Actually, this ended up being a wall of text. Oops.
@syvarris This is probably going to end up as yet another long and wall-o'-text discussion, but (... hey, why should this discourage any veteran resident of this thread? 
) - why do you consider melee obsolete in ER age? (Not modern age, though, than one I can mostly understand.)
I'll admit, my opinion
is fairly rooted in real life. Whenever I think of an ER battlefield, I tend to imagine a RL battlefield but with spacesuits and lasers. That's certainly different from the reality, which is that PW decides outcomes, and 'awesome' is an advantage when you're in PW's head. I'll try to argue from an in-game perspective for this.
My reasoning is simple: there is a range of devastating scientific effects (kin-amps, vibrating monoatomic strings, etc.) that can be unleashed on the foes only from up close (or, well, it is economical to do so only from up close);
You do have a point, but I don't think it's quite that important. A kinetic amp is certainly capable of killing weak troops, but tends to fail against heavy troops. Other, similarly priced CON weapons can do the same--and at a range. However, it does have improved utility over those weapons, for example to punch through walls. It has a use, but more as an emergency item or tool rather than a main weapon.
A monoatomic machete is something of a poor example. It can butcher unarmored or medium armored troops, and against a BS it can sever limbs. However, a gauss rifle, which is half the price, can do the first and third (A direct joint shot destroys the joint, rather than severing). If medium armored troops are a major threat, a testament (or blifle, now), which is the same price, can do all three. Both of those weapons are ranged, too.
existence of Melee Battlesuit variant is proof that being very fast, agile and still quite adequately armored is possible;
I'm not really so sure. Yes, a melee battlesuit is highly mobile, but it's slower than speed-oriented light troops, like Mk.III troopers. I believe those troops could even have milnoplate and still be faster, unless a melee BS is faster than a mobility one. So, yes, this is true, but only if you have a large technological gap. If you're fighting against equal foes (other BSs), then they're either more heavily armored than you, or they are as fast as you. Either way, they can be armed with weapons that can kill you from farther away than you can kill them.
Therefore, at the very least in the niche of obstructed battlefields and somewhat diminished line of sight, melee battlesuits can and would wreak havoc upon enemy from up close.
Hmm. Yes, in a battlefield which puts you at knifefight range, being melee oriented is an advantage. I think any battlesuit is a poor choice for such a place though, because they're not urban compatants--they're tanks. They don't do well in tight quarters, which is the situation where being melee is an advantage.
...Perhaps the idea should be for a melee HRB variant? The main obstacle would be figuring out what to trade away.
Therefore, melee combat has its own well-deserved place in ground warfare. It's "Uncommon", but not that much "Exotic" or "Useless".
It has a place, yes. Given any item with unique traits, you can imagine a situation where it's usable. This is similar to the earlier discussion I had with Radio, about redundancy within the armory--there's
places where 'different but inferior' items are an advantage, but those places are too rare to justify use.
I don't really think that knifefight battlefields would be common enough for it to be a good idea to employ units who excel in melee but are worthless at range. There's the argument that thinking like that is an exploitable flaw, and the UWM would try to use it against us... but the UWM are basically defined by stupidity. I think maybe some special melee units would be nice to have mothballed, just in case, but they shouldn't be primary units.
(And that's even without us getting into really rare and special stuff like the Avatars or the Arbiters.)
Melee avatars... I... The only role they would be useful for is killing other avatars when in conditions that preclude ranged combat. Normal avatars are already overkill in melee anyway, without having a special variant.
Arbiters are one of the instances where the UWM hired the guy who said he had a
theoretical degree in physics. Have you ever played a videogame where there's hard-to-see snipers who take three seconds to aim their attack, but damage 70% of your health in one shot? Imagine if those snipers instead could pop up and aim in 0.2 seconds, with pinpoint accuracy, and with a gun that damages 120% of your health. If you have a soldier who can dodge bullets, you don't send him to stab your enemy, you send him to murder an entire platoon by killing them all with quickdraws from 200 meters away while immune to their returning fire.
Anyway, so that this isn't entirely one sided, here's my core reasons said alone:
--For you to be able to kill an enemy, with a melee weapon, you either need to be faster than them, or undetected by them.
----This is because if I can outpace you, you'll never reach me to stab me. Simple.
--For you to be able to kill an enemy, with a melee weapon, their weapon must not be able to kill you before you can kill them.
----This is because if you charge at me with a knife, and I shoot you halfway, you lose.
--For it to be a
good tactic to kill an enemy with a melee weapon, the weapon must be cheaper than equivalent conventional weapons.
----This is because if you could kill the person with a knife, you can kill them with a gauss rifle, but
also situations where you need range.
--Finally, for
specialized use or
mass deployment, a melee unit should be able to reliably meet all three of those criteria.
----This is because if you have a melee unit instead of a ranged unit, but you never (or rarely) use it, then you effectively just lost a ranged unit. One single instance is minor, but we're talking about armies, which means that you could end up effectively losing
hundreds of expensive troops.
The third point is really the weakest. While there's no direct proof of melee weapons outperforming similar-price items, one could argue that a kinetic amp's weird scaling would allow it. Another example would be that a battlesuit sword is probably less expensive than a PSL. You could also just nullify the argument by saying that uncon users can use melee weapons effectively with less stat inefficiently than training con. I tend to think that uncon melee is unreliable (and a bad idea if it isn't an emergency), but nobody wants to watch syv vs. syv.
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