Game Design: Part 5; Shooting vs Melee

From my experience with gaming and from talking with other gamers, one of the hardest things to get right in a game is the balance between ranged and melee combat so this is going to be my thoughts on this crucial part of designing a game.  The problem in balancing them from my point of view is getting them both to have the right "feel" while keeping them at the same effectiveness on the battlefield.

When I say the right "feel", what I mean is that for shooting it should feel like you're troops are expending ammunition against the enemy while advancing/defending to both cause casualties and keep your opponent's heads down, while melee should feel fast, furious and frantic  with only one side emerging from the crush victorious while the opponent is wiped out or running for their live but from which neither side emerges unscathed.

This generally leads to shooting being a whittling down unless you bring heavy weapons to bear or focus fire where as melee is a bucket of dice affair where units can evaporate extremely quickly, which can lead to melee being judged as better than shooting.  I don't think this is the case as shooting is balanced to melee in a different was other than speed of destruction, when you shoot you have little to no risk of suffering harm in return whereas with melee combat there's always a high risk of being mauled in return or even being wiped out without causing damage if it goes wrong.

This for me allows for the balance between melee and shooting to be struck by limiting how quickly units can get into combat, how units react to taking casualties from shooting, how quickly units can get from combat to combat and how much damage can be done by a unit in one round of melee.  This balancing act can get skewed to give a preferential phase for example in a fantasy game the balance will be tipped towards melee while a sci-fi game will usually have a preference towards shooting.  The balance for a game like Warhammer 40k, which is a Science-Fantasy game, is the most likely to be equal with no preference as it fits the background well.

When writing game rules its important to work out how the balance of strength of ranged and melee combat is needed by the game to provide a "realistic" feeling to the game in relation to the background material and general type of setting of the game.

So these are my thoughts in balancing the strengths of the shooting and melee combat when designing a game.  If you've had thoughts on this I'd like to hear them or if you have topics that you'd like to hear about from me post them below.