Parry, damn it! (melee improvement and complexity)

[Xom]

A significant portion, the majority in fact, of real life close combat training is all about defending yourself from harm. Parrying, blocking, harassing, exploiting reach. So it seems a bit SILLY when my 18 skill noble with a bionic arm and Excellent steel sword trades blow for blow with a skill 3 unarmed tribal for 30 seconds and wins by a small margin. It makes me wonder what the melee skill even does. Does it just reduce miss chance like ranged weapons? I know melee weapons are new and haven't had much tweaking done, but just in case.

My recommendations (if any of this is present in the game, I have not noticed at all while watching my melee specialists)

Increased attack rate (decreased windup/cooldown): Skill should improve attack rate due to increased agility and the warrior's familiarity with basic movements. I don't imagine this being particularly extreme, something like a %5 bonus to the weapon's agility multiplier per skill level.
Increased damage: A skilled warrior knows how to stick it where it does the most harm. A minor improvement to damage would be nice, perhaps something as simple as adding the weapon skill (-3?) directly onto the weapon's base damage.
Active Defence: When fighting another enemy that's using melee, a superior fighter has a proportionally slim chance of getting hit. Someone with 20 skill should be next to impossible to scratch by anyone he or she can see and parry. Conversely, a weaker defender would have a tough time defending against a stronger attacker (but not to the same extent as attacking, I'd imagine) I don't know how rimworld currently handles melee miss chance, but this should be taken into account, either as a penalty for the weaker fighter or a skill check for the defender.

Getting Fancy: the following is a series of 'moves' that I think belong in vanilla rimworld to spice up combat and have it resemble the injury system in randomness and complexity.

Charge: When approaching a target, a melee attacker can speed up to close the distance quickly. This gives ranged attackers less time to draw a bead.
Disarm: A common move in fencing of all types is taking away an opponent's weapon. Many martial arts teach techniques that allow a defender to turn a weapon against its wielder, a move most popularly used against knives.
Dangerous Edges: Sharp weapons are dangerous. They are especially dangerous when all you have to defend against them are your bare hands. Even blunt weapons are difficult to defend against without having something inert to interpose. Unarmed combatants, except for those of utterly superior skill, should have a tough time against armed ones as a successful defence on anyone's part can leave them with injured hands. Perhaps a defender can use their hands to divert wounds that would have otherwise landed on their vitals?

[NoImageAvailable]

I do agree that the hit-chance should take into account both opponents skill. Maybe make it so if two opponents are attacking each other the chance to hit is something like 0.5 + ([attacker's skill] - [defender's skill]) / 40, so in a match between a 0 skill and 20 skill pawn the 0 skill has no chance of hitting and the 20 has 100% chance of hitting. In an even match up both would have 50% chance to hit. Against multiple opponents the formula could be along the lines of 0.5 + ([attacker's skill] - [defender's skill] / 4) / 40 since defending against multiple attackers is a lot harder.

[Argon]

^  I second this (both posts) as it could make melee combat a viable strategy for hunting as well as battling raiders.

-Argon

[Playbahnosh]

I support this.

Also, colonists normally have two hands, right? So things like dual-wielding should be a thing. Also, shields that increase defense and have a chance to block attacks. Small shields made of wood and metal for tribesman, and maybe riot shields to wield together with pistols, maybe even some sci-fi energy shields (given enough research). Projectiles could ricochet off shields, hitting other things (shots should ricochet off other things too, but that's a different matter )

[Anduin1357]

Somebody make this a mod, NOW!
I can totally see this coming...
Personally, though, 20 vs 20 should end up 5% hit, they will just take forever to hurt each other, quite frankly.
Next would be rifle bayonets
That reminds me... Bionic Arms and Legs should never bleed, never scar and a 20 with bionics would totally own with 1% chance to get hit.
Bionic eyes should help.
Clothing actually does ALOT against cuts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RcP1ZWwlUw
Powered armors requires blunt damage,
Fists do blunt damage only, no effect on armor (fact is, it might break a bone.)
Charge needs at least a straight line of 5 squares to occur
If enemy has a weapon readied by then, guy runs into blade and you know. 
Getting fancy: Special AI that looks up melee skill and then decides if the colonist does something smart ie. readying blade into charging guy or something dumb ie. charging into high melee skill dude who readies his weapon, does not look to see where he charge and get...
with chance of stopping. 10.0 c/s
Support!
Would love the addition of 3 weapons, main armament, Sidearm and melee weapon, with grenades as special etc
would love a field medic
would love an inventory so that during long raids, colonist can take food from inv and eat on duty.

[Johnny Masters]

I also totally support this. Melee deserves some luving fast, but guns should still be superior, for obvious reasons. Problem is the way the game works with guns cooldowns, a fast melee attack rate kinda messes with ranged, unless it's not interruptible anymore.

Also:
- Chance to hit should be 50% and increase or decrease based on difference of skill. So the chance to hit skill 1 vs skill 1 is the same as two lvl 20 masters facing off. Conversely, an untrained should have a 1-5% chance to hit a master and a master 95-99% to hit an untrained. Not sure a double system is needed (attack and defense), so parry/dodge from defendant is abstracted into lower chance to hit from attacker.

- Yep, more slots. Really, more slots. So we can have sidearms, shields and tools & rations. At least 2 slots but no more than 5 I guess. It's not any more complex than how armor and clothing or damage locations works, which is fairly complex. As it is, it's like you can carry 50 pieces bricks, but carrying both a pistol and a knife is too much trouble.

- Non % damage reduction. I'm not sure if weapons/fists should deal random damage, but stuff certainly needs a solid damage reduction stat. So a punch could deal 1+0,5*lvl damage/blunt  but a wall / power armor has 15/blunt resistance instead of 65% blunt resistance. So no matter how strong or trained you are, you're not hurting power armor (OR WALLS, YOU SILLY GAME), which is how it should work. Ofc, under this, a bionic arm has its own damage reduction which is better than original organics.

- Maneuvers. Yes, i like disarms and charges. Should also include a trip. Some sort of grapple perhaps, like pinning down an opponent?
A charge could include some bonus chance to trip and disarm an opponent. ofc, maneuver chance is based on skill level.

- Since nothing impacts plant cutting, couldn't melee help with it? 

[Anduin1357]

I also totally support this. Melee deserves some luving fast, but guns should still be superior, for obvious reasons. Problem is the way the game works with guns cooldowns, a fast melee attack rate kinda messes with ranged, unless it's not interruptible anymore.
...

I second this!