How about increasing the energy reserve of melee weapon users by 20%? Light units gets 12 -> 14 energy on their next turn, Medium units 14 -> 17 energy and Heavy units 18 -> 22.
That extra energy could help melee users close in faster and deal more damage per turn, increasing their effectiveness.
Since there is no options for me to choose that i would agree with, my answer is YES, but it is the MELEE weapon SP COST that should be reduced, not the damage, energy nor toon which would upset the balance drastically.
But even if the cost to use melee weapon was lowered, getting in close enough to attack would still consume most of your energy reserve (even worse when taking cover after 1-2 attacks). More energy would let you either move around the map faster to flank the target or land more hits while lowering the energy cost would just let you attack more often.
Too much complicated. If the energy cost for melee weapons is 2 (originally all melee weapons required only 2 energy to attack), you will have enough energy to run. I think that melee weapons should have smaller damage with lower energy cost.
Devs are aware of the melee issues, and its something that will be fixed in a later update.
The point of lowering SP is to allow more melee units to be deployed in a pure melee VS pure gun game. It would also allow other non-melee units to equip heavier weapons when one equips his team with melee units. This would enable the firepower in a team to be maintained and not getting bogged down for equipping melee weapons with SP cost equal to guns which do not fare well in battle since it lacks range. By a count of dmg/energy you will realize melee weapons are not lagging behind range weapons. In other words, both melee and ranged weapons are powerful damage dealers(dmg/energy) but to rate that melee is only slighty less useful to ranged weapons by a reduction of 1SP is ridiculous.
I rest my case…
Lowering the SP value of melee weapons isn’t going to make them a great flanking asset while your gunners pin down the ennemies, it’s just going to allow you to send in even more meat shields while your long-range characters land more hits.
The 20% bonus energy for melee users can be increased if the bonus isn’t good enough. The main idea was to allow melee units to have an actual advantage over gun users.
…which is a bad idea.
Melee weapons are already still good for area control, increasing their usefulness beyond whatever tweaks are coming down the pike is likely just going to be a reenactment of the selective beta, where ranged weapons could be entirely forsaken in favor of an all-melee squad with ridiculous damage output and mobility. Giving a unit more AP for using melee weapons is bad because there is no low percentage that gives an even AP increase, and any AP increase would chuck the balance behind most unit/ability pairings right out.