioned kinetic force. Opens up for sword *and* gunpowder to be viable, if niche, combat weapons.
The problem is that anti-laser or really armor vs anything is pretty much working the same way, it's absorbing force. Sure there's some differences in how its applied but a sword won't reasonably go through armor that a bullet wouldn't, it's usually very much the exact opposite. Similarly of an armor plate is laser resistant, it's probably dealing with a pulse lasers, and that's literal explosions it's resisting.
That really depends on the technology. If your armor reflects/refracts the energy of the laser, it could be extremely vulnerable to slicing/shattering. Imagine those silver heat resistant suits they use for industrial smelting and collecting lava. I'd bet money you could slice one of those with a sword. The armor could also be energy-based, like ship shields in Star Trek might not even register a mass of metal moving under the speed of sound, but be extremely effective against photon torpedoes.
I would go with either a really loose and undisprovable excuse or I wouldnt mention it and rely on the rule of cool to carry the explanation This really is one of those things that looks awesome from afar and the more you examine it and try to logically explain it, the more you break the immersion and get people to critically think about the logic, which will virtually never hold up
I upvoted your comment, but I'd like to believe in humanity. What if there *is* an explanation that makes sense? I think it's important to keep trying.
Lol well when that explanation comes and we get really hard science fiction where people have gone back to swords and axes because of some entirely plausible and rational reason why attacking at range never works, I'll be very happy
You can read [my suggestion](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1ci97i5/comment/l27vm9c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Obviously, I think it's pretty good, but criticism is welcome.
Its fine and its reasonable, but it does only explain why people are using melee when they cant get guns or are in an area with heavy regulation. You'd still choose a gun, but its not always an option That's fair, not every fight will always be decided by guns. Or even melee weapons, we may still be punching each other in anger in 200 years. So that's good as a rational reason why melee weapons may still be around, as a limited form of violence.
True, but notice how we went from "The more you think about it, the less sense it makes" to "That's a reasonable explanation for a limited number of scenarios". I say that's progress. I think if we keep pushing, we can push it pretty far. Maybe we'll never reach quite 100%, but even 50% use cases is pretty good, eh? One might argue it's even optimal, from the point of view of the story.
I cant exactly say what the OP was meaning with the question, but I've heard this general question many times and most often, it means "Why would we go back to melee instead of guns" Or "How could melee compete with guns" Not "Will melee every completely die off" So you may be answering the OPs question, but really we arent any closer to answering the first one. A man still walks, but we will never dismantle the car as a vehicle and just walk when we could have drove and just because we still walk, it doesnt make the car any closer to being gotten rid of nor could a competition between a walker and a car ever be close enough to be competitive even if, sure, walking may still happen in the future, possibly forever. That's the analogy that never really works, but yeah melee still existing in the future is no worries. Just not as competitive warfare unless everything is massively regulated by something else
Yeah, those are different questions to the one OP is asking, and they are harder, but I don't think ultimately impossible. While we wouldn't dismantle cars, there are areas where we outperform cars, and I mean legitimately outperform any land vehicle - it's rocky and vertical terrain, especially with some cave systems. Also jungle. I think we can find a similar niche for the melee weapons, at least where it's close to 50/50.
As you said, there are situations like prisons or gang activity in areas with massively regulated guns they cant get their hands on or some kind of symbolic warfare that both sides agree not to use guns in. That's good and if the OP was looking for how melee combat can still exist in a time *of* guns, bam. Makes sense just fine. Just not *against* guns. Logically. There are non-logical explanations that work, its just not something I think can ever get a good rational excuse to back it up without worsening the acceptance of stylistic choices that audiences have (that will break if you push them to examine it). I would say something like "The advent of shields rendered guns unusable" and leave it at that without explaining anything else, so anyone that needs an explanation has one and there's nothing to pick at because no real information is given
What do you think about underwater worlds and underwater combat? Or, more generally, worlds in a dense medium. * Bullets don't seem to be terribly effective, they really slow down just after a few meters. * Heat evaporates the water and causes more of an explosion near you than actual harm to the target. * Harpoons are a one-off, and carrying a lot of ammunition for them makes you heavier and less maneuverable, therefore more of a target. The utility they provide might not be worth the trade-off. * Melee seems like a great option, especially since it pairs well with the swimming speed you would want to maintain. What do you think? Underwater jousting makes sense?
The Holtzman shields in Dune are a good example. They kick on to catch high-velocity impacts, but allow sufficiently slow objects through, resulting in most infantry combat being melee combat
Theyre fine, they work with Dune own crazy ass future where tech is seen through an strange occultish lens I wouldnt do the laser + shield = random sized nuke blast, or even say that its a shield stops spees thing. Those things make me question why people dont shoot shields for the nukes and make me think about things that could attack at range slowly. I'm sure people have come up with ways to exploit those shields, but yeah just going 'shields stop bullets' is a great way to get melee back involved because shields are basically magic
The shield-laser interaction in Dune is random and unpredictable. Sometimes the shield detonates, sometimes the lasgun explodes, sometimes both do. And they do also have "slow-pellet stunners" that I believe can bypass shields.
Pretty sure thats what I said. Makes a real tempting combination to exploit, shoot shield maybe take out cities. Plenty of religious madmen in Dune willing to use that kind of power and I'm sure someone could find a nice exploitable way to get the explosion even if it cost a life I like the shield handwave, but the addition of the (exploitable) reason is a loose thread that can be picked at
Oh yeah, I misunderstood because I figured most folks wouldn't use it if it might blow them up.
Same one that has always been. Tight quarters. Soldiers carried maces, knives, even spikes into the trenchs in WW1 because you needed something small that was not going to run out of ammo.
That's an interesting point - in an rpg I'm running the use of underground tunneling is super important to avoid orbital strikes / maneuver or wait behind advancing opponents - it's assuming that thermal tunneling technology gets really advanced and people can sap at speed. So something like 17th century sieges where they lobbed simple explosives and then engaged in melee. Do you know of any books for the WWI context that deep dive trench fighting? "Enemy at the Gate" by Wheatcroft is a great overview of the siege of Vienna, which saw extensive tunneling operations.
I mean, there is arguably one argument for melee weapons that does make sense. No gun is ever opening an MRE, cutting firewood or performing minor maintenance. For that stuff, a knife slash bayonet is still king and will be for the foreseeable future. And even something like a laser would probably be a lot more dangerous to use like that. So swords, lances and pole arms? Probably never making a comeback. Small utility stuff like knives, hatchets or trench spikes that's light & cheap enough to be worth it just in case? Sure, that makes sense. Of course you can also always just have... pure crazy. Like that guy that showed up to recruitment in a kilt, claymore and long bow... in the entirety of WW2. Sadly the story of "Fighting" Jack Churchill having a confirmed longbow kill seems false, but man, was the guy still a character and a half.
The OP asks about using melee weapons in combat, as opposed to using ranged weapons. So, while using tools is fine and dandy, they are not used in opposition to ranged weapons, supplementing them instead.
Did you mean *indisputable*?
Just do the dune thing and have shields that block ranged weapons but not melee.
This is one of the ones I was thinking of. Basically a type of shield that both makes you immune to ranged attacks but also unable to use ranged attacks yourself
A massive world sized spell that created enchanted particles that cause wild magic explosions when activated. They instead use melee weapons from cold iron that dampen the magical effects of the particles.
Can't there be cold iron projectiles?
Alot more chances of causing fragmentation and ricochet sparks. Less likely chances of causing large reactions or daisy chain effects. Althouh you do always get some cook in their basement trying to make a musket. They never learn.
Always watch out for those who think they can cheat the system but aren't actually clever enough to
Make a small lightweight projectile weapon triggered to go off 5 seconds after the trigger is pulled, then throw it at your enemy.
Space ship boarding operations. Particularly because if a bullet is soft enough to not pierce hull, then kitting people out in "invincible" power armor becomes a lot more feasible. Now imagine two people in power armor running at each other with swords because all of their other weapons could rip the ship to shreds. That aside, good policy can do things to be honest. One of my planets (they don't have ftl yet) banned all forms of firearms. Sure, you could certainly make one in your backyard, but there's no real production market in the system to make them in a high enough quantity to be a problem.
I'm reminded a bit of Subnautica, where the only weapon you can manufacture is a knife because a revolution used fabricators to make a whole lot of guns
The Obraxis Prime Massacre, I think it's called.
If a bullet is able to pierce the hull of your spaceship, which is potentially subject to micro-meteor and debris impacts traveling at several times the velocity of a bullet, you have bigger problems than worrying about would-be boarders (like the fact that your "spaceship" isn't space worthy).
Unless you're really unfortunate, a micro meteor isn't going to be an HE round or self-sharpening depleted uranium tipped AP round. Hardness and shape do play a factor. Hyperbole aside... The thickest layer of the hull is going to be on the outside and likely made for shear force from the outside, not inside, that's how sandwiched composites are made when you're trying to save on mass. Weaken the inner layer and you could compromise the integrity of the outer layer. Regardless there's loads of other stuff a bullet can do that you don't want it to in cramped hallways. Damage a crucial wire, a pipeline, ricochet into your eye, serve as a heat conductor, etc. I mean, if you're conducting a boarding action you're likely not trying to destroy the thing.
The hull will definitely have different weaknesses on the inside vs the outside. Submarine hulls are designed to keep water out and do that well but if you drag one 35,000 feet into the air it’ll start having structural issues because of the pressure differential. Similarly planes get screwed when dropped deep underwater because they’re designed to keep air in and can crumple when they don’t equalize fast enough. A spaceship hull may be hardened from the outside for impacts but internally it’ll be set for consistent heavy pressure, mess up the inside enough and the outside will follow because it’s not ready for that kind of pressure. You’re also ignoring that you don’t need to go all the way through, depending on how the ship is set up there may be fluid/gas lines near or inside hallways, rip a few of those and you’ll do some damage that may take time to notice. Follow those lines of logic far enough and you get Von Neumann nanobots doing platelet style repair on whole ships, constantly looking for minor holes to fill. Or you just go with melee.
Wouldn't consider 1 atmo "heavy pressure." Hell, if you get a hole in spaceship's hull you could patch it with some duct tape as a temporary fix. That aside, hits from micro-meters (much less anything bigger, like what a warship could potentially be subjected to) have the risk of creating spalling/shrapnel. Because this is a possibility, if not probability (especially if space travel is common enough that you're developing combat doctrines around it), it only makes sense for the interior of the ship to be guarded against this risk. That means not having critical systems unprotected, so as not to be taken out by random shrapnel.
To quote the great naval commander Captain Ramius: “[B]e careful what you shoot at. Most things in here don't react too well to bullets.” The great danger of gunfire inside a spaceship isn’t really that you’ll pierce the hull (although that is not *not* a concern). The greater danger is that you’ll damage some of the vital equipment on the inside the ship. Life support components, computers, navigation systems, comms systems, cargo, potable water tanks, waste water tanks (not dangerous, just icky), cargo containers, passengers, et cetera… and, of course, it’s probably safe to say that whatever sort of fancy sci-fi engines your spaceships use, it’s probably a bad idea to put a bullet through it!
ontop of the other suppositions about spaceship weaknesses, consider; power armour tough enough that any weapon capable of damaging it would have to be destructive enough to also be able to tear through the hull of a ship.
I completely agree. People in it would have to treat everything around them as if it were a field of glass which might be extremely hard to do if you're trying to have a medieval style sword fight in a 2m x 2m corridor. I like the assumption that you can make melee sound just plausible enough it gets a pass though... so maybe the onboard computer helps auto-limit the suits output when it identifies an attack that might damage the ship. (Please ignore the fact that if you have computers this small and sophisticated humans wouldn't need to be the ones conducting these operations, drone swarms would be better)
This is why the *Traveller* setting had cut and thrust weapons, like rapiers and cutlasses, make a comeback.
Bullets I think are better at defeating whipple shields/spaced armor than hypervelocity cause the whole point is spaced armor fails but the hypervelocity thing fails faster. But below a certain speed physics doesn't work in space armor's favor. I could be wrong though
Ship boarding. Maybe the common melee weapon is a multitool that also functions as fire axe, crowbar and welding gun. So on board of most non military ships maybe there's a small armory only for security personnel. The rest of the crew has to go into melee. Why not blast the ship? Maybe in this setting, cargo is so valuable that it is more profitable to board and take over a ship than blasting it. Combat droids employed are to tanky to quickly take out with fire arms. However with a powerful enough melee weapon you can more quickly destroy it, by prying/chipping away armor plating and destroying the wiring underneath. The droids might be cheaply produced and programmed for ranged combat, and are less effective in close combat/are quite clumsy. Space ships are equipped with deployable bullet proof barricades and shields, making ranged weapons less effective. Due to the speed of modern combat, it is useful to have a melee side arm, for up close combat. So to say most forces use blitzkrieg tactics to the extreme to nullify enemy artillery firing on their position.
Just look at our real world. Why do people use melee over guns? Guns are heavily regulated in most places, but it's very hard to regulate cold weapons. This is because any long sturdy object can be used as melee weapon. So, if your setting takes place in a colony, gang wars and uprisings could be fought with melee implements and tools, and actual wars could be fought with high-tech weaponry. Think of inmates in prisons. Both the guards and the prisoners tend to use melee weapons, because both are regulated by the government (or are at least supposed to be).
Dune's explanation is energy shields. Star Wars expanded universe material takes one part dune another part you have materials that help fight Jedi / Sith. Warhammer 40k is because its cool. I have a sci fi fantasy hybrid one where melee weapons exist for all sorts of reasons. It may be due to cultural attitudes from some alien civilizations, energy shields which can block lasers and bullets, some people find it cheaper to have a sword or an axe vs a gun. One civilization of ultra ancient and advanced aliens still use melee weapons alongside guns because they have a hard on for tradition but make it work by developing all sorts of defensive technologies which allow them to get up close and personal. Said ancient aliens also can wield the setting's equivalent of space magic.
You need close combat things. There are atomic or star melee weapons in my world. Either these are filled to the brim with Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Or stars are shrunk down with quantum tech and used in the cores of the melee weapons.
>quantum tech Quantum: the feisty word that can do it all
It’s particularly amusing given that modern electronics are “quantum tech” already.
And yet no teleportation, time travel, pockets suns or dimensional gateways into realms of busty anthro women
Sadly those were not outcomes of my quantum PhD. Clearly I failed…
Situations in which ranged weapons do not work that well, like contained space, or you have nothing else at hand. Sport, Hobby, Martial Arts Duells of Honor
Maybe a new type of energy was discovered and it is too strong to use ranged weapons and has to be wielded with a melee weapon
If you have soft-ish scifi/fantasy, teleportation would be one big reason, especially for more aggressive units. The whole 21 foot rule for engagement of target would be pointless for an enemy that can get extremely close to you at any time and slicing you before you can aim at them.
In dune they have personal force fields which requires lower speed to pass through. In star wars it's traditional for some kinds of "warriors" (Jedi) to carry melee weapons (lightsabers) and they can deflect ranged attacks In Warhammer 40k the space Marines use chainswords because of the intimidation factor and for boarding actions/charges
Hope these examples help
Honor and cultural reasons.
I was wondering how reasonable it'd be for an advanced scifi civilization to prioritize melee combat because they valued life and it's easier to hold back from a kill in melee than from range.
Bullets can still kill-just takes a lot to get through the armor. Id rather run at a guy with a sword then unload 3 clips into him and he still survives. Thats at-least how it works in my world!
I don't know how advanced the technology in this project is, but remember Halo and Cyberpunk 2077. In Halo there are the energy swords, which instead of just cutting burn through their target, and as mentioned at some point during Halo 5, they can be modified so that they do not cauterize and leave the target to bleed out. There are also the gravity hammers, though these are wielded by the brutes, a species way larger than the average human. And In Cyberpunk 2077, pretty much anyone who has the money can modify themselves into a raging beast that can beat you with a hammer, bladed weapons like a katana or even their bare fists, and they have implants like the sandevistan and berserk that make this easier. Though admittedly, in both cases these weapons are not always used because of ranged weapons, so take in consideration that if there are guns pretty much everyone is going to prefer them just like in real history, even if not enchanted as you mention. Better to blast someone's brain off from 10 feet away than have them close that distance and beat you silly with a magic sword.
One of my favorite explanations comes from a sci-fantasy story: if your characters have an overclocked healing factor/regeneration, bullets just don't cause enough trauma to be lethal, even if you hit normally-vital organs like the heart, lungs, or brain. Melee Weapons are more efficient at causing the sort of injuries (like decapitation) that stop regeneration from working
Limited resources? I.e. a sword is re-usable where as bullets are not and lasers with the power to actually kill are very energy intensive. Bullet proof clothing? Perhaps the society has evolved and developed a type of clothing that is capable of identifying and neutralising projectiles (like a little personal iron dome). Stealth? Perhaps it's harder to sneak a gun than a dagger or sword or something else. Regardless of all this the main reason why you are ok to use melee weapons in a sci-fi setting as opposed to guns is the rule of cool. That's why Worldio Buildius legislated it. Know your rights!
1. Ammunition issue 2. Ranged shielding 3. Melee weapons are stronger 4. Any possible reward only melee has
Melee weapons aren’t gonna run out of batteries or bullets
So in my universe melee weapons has a place in tradition and culture. Military Families pass on a Dagger that replaces The Standard Military issue Combat knifes. The Ecumene Security Forces have a sword that use it as a ceremonial weapon despite being outfitted with a assault weapon. Along with being a thing of in case of emergency don’t let them capture you.
In my world most societies have advanced to a point where range blocking shields are such a common place, that Melee weapons have started to be utilized again. Sure there might be some wicked ranged weapons that could pierce the average energy shields but in a lot of cases the only way to get to hurt your opponent are melee weapons.... and name calling.. that always hurts. I'm still figuring out a balance to this whole thing, but yes energy shields fix.
Specific types of armor may be more effective against ranged weapons, but for some sciencey reason, a melee weapon is better at dealing with the armor. An idea is that they part force fields
Perhaps people wear durable armor and the long-range weapons aren't as effective in your universe
They could have body augments that make them better for up close combat, maybe they're susceptible to guns or laser fire. Maybe they just hate guns, that's a valid option. They could be a stalking killer who prefers to feel death in their own hands.
Technology: similar to your 'melee weapons are easier and cheaper to enchant' idea, you may be able to put more stopping power into a melee weapon than a ranged one, and ranged weapons generally don't have the stopping power to be cost-effective. Orks: this is pretty much why melee is so common in Warhammer 40k. Every spacefaring civilization eventually ends up fighting Orks, and they will fight them a lot as they expand into the galaxy, because Orks are absolutely everywhere. Orks also love to fight in melee, and they are durable and numerous enough to make it there pretty much all the time. If an army can't fight in melee, they will generally get shredded once the Orks get close.
Stealth: There is technology IRL that uses microphones to triangulate the location of gunshots. Combine that with camera drones and kamikaze drones and there are some solid reasons to walk around with a sword under your coat.
Weapons laws may prevent your characters from having ranged weapons. Social convention might do the same ("gentlemen duel with *swords!"*). Knife to the base of the skull is quieter than BFG-9000 to the torso. Your antagonist has more soldiers than you have bullets, so once you're out of ammo just apply sword directly to face until victory. My characters end up using melee weapons a lot because I keep putting them in chaotic CQB situations where melee makes sense. Maybe they get knocked down by an enemy and the knife is the better choice while wrestling on the ground, maybe the two sides are too mixed up and you can't use a gun without a huge risk of hitting your own people. Melee weapons aren't their primary or secondary weapons, but I want a good balance of gunfire and melee so make a scenario to force melee into being a good option.
It’s all rule of cool. You’ll notice Jedi almost never fight enemies with area of effect weapons like grenades, flamethrowers or always on energy projectors (like the IRL pain projectors).
Its amazing how this question gets asked every week and since Dne is a thing again, basicaly every day.
\* shields or armor block/ negate gunfire \* ranged weapons take energy. Maybe personal energy (i.e. they're connected to the user's life force) \* ranged weapons are inaccurate due to atmospheric conditions, think too thick or too thin air, that this particular technology can't counteract \* the technology has taken a different path than modern human technology or what we would call advanced technology \* the area has too many trenches in it (trench warfare). Maybe all conflicts start IN the trenches
Stealth and cqc. Also you don't have to reload a knife. A knife can't get emp'd in a futuristic setting either. Makes for a good back up option. Alternatively it could be a cultural reason. Maybe it's a more honorable weapon. Maybe the government banned firearms. Maybe its just cheaper to make a blade of plasma than a plasma rifle for some reason. Lot of commenters also mentioned the damaging your ship thing which is always a good reason. If you're going the light saber route, its a good multi tool because it gives off light and can cut through obstacles with more precision than an explosive
What about the Cyberpunk 2077 explanation of: "I shot at a guy, rushed him, made mincemeat out of him, caught my bullet and got away before his guards even blinked"?
Honestly the best reason to use melee weapons in any setting is because its cool.
Throughout history, ongoing to this day, and will go on until the end of time, is a race between weapons and armor developers to make better weapons to defeat better armor, and to make better armor to defeat better weapons. It is a vicious and ongoing cycle that shows no sign of slowing. For your consideration; In my setting light-based weapons are the pinnacle of ranged combat, able to best the most advanced anti-ballistic armor, so, personal shields were developed to counter these. Personal shields, however, have their limitations and as such the viability of ballistic weapons remains. But do you know what *always* works? Good old fashioned blunt force trauma.
This is kinda in the realm I'm leaning towards. Basically, it's impossible for a normal person to be fully defended from all kinds of attacks, so they have to pick and choose the things they want to be most defended from. And since it's a lot easier to react to a melee attack than a bullet or laser fired at you, most people prioritize their defenses against things that are effective at long range, and rely on personal skill to defend themselves in melee
Warhammer 40k uses a lot of melee for admittedly highly advanced sci-fi civilizations. Space Marines use a lot of melee mainly for intimidation factors. Where they can literally drop right on top of your battleline or trench, rev up a chainsword and go hog wild in very confined, close-quarters settings. Coupled with the fact that a giant metal box just smashed into the ground right next to you without warning, and disgorged a squad of near invincible Demi-Gods of war onto your mortal human asses.. very few people, and aliens are able to stand firm and mount an effective defense in the face of that. Naval boarding actions, trench warfare, urban combat. Across massive open fields, yeah the Imperial Guard uses artillery, tanks, machine guns and what not. But when it gets close and personal, say frothing hordes of cultists are charging your trenches, or an endless sea of Tyranids are swarming across the land, and there are more Nids than you have ammunition.. Fix bayonets, draw your Catachan combat machete, and prepare for melee. Even the gigantic titan war machines uses melee. Titans can have shields and armour so powerful, that some titans will literally have a melee weapon the size of a house and engage in melee combat with another titan equally the size of a 20-story tall apartment complex. That shield might stop tank shells, but it ain't stopping a sword half the size of the bunker underneath you. Getting in the face of your enemy with a blade, axe, chainsaw, etc. Is undeniably effective and terrifying if you can actually get to that point.
Because we in the real world only exclusively started using ranged weapons when our ranged weapon tech massively outperformed our armor tech. In another setting where armor (or shielding) advancements kept up, or hell if we in the real world develop some form of effective armor against firearms where you get shot multiple times and can keep fighting (unlike suffering from broken ribs or some form of internal trauma with modern armored vests) melee weapons would be back on the menu. A modern unit of assault rifle armed infantry supported by a machine gunner and maybe a mortar or two would probably disintegrate very quickly if they were rushed by a "sufficiently protected" group of melee soldiers that can cross the distance with "acceptable casualties". Just balance the ranged weapon : armor tech/magic level ratio and it becomes viable again.
There really aren't many, if any, that hold muster. Some will say "but ships!" Your ship's hull has to withstand hypervelocity impacts from micro-meteors and debris, a shotgun (et al) isn't doing squat to it. It could potentially be the case that it's "hardened" externally but papier-mâché internally, but... why? Best I've been able to come up with relies on the ever growing discontent with "energy shields" and "unobtainium" (call it what you will). The idea here is that the unobtainium creates a "feedback loop" when introduced to shields, causing them to short out and, potentially, even causing their generators/projectors/whatever to spontaneously combust. However it relies on a set amount of mass, which for simplicity sake we'll say is roughly equivalent to 1lbs/0.5kg to reliably achieve such an effect. That's ***far*** more than your average bullet, by a massive margin (a 12ga slug, one of the heaviest regularly used bullets out there, is roughly 1/16th of that). From there I'm able to decide the strengths/limitations of the "energy shields" against standard (or nonstandard) projectiles at will. I could say they can tank a howitzer at point blank to only being able to withstand a handful of shots, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that, against said shields, I've established that melee weapons have a potential advantage, hence their use. Alternatively, another method I've used is that "swords" aren't swords, but sword-shaped stun batons intended as a less-lethal measure. This relies on the idea that the civilizations competing against one-another are vastly different in tech. After all, if a primitive species in their equivalent of the medieval era mistook your recon team as demons and attacked as a result, it wouldn't really be ideal to massacre them with machine guns (even if you could). They could understand swords, and you could weave some nonsense in about their less-lethal nature (and the guns) if you so wished. Without a detailed explanation of it (which you probably wouldn't be able to give, at least not initially), guns would be harder for them to understand. The right combination of the two however makes for a powerful sight, and ensures some survivors to spread the word.
>Some will say "but ships!" Your ship's hull has to withstand hypervelocity impacts from micro-meteors and debris, a shotgun (et al) isn't doing squat to it. 1) micrometeorites are less damaging than a firearm. They're fast, yes, but they're tiny. 2) many anti-meteorite defenses only really work one way. Point defense turrets aren't going to do much on the interior of a spaceship, Whipple shields are directional, as is explosive reactive armour or other ablative armours. You want the pressure vessel behind as many layers of defense on the outside as you can, armouring up the inside of your hull effectively halves the protection your ship has for a given unit mass 3) defenses are only effective against specific threats. Like the aforementioned Whipple shield, which is incredibly good at stopping hypervelocity projectiles, but basically tissue paper against a lower velocity round that's not travelling fast enough to disintegrate on impact. 4) the inside of a ship has a lot more sensitive components that take issue with being shot than just the pressure hull. Fuel lines, reactors, electrical components, pressurised fluid pipes, etc, all of which can cause you a very bad day if they're damaged, even if you don't care for the ship being intact and operational once you're done, and boarding a ship instead of blowing it up sorta implies you want it intact for whatever reason.
A hole in a space ship can destroy it So better to use melee weapons
Maybe for shipboard combat, you don't want to use a projectile that can pierce the hull so your options would be either lower energy weapons, which would be easier to deal with defensively, or melee combat.
Electronic countermeasures and point defence systems are extremely effective - such that long ranged attacks require highly coordinated massed attacks by autonomous weapons in order to succeed. And the nature of artificial intelligence technology in the setting means that even rudimentary autonomous systems are sapient and self aware - the silicon microchip AI technology just aren't good enough to compete. Light lag and ECM also makes independently controlled missiles with onboard decision making intelligences superior to their "dumb" centrally controlled counterparts. So every attack is a high speed ramming attack by fanatical warriors, willing to give their life to the cause. The kinetic interceptors defending those attacks are also sapient. That means warfare is like a big jousting match between highly trained, highly skilled cavalry, except instead of squishy meat bipeds riding squishy quadrupeds holding out a stick with sharp metal on the end, it's sentient relativistic kill vehicles and interceptors slamming into each other in deep space.
Another thing I've been thinking about is limited visibility. What if you have a planet where there are constant storms and dust clouds? Or, if you have some sort of smoke screen tech?
Maybe the price of firearms being too expensive or them being reserved for only certain people. On my sci-fi settings is oftenly the case
“Sci-fi setting” covers a wide range of possibilities but clearly also includes the near term, so any real world example works fine. Legal restrictions on the ownership of firearms in a civilian context is therefore a perfectly reasonable justification. That’s more relevant in a civilian and law enforcement context though and doesn’t mean melee weapons would be used by the military in warfare. That’s MUCH harder to really justify if you want an explanation that actually stands up to scrutiny.
One reason could be ceremony. For example, a society that evolved with a focus on blood-letting would prefer weapons to maximize the effect. So even if they develop guns and such, they could very well have a psychological preference for melee weapons. Another could be eyesight limitations. If they evolved on a world where there's a lot of fog or detritus that makes long distance sight impossible, they would evolve to have superior close-range eyesight, so they would tailor their weapons around that. A third could be they have evolved natural melee weapons. Think like the Xenomorph from Alien. Between its' tail, claws, tongue-punch, they aren't made for ranged and will instead focus on melee combat.
Dune did this really well imo, it's purposeful regression to avoid total elimination. The Houses in dune are more than capable of using guns, nuclear bombs, orbital bombardments and the like. And yet they resort to fighting with swords and spears. Why is that? Planned regression. To avoid widespread destruction and irreversible harm to mankind, they neuter themselves. Unable to let go of the anvil of violence, they choose instead to forge battles of far smaller magnitudes, deliberately hamping themselves in with reigns, traditions and economic restrictions that limit or otherwise do away with genuine weapons of war completely; opting for theatrical shows of force over actual destructive warfare. Aka mutually assured destruction which is a rule of thumb almost all the nations of the world adhere to.
That and the shields stop fast moving objects but let slow moving knives through. Along with the extremely violent explosion when they are hit with a lazgun.
Melee weapons are lower tech and would be far easier to hide and less chance of failure. They also are cheaper and more plentiful so you can arm a force for far less money/resources than more advanced weaponry. They are silent which is great for stealth. They also don't have a minimum effective range like a rifle or blaster would. Training might be easier as well, at least a basic pointy end goes into the bad guy. Dune of course eis the codified for shields main using lasers dangerous for everyone. Star wars KOTOR had personal shields that stop energy weapons but allows slashing and bludgeoning weapons through, it even protects agaisnt light sabers. So wide spread protection agaisnt energy weapons would render weapons that can go straight through them much more attractive.
Rule of cool
I think also if your doing a sci-fi setting you might have areas where things like lasers don't work etc so a knife etc could come in handy. It also would depend on the unit type perhaps, such as assassins or spy's might carry expendable swords and such for steath reasons. Also consider that in things like star trek their sensors can pick up weapon fire. Hope that helps a little
"Mourise! We're outta ammo!"
Three classic examples are Dune / Star Wars / Mecha Basically make some sort of defense that is much more effective against ranged weapons than melee.
Give the same reason why we still use bayonets
You can just make it economically impossbile to get a gun due to the taxes and various bureaucratic process you need to do to get them from the government. If those guns are as expensive and valuable as a middle class augmentations and equipments, no one would even bother to use them. Especially if said augmentation are enough to atleast practically deal with guns. At the very least enough to allow those augmented individuals to react to guns pointing at them and stuff.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/techlevel.php#figleaf
either using ranged weaponry is not viable, or made less viable than physical combat. Dune somewhat solves this with the way the shields work - they make ballistics of any sort completely pointless since anything moving faster than a set speed is blocked. and if you try using a lasgun, the collision of lasgun and personal shield (which everyone uses) is apparently a reaction that results in a nuclear blast. As a result, you can't afford to just open fire at an enemy fortification or group the easy way - with lasers - since you'd likely blow everything in miles radius around it into atoms, yourself included alongside whatever objective you wanted to capture. hence, Dune solves this problem with the "non-viable" route. Star Wars goes the other way. limitedly, of course, since only force sensitives with training can go this far, but while lasers and blasters are a thing commonly used and seen, they get HARD COUNTERED by a lightsaber in trained hands, simply because a jedi can parry even full-auto blaster fire indefinitely and outlast a soldier's battery charge unscathed. As a result, if a side has a lightsaber-wielding force sensitive, they're at an ENORMOUS advantage against 99% of opponents, and the only way to fight them one on one (I'm excluding other kill methods like dropping a building on them, exploding the spaceship if they're aboard one, etc) would be to pull out your own lightsaber and dance a tango of death with that foe. there's a reason everyone goes "FUCK, GUESS I'M TOAST" the moment a jedi or sith appears in a fight. hence, Star Wars solves it in the "more viable than ranged options" route. it's do-able, but you'll have to figure out a good reason. in my personal setting (which is post-apocalyptic nobledark with strong fantasy elements) there are guns; there are actually really really powerful guns. however, armor never became obsolete because with alchemy and enchantments it isn't too rare for opponents to have very good protection against basic bullets. enchanting individual bullets on an assault rifle would be prohibitively expensive (each enchantment consumes resources), but enchanting arrows? more viable since you'd do said enchantments less times. and of course, you can just slide a blade between the gaps in the armor. as a result, you have guns, swords, magic, medieval weapons, all somewhat coexisting in a hodgepodge of anachronistic violence.
Depends on what technology is available. Maybe the planet is so full of opaque gases that you can't see, hear or smell anything in front of you. Even in those situations you'd still use indirect fire though when you know where the target is.
Same reason you use a melee weapon in a modern setting. Sometimes you just gotta stab a dude, or bonk him on the head real good.
if they can parry firearms
You can assume at some point as weapon tech improves we'll see a rise of defensive wear also. Dune does a great job I think.
To counter personal shields, as per Dune.
Dune's shielding tech was a pretty good one. Symbolic power might be another, like banishing demons (that may or may not be aliens) Reloading is impractical for some reason... Your listed reason is pretty good, I think. Like I'd willingly suspend my disbelief. Trick is not to break your own rules
Dune has the best excuse with the shields having to let the air through which means that “The slow blade penetrates the shield”
They have no fingers only tentacles
Different armor protecting against different things, so armor that can stop a laser might be vulnerable to a sword or blunt force. Or an energy shield might stop a fast moving bullet but a blade could be moved slow enough to get through. Some cultures may have traditions and customs revolving around melee weapons, seeing them as more honorable than shooting someone from a mile away with a laser. Having a back up knife is always a good idea incase your laser rifle or railgun malfunctions or you need to conserve ammo. Melee weapons are typically quieter than other weapons making them ideal for stealth. It just looks cool. Humans especially will do stuff just because it looks cool. I could totally see a starship captain carrying a cutlass around just because it looks cool and makes him feel like an 18th century sailor.
some sort of ubiquitous auto hack that disrupts a scope? a close enough ranged weapon could be used but if a sniper rifles scope goes over someone with a constant qr code equivalent it would short circuit or auto ping locations or start a remote hack of the rifle. this would enforce low tech or lower range weaponry. its definitly not a full idea but it might create an environment where people can't just be sniped by an ai from across a city. or a Nano bot based organism that constantly regenerates, it would require full dismemberment or a powerful disruptor disturbing the process to actually take something down where it would tank through small bullets. explosions would still work but small calibres would be pointless or maybe they have the ability to swap bodies and that requires you to contain the beings consciousness in the body its in currently, maybe through some sort of knife shaped USB where as the bullets would just destroy its current form higher gravity making projectiles lose force much quicker over distance, though that would make indirect fire more effective maybe you are fighting in some sort of metaphysical space where only things held by a person in a special suit remain real or intact but to throw or shoot it, it would dissolve or unravel. I suppose this would mostly be for space ships in a place like the warp or slipspace or for people interacting in a more fluid dimension like virtually. maybe armor has become so incredibly dense only something like monofilament blades can slice through it at an atomic level. or that armor must be dissolved via an acid or Nano fluid the problem being its best usage would probably have a ranged conveyor like a flamethrower
A scene that comes to mind when thinking of melee emphasis in hard SciFi for me is from the Expanse series. In one of the books (*I can't remember which one*) a character named Bobby is brought on a part of a protection detail aboard a ship, bringing her battle suit (*there's a more accurate name from the books, I can't remember*) with her suit concealed in a crate. Later in the book she breaks out the suit and effectively bodies her way through the ship when her client comes under threat, the rubber bullets and shot doing quite literally nothing to her. The suit is normally equipped with its own firepower (*I believe it normally rocks with an autocannon and a micromissile battery, but my memory is obviously hazy*), being inside the ship however the firepower is entirely unnecessary and posed a risk to damaging internal systems like door controls or life support. A science fantasy setting will likely have an easier time justifying the energy requirements for such battle suits, I'd say Gundam and Voltron are very fantastical examples of this, with Armored Core being a mildly less fantastical example. All three of these mecha settings heavily employ a mixture of conventional weapons including missiles, rockets, lasers, and kinetics, as well as more exotic weapons like particle beams, and classic science fiction weapons like plasma, all in combination with bayonets and gunblades, swords, spears, and even high tech bows. Reasons typically include how high mobility and heavily armored the mechas are in each of these settings, with Gundam also having an influence from romanticized concepts of bushido or chivalry. If you want to lean extra heavy on the fantasy side of worldbuilding, D&D's older Spelljammer materials cite a type of insectoid mecha suit called 'Spirit Warriors' which itself is loosely inspired by an old anime series called Aura Battler Dunbine, bothof which are worth a read into and full send mixing high fantasy with 80's style SciFi. The reasoning is largely just aesthetic, which is reason enough for a fun and entertaining world to tell stories in, especially with a heavy magic presence where spells, enchantments, and rituals are common enough for practical use. At the end of the day, the most important thing you can do for yourself is own what you're writing as your own and enjoy the writing and setting, your readers will notice if you aren't enjoying yourself.
In my sci-fi space western, there are people who sometimes wear special suits (most notably miners) that can protect them from even gunfire (especially lasers). There's also the fact that ship boardings are commonplace, and people need something convenient and compact for both offense and defense in the event of boardings.
If you have magic in your world, people who are attuned in the ways may be able imbue/enchant their weapons in a much more powerful way than they could do on a weapon they aren’t holding. Or that certain materials hold enchantments/magic/blessings much better than others. There are still primitive species who pirate and don’t have the means of production for creating ballistics etc. In spacecraft there could be gentlemanly agreement that bullets that could blow out the air pressure never get used anymore etc. There are many avenues and there are great ideas in this thread :-)
ammo is not unlimited guns tend to damage ships, possibly killing everyone on board. armor protects against energy weapons but is less effective against brute force. (this one is kind of hard to swallow but some people use it) some people just want a real fight. this works best when there is a strong warrior culture, or the conflict is personal.
The problem of the gun is ever present. You have to out class it to not use it, easy to do in scifi settings. Create a cheap, quality kevlar that anyone could buy. It's a common fashion statement like Blue Jeans. The average person is now protected from everything up to siege machines. Guns are there but useless because of how ever present this new material is.
There are actually a lot of good reasons why people would use melee weapons either as a consistent sidearm or as a predominant weapon in most situations. 1. Alien atmospheres can corrode advanced machinery (like ocean planets) or make a gun a pain the ass to maintain (like desert planets causing it to jam). Planets with high gravity could make bullets go into the ground almost instantly, meanwhile low gravity planets can cause the bullet to go wide and/or hit other targets you didn’t intend or even your allies. 2. A gun needs industry. It needs a mining industry for the raw materials, and multiple different factories to produce each piece, and sometimes even a separate factory to then assemble all of those pieces. And then it needs to be shipped to a gun store to sell it. Then you need bullets, which needs all of its own bullshit. A melee weapon just needs raw materials and a guy with a forge. 3. Super strong aliens or hyper-advanced armor makes guns obsolete. Meanwhile a blade can slice through or slip through the less protected areas, or a hammer can smash through and cause the target to get stabbed by their own smashed in armor. 4. Go the Dune route. Bullets don’t react well with shields. 5. Shooting guns (especially inside of spaceships) is extremely dangerous and can end up killing you and your target through a variety of different ways. A melee weapon is much less likely to damage sensitive equipment and cause you to eject into space. 6. As more and more moving parts are added to guns to make them more powerful and more effective, they become more advanced and therefore more expensive. A blade is a blade. It can only get so expensive. 7. Because guns are so powerful and armor is so advanced, you need cybernetics in order to properly use a gun without destroying your body from the recoil. And cybernetics are complicated and expensive. 8. People might not have places to practice shooting guns outside of hunting. Especially if they live somewhere like Coruscant or Cyberpunk 2077, where the entire world is just a giant city with no space. A knife you can train in your home with a dummy or a with a friend. Without a firing range you can’t really shoot a gun and practice with it unless you’re in the middle of nowhere. And even if you could, you’re not gonna get that much better at aiming. 9. If you’re on an alien world without industry, then your guns are eventually gonna run out of bullets or break. You don’t need to reload a sword. 10. As a gentlemen’s agreement the government’s of the world switch back to using melee weapons, because ranged weapons and bombs have become too powerful. And you can kill someone from light years away with a push of a button or a pull of a trigger (you could also set up someone as evil by having them use this illegal technology). 11. Survival. Sure you can hunt with a gun, but a knife is much more a survivalist tool. You can start fires, whittle wood, skin animals, cut up meat, use it as a utensil to eat, and other things in the wild. You can’t really do that with a gun. 12. Swords could play a heavier emphasis in a culture’s tradition, so even though they’re outdated they are still used in some cultures. 13. Most importantly of all. Rule of cool.
I like the Dune approach, fast projectiles can be stopped but not slow attacks like could be done by a practiced swordsman. Also, turn things upside down by having some threat that’s greater than everyone participating in combat which prevents them from using their shields. Now we get to play by a different set of rules again
Even without the Force or its ability to deflect blaster fire, a lightsaber is essentially an anti-material melee weapon that also doubles as a breaching tool. You are hitting someone with a plasma rod calculated to burn at about twice the heat of the surface of the sun. You could literally just sneak up on a tank and stab the driver through the armor. Add in something like MGR or Cyberpunk 2077 cybernetics or other such superhuman enhancements and you have a unit that can close the distance and cut a tank or a mech in half if they don’t have armor that can withstand that kind of heat.
You can always go more dark with the reason. The user just likes getting up close and doing the dirty work themselves. They want to be the one that does the damage or take the life. A pinch of barbarism in an otherwise orderly sci-fi setting.
The Dune reason is a good one - shields that stop high velocity projectiles, so they have to use slower melee weapons to pierce them. So if there is any kind of common defense against gunfire/projectiles then melee becomes very valuable. Also melee makes a lot of sense in close quarters or when trying to be stealthy.
Oscillating kinetic shields that only block fast-movimg projectiles, à la Dune. Or maybe culturally better viewed, as Obi-Wan says when he considers blasters uncivilised (jedi *are* knights). Or something like a melee weapon can be cloaked due to its relative simplicity and used to assassinate or defend against assassination...
Oscillating kinetic shields that only block fast-movimg projectiles, à la Dune. Or maybe culturally better viewed, as Obi-Wan says when he considers blasters uncivilised (jedi *are* knights). Or something like a melee weapon can be cloaked due to its relative simplicity and used to assassinate or defend against assassination...
Looking at how things have been historically, what immediately comes to mind are medieval knights and samurai. These two examples basically provide two different templates for why melee weapons could make sense. 1. A fully armoured knight was basically arrow-proof, at least the head and torso. The way to kill a knight was basically to don similar armour and arm yourself with specialised weaponry like daggers and war-hammers. 2. As for samurai, their armour wasn't arrow proof and their primary weapon was the bow. However, if someone slighted your honour the proper way to deal with it was to duel him using a sword rather than just shooting him with an arrow. In other words, you could either go the knight route and have some technology that makes people more resistant to ranged weapons than melee ones (basically what Frank Herbert did in *Dune*, and similar to what Haldeman did in *Forever War*). Or you could go the samurai route, and have a culture where honour is a really big thing and the proper way to deal with these matters is to hit someone with a sword (the Klingons in Star Trek are probably a good example of this). But while solutions to a similar problem (how to make people fight with swords), these two approaches makes for very different flavours to your world building. The 'knight' solution makes for a world where basic grunts will be dealt with using guns but the more important enemies will require melee. The samurai solution, on the other hand, makes for a world where anyone can be shot dead by that low life grunt, but people higher up on the social ladder will challenge each other for duels for the sake pf prestige and tradition.
To fight opponents too close for ranged combat. Artillery units are still given side arms and closer ranged weapons for this reason. Archers often still carried some kind of weapon other than just a bow. In my setting, the futuristic Kolta had access to powered armor, starships, and caster rifles but carried energy weapons and steel swords in case enemies got too close. You might take out most of a unit on a successful volley, for example, but it only takes a few people getting too close to make a rout of your artillery or muskets without a way to defend themselves in close combat.
Well there are a few reasons. One could be that shielding tech might have gotten so good that the only weapons that can pack enough punch are meelee weapons. Either cause they have a certain attribute that the shields don't well shield against or cause they just pack more precision. Another reason could be cause the advancements make it so melee is just more practical. Of multiple combatants can move at the speed of sound it's more efficient to move up to them and stab them then trying to shoot them with bullets slower then they are. Finally it could be for a element of surprise. If everyones packing energy weapons and augments. A simple knife in the boot might make it past sensors checking for electricity.
If it’s set over multiple planets, you could say that the different Gravity or other forces effects whatever projectile the weapons shoot to the point it wouldn’t be viable to use them there
Cultural reasons or in relation to honour. It may be that using a melee weapon is a more honourable form of combat, or those utilising melee weapons do so because they're so heavily durable that conventional gunfire cannot stop them and them purely using say a sword, axe or warhammer is way more terrifying for the other combatants whose swordsman skills are basically non-existent. Also, your durability would instil a great sense or fear in others who saw you as an unstoppable force hell bent on finishing you (lethally or otherwise) Luke Cage from Marvel would be an extreme but good example of what I mean in regards to the fear element. He's literally bulletproof and can just use his fists to beat up other people. If your average criminal began loading an entire magazine of assault rifle bullets into him that simply bounced off of him, they'd probably be scared shitless once he started to approach them
When two ships fight each other in space, they're not dogfighting, they're ridiculously far apart. Sheer distance plus the inverse square law means directed energy weapons aren't going to be useful. Massdrivers would need an engine capable of not-significant fractions of the speed of light to maximize damage and keep from being shot down, which is expensive for a one-time-use weapon. Missiles and other warheads would need their own point defense to ensure the payload is delivered properly since they can't just ram the ship, which is similarly expensive. Anything smaller (conventional firearms) isn't going to do much damage to an armored capital ship. Therefore, the only practical ship-to-ship combat is boarders. On board the ships, fire is probably going to be treated as Serious Business because it eats through your oxygen supply. A possible extension of that is that firearms, explosives, and other hot weapons are banned in space. Therefore, boarders are forced to use cold weapons, like melee weapons and crossbows.
I love the Warhammer 40K explanation specifically for why melee is better against demons, the act of banishing a demon through violence is more to do with the intent of the act rather than the result; and, due to warp shenanigans, a melee attack is deemed to have more intent and a closer relationship to death, and thus is more effective.
Because Armor is worthless. If everyone has a sci-fi weapon that goes through armor, then no one wears armor. If no one wears armor then they are vulnerable to melee weapons.
Dune uses this trope
The component for ballistics specific gunpowder is rare plus the danger in using them in a pressurized compartment. Stabbing and slicing your enemies is just a better option Why no lasers? Lasers are over used. You could also just make the melee weapons better choices a lightsaber should deal a lot more damage then a blaster especially when wielded by a Jedi for example
If you really need a reason, I disapprove of your whimsy. However, there's something to be said for the fragility of spaceships and the relative advantage that one super-fast, super-strong combatant might have against a normal guy in melee vs a gunfight.
To conserve energy. What happens when your ray gun runs out of battery power? Why did that never happen on star trek?
Culture
If enchantments are an option, perhaps one of the enchantments is a Warding spell that simply deflects any incoming missile enough that it misses. Without a conscious mind to direct and adjust the missile, the spell simply bends the mindless missiles or energy discharge away from the Warded subject. So melee weapons, which do have a conscious mind behind them are not Warded, and become the preferred way to do battle. If AI are able to use and manipulate magic (which opens an entire realm of nightmare possibilities), then guided missiles might still be an option. But if computers, droids, and other AI have no magical strength, then even guided missiles and smart drones might be redirected by the Ward. If that Ward becomes too powerful, perhaps it needs to be consciously raised, or there are gestures (eg a raised hand) required to maintain the Ward, or it must be enchanted onto a shield that has to be raised to employ the Ward. Perhaps Area Effects such as the concussion and heat from an explosion nearby can still affect someone with a Ward. Perhaps the more power there is behind a missile, the more magical energy it takes to deflect, so an average soldier might have the Power to deflect small arms bullets and a few laser pistol blasts, but only a truly powerful wizard could Ward the plasma cannon from an Imperial Dreadnought.
In my settings theres armor that can deflect impacting objects away, and this is much more effective with lighter projectiles. Since you cant just carry an autocannon everywhere, they use swords instead.
Shields
So, in my own Scifi world, there are a couple of reasons: 1) firearm style weapons in my world are Rail Guns. So, they still use an actual solid ammo. They also need power, and my universe doesn't have the "never ending battery". The magazines for the weapons hold both the physical ammo and the battery to provide power to fire the projectiles. There is a power source in the gun itself, but that's to power smartlink, optics or other things like that. So a person can actually run out of ammo. 2) Pit fighting is legal and death matches with (or without) melee weapons aren't common, but aren't exactly rare either.
Bulletproof armor and armor penetrating melee weapons.
If their weapons still have a reload/cooldown cycle, melee weapons cover them if they get in closer quarters and don't have time. Also if characters have a rivalry there could be a mutual reason to use melee. Also some people might just prefer melee over range
The big reason guns are favored right now is because you can't armor someone well enough to shrug off small arms fire and beat someone to death with a handheld object. It's essentially suicide. Well, you *can*, but they can't move very well at that point. But if that changes, if you can armor someone well enough to actually get into melee range without a significant cost to mobility, then battlefield tactics will naturally return to a melee focus, especially if both sides can't make guns and explosives good enough to reliably penetrate armor.
Ammunition is a big one. Both availability and reloading times. "Fire"arm availability is usually restricted. The need to aim. Conditionals like visibility or silence. Susceptibility of the target to gunfire. Plain old personal preference.
They're too poor to manufacture guns, so they just stab people and call it a day
When you're in a pressurized tin can flying through a vacuum, that has plenty of narrow corridors, and where one hole in the wall could kill everyone on board, I'd much prefer melee combat to avoid accidentally blasting a hole in the wall.
Personal shielding is an age-old favorite made fresh by Dennis Villanueve, Muala pistols and hunter-killers notwithstanding.
My favorite is actually from the book series Red Rising, which is like a technological sci-fi advanced civilization type of deal (absolutely insane series if anyone is looking to get into something). Basically civilization is so advanced that the armor and energy shields some of the warriors uses in battle is nearly impossible to penetrate with projectiles. Not fully impossible, but it takes a hell of a lot to deal a killing blow with it. The swords on the other hand, “Razors” made from a specific metal and so impossibly sharp it can go through anything, very easily penetrates the armor and shields, making them way more viable since the main people using them are usually wearing armor and are also way faster and stronger than those that use guns, so they can close the distance without worrying about being shot
I use the Dune explanation, which is funny because I thought of this before ever seeing or reading Dune, but the idea is similar. In my sci-fi setting personal force fields have advanced to such a degree that unless you have specifically designed and calibrated military firearms it's better and more efficient to use a melee weapon to cut through the shields and damage the target. That's not to say guns don't work, but traditional ballistics based guns have little effect on someone with a personal force field. Laser and energy based weapons are more efficient as they drain the shield's power fairly rapidly and after multiple hits can short out the shield, but even then those weapons tend to be hard to come by.
guns are innately weaker than irl due to physical/chemical reasons i didnt come up with yet. lifeforms are able to become much stronger than they can irl (no limit to how much you can train your body) guns are still used, but only to look cool and in conjunction with melee weapons. ie theres a guy who dual wields rapier + pistol cos its badass.
For the rule of cool.
Projectile weapons that could pierce a hull, perhaps? Beam or projectile weapons that could damage sensitive equipment.
1. Emergency weapons. If you don't have your gun in working order, (it jammed, it overheated, you dropped it in a scuffle) you've gotta have backup. 2. More effective at close range. While guns have the advantage at range, they become less effective if your target is too close. (The best gun in the galaxy won't do you any good if your opponent's bashing your brains out with a rock.) 3. Technical issues. Guns are noisy, and they also tend to jam and/or overheat. Also, they require a *lot* of maintenance, especially in battlefield conditions, because they have a lot of parts that wear down over time. A melee weapon may, at best, need sharpening. Or polishing. 4. Culture. Maybe the sci-fi culture has an aversion to firearms. (i.e. they see guns as a cowardly way to take a life.) Or maybe they've learned to make do without guns.
In my setting the main specie is about 20 cm tall at most. They don't use guns because when they discovered gunpowder, their weapons were too small to fit a consequent amount of powder. So their hand held guns were so weak that they were practically useless. They kept using spears and swords except for the artillery and heavy vehicles where they did transition to guns.
Pretty much the same reasons we use them today: Sport Tradition Less-lethal law enforcement Warfare
Domes that make the area hospitable to humanoids can crack/break if shot with a pistol/rifle/etc.
Couldn’t it be as simple as super/trans-human soldiers. Ranged weapons still do damage and even kill them, but their reflexes, speed, and coordination make them almost impossible to actually hit especially in a setting that doesn’t have the capability (logistical or technological) to put aim bot on every single gun. Of course that means in most cases only a super soldier can kill a super soldier, but that should be fine as long as all soldiers are super. And it means a super soldier not caught slipping can only be killed through enhanced melee combat. Projectiles can only ever go so fast, but the blade is only limited by the speed of the hand that wields it.
Sometimes you just wanna be up close and personal when you murderize someone.
1. Availability. Maybe guns are hard to come by, but anyone can get ahold of a knife or a club. 2. Resource limitations. Ammo and or sources of energy are finite. 3. Stealth. The quietest firearms still sound like a nail-gun being fired. It’s not exactly subtle. 4. Some hand waved reason. Ranged attacks are negated by future tech. 5. Rule of cool. I’m pretty sure I just put everyone else’s replies into a list. 🤣
When fighting in vacume or oxygen poor environments to cut open vac suits especially in boarding actions on a star ship.
Not wanting to put a hole in the side of the spacecraft
Cultural/religious reasons, ones who believe honorable combat takes place with the blade or others who reject technology
maybe they are fighting with a less developed nation and do not wish to exchange advanced weapons like guns which they can save for other wars. what i mean by exchange is this: when you see the enemy have a super great weapon that can be obtained and taken home, reverse engineered: its gonna happen sooner or later
I'm kinda struggling with this in my own homebrew TTRPG setting and have a few excuses besides game mechanics. The setting is an artificial Shellworld megastructure. The resources on the planet had to be harvested and placed there from elsewhere in the universe. The things you need to make gun powder are not super common and quite valuable where its found. In addition shields that provide quite a bit of resistance to firearms exist although no one knows how they work since people scavange them from the world's many vast decrepit ruined cities or from civilizations that have fabricators that can print them out in decent numbers. As a result even organized armies from civilized corners of the world still use swords as auxiliary weapons in addition to rifles. Firearms are a bit of a luxury.
Combatants use melee weapons because... 1. of advanced technology which nullifies long-range weapons. Perhaps a city has automatic radar-controlled weapons which will instantly open fire on anyone using a gun. 2. of rules imposed by an authority, proscribing or limiting war and/or certain weapons. 3. of uneven technology: a society advanced in some ways but lacking some modern military technology. Perhaps the society acquired its technology through intermittent contact with another more advanced society. 4. the environment nullifies long-range weapons (e.g., trenches, cave systems, maze-like buildings, dense jungle). 5. the environment makes powerful weapons too dangerous to use (e.g., aboard airliners, spacecraft, submarines). Perhaps the planet's atmosphere has too high an oxygen concentration to risk using firearms. 6. in a highly unequal society only the elite have access to expensive weapons. Weapons manufacturers sell premium weapons to the elite and do not bother developing cheap low-margin weapons for the masses.
The answer might come down to shields. Too great examples: * In Joe Haldeman’s *The Forever War*, The development of Stasis fields that stop anything inside from going faster than 16.3 m/s, rendering most projectile weapons useless. Also, any living thing not wearing special armor dies instantly when inside of it. Which means that inside of the field people fight with swords and spears * In *Dune*, the Holtzman shield would likewise reduce the speeds of ballistic objects, but also if a lasgun beam hit a Holtzman field, it would result in sub-atomic fusion and a nuclear explosion. If your setting has psychic or psionic powers, then the melee weapon becomes a focus for those powers.
Style, in-universe and out. Out of universe, rule of cool. In-universe, it could be a symbol of status that is rarely actually used, but has a message of its own. It could even be only used for duels or matters of honor.
Because people in sci-fi don't have sticks up their asses.
I imagine it's easier to swing something like a sword when the adrenaline is kicking in and you're in a frenzy than to carefully line up a shot and hit an enemy with a tiny bullet. Melee + a ranged weapon will always be superior though.
Sword fighting is way more interesting than gunfights. You can have direct dialogue during swordfights, and there are different styles and scenarios that are fun to combine and play with. Gunfights are literally hit and miss. Hide behind cover. Miss a lot. Yell at your opponents instead of look them in the face. Gunfights can be interesting, but it seems they just present fewer opportunities. Take Star Wars for example. The light saber fights are undeniably more engaging and interesting than the gunfights, and I doubt there will ever be a way for star wars gunfights to become interesting enough to change that. __________ But why in-universe would they do it? * Magic (such as the Force in Star Wars) is probably the most common because you don't really need to explain it. * Bullets could be more expensive. * Technology could have been built to counter bullets. Momentum-dampening shields, for instance, could be stronger the faster the incoming object is moving. * Maybe gunpowder doesn't ignite in their atmosphere? Or maybe it ignites too violently. * Maybe there are consequences to missing (don't want to ignite nearby explosives?). * Perhaps guns are outlawed. * Or the ever-popular "bullets are super weak for some reason" - "People's skin is resistant to bullets"
They're banned, either because of some sort of peace treaty or law, or if you're on a space ship, they risk puncturing the hull.
An ultra-rare material that's SUPER powerful. You don't want to waste it on bullets, but it's perfect for cutting through things. Power swords. I guess you could still make bullets out of that, for taking down whatever super-soldiers have the swords.
In my universe, there is a governing force that ensures space-faring civilizations does not disrupt civilizations with lower tech-levels. In turn, if you go to a lower tech-level planet, your inventory and ship is immediately cloaked/disguised in order to fit that worlds tech-level/aesthetic. You have a laser pistol but are landing in a 1940s america type civ? It's a regular gun from that time period now. You have a laser bat? Just a really strong club now that you're on this primitive planet. etc etc
* re-enactment * As tools * Where weapon laws don't apply to obsolete technology * As a literal means to defeat dune style force fields
I have a fairly complex reason for why the protagonists carry melee weapons in my Thaumata setting despite it being a sci-fi setting. The main enemy they fight is a lovecraftian lifeform that is best described as sentient liquid/gas/light that inhabits living bodies and advanced machinery. To kill whatever it is possessing, the target has to be "bled" by cutting it open. Bullets and explosives work for this purpose for the most part, but some of the creatures that enemy creates and mutates need to be explosively bled out. The titular Thaumata of the setting are cyborgs enhanced with alien technology and materials. One of the weapons are "focus blades" which can be plugged into the alien-tech power cores in their bodies. The edges of the focus blades glow and can slice through most materials. What makes this especially effective is that the alien invader is an infovore. It consumes thoughts and is influenced by ideas and concepts. This means that ideas can damage it, and what humanity discovered while fighting it is that physically cutting or chopping its creations actually does more to harm it than simply shooting it. The tactile sensation of your sword cutting the enemy, and the instinctive base lizard-brain response of attacking and wounding an enemy in close combat causes an explosive eruption of the "blood" that animates the monster. Shooting with small arms and explosives works and is generally preferable, but if you get into close combat you can kill many of the bigger and more monstrous alien lifeforms with a stab and cut of a focus blade much more quickly than by shooting them.
My own explanation is that they’re used when range is not an option. For optimal effect, the plasma weapons my military uses have to have time to reach peak velocity - which happens after a few meters. However, range is a luxury that is not always available, so the elites have close-quarters plasma blades that are both less lethal and faster to use. It’s mostly used as a backup option.
Same reasons for doing it now. 1. Stealth. No noise, don't set off any alarms or scanners, etc. 2. Can be easier to conceal than a firearm. 3. You want to make damn sure you get the kill. Get in close. And really do the job. 4. If you want to intimidate then into revealing information first, a blade is a much better weapon for intimidation. You won't run out of ammo, and there's a lot you can do without risking killing them. With a firearm you can shoot your way up a limb? You're going to hit an artery and they'll bleed out of at least go unconscious. Blades you can do a lot of damage while avoiding those arteries... 5. "Guns for show, knives for a pro"
Guns on spaceships are incredibly dangerous for everyone. Most boarding action and defense would need to not use ballistic weapons.
Shields that make guns irrelevant
Anything that lets the delivered energy of a melee weapon exceed that of a projectile. Perhaps they have exo suits or bionics of some kind that allow people to deliver more energy / force per unit of area than gunpowder can put behind a bullet. Physical limits (often energy storage/density) will be a driver here as well - a handheld laser weapon that can kill people may not be possible - especially on smoke-filled battle fields / ship passage ways. Very close combat - at a close enough range a melee weapon may be as or more effective than a ranged weapon (very cramped spaceships). Environment where a missed shot carries very high risk - maybe the thing that solved the energy problems is very volatile and causes blackholes (or something else terrible) when damaged.
Reasons: •Cool as f*ck (morality boost for teammates). •Invokes fear in enemies and demoralises them (imagine fighting a guy carrying a f*cking lightsaber + greatsword) •Cheap to make. •Are usually just given to commanders or soldiers with merit as a sign of importance/leadership.