I am in total agreement about not adding complexity to the system. I’m trying a few different things out and seeing how it computes in comparison to the existing values. If it comes out clean I will present it. Last thing I would want to do it make it harder when it should hopefully make is easier.
As for difficulty in adding future items, it could easily be done with a googledocs spreadsheet, just punch in the few physical constraints (Length, Weight, Balance, Striking Surface Area) and get your in game stats as the output. I find deriving stats in this manner is easier as you don’t have to ‘guess’ what you think something would or would not do. That and when all weapons are processed this way, they all relate to their real world counterparts and act intuitively.
I hope to have a rough draft up tomorrow. I’m dozing off.
Okay, I have some general news to report on the work I have been doing.
I was talking with some of you devs in the dev IRC yesterday and some things were discussed. Firstly, there would be little benefit working through all the calculations to have it all precalced outside of the game. It would add a layer of complexity to adding items to the game later on.
The next issue is the state of melee.ccp. It is exactly as should be expected for this stage of development. Layer upon layer of added functionality. I have spent a few hours trying to identify everything contained to attempt a rewrite. I have pulled a fork and will work on it as time permits but be advised I am not much of a coder. I am more of a pseudo coder. I understand the process but the syntax has always alluded me.
The goal is to rewrite melee.ccp into something more managable and more organized. Then I should have a MUCH better understanding on what is happening in the damage calcs and have a better idea of how to proceed.
I will likely have many many questions for the devs as I work on this. But I am feeling optimistic. 
Should any other dev want to do this job, by all means just let me know. I would hate to take something away from a regular dev that wants to do it. If at any point it becomes too much for me, I will let you know and step back so as to not hinder progress.
Cheers!
Thanks for the head-up Vaughner, good luck with what you are doing.
Okay, update.
This is way to large a project for a first time with this source. So I will step aside at this time. I will start smaller possibly with a few bug fixes and work my way up. Just wanted the devs to know that this is not being worked on at this time.
Sorry. 
Hey no problem, it’s a rather intimidating codebase, a lot of it is very idiosyncratic, and our documentation is nearly nonexistent. Save the apologies for breaking stuff 
Kevin, since we at least seem to have consensus for the to-hit guidelines, do you think you could throw those in? I’ll probably get a chance to tomorrow night. I’ll see if Rivet’s interested in some more rebalance work, I’m sure she’ll absolutely love the idea.
Sure, I’ll drop in a PR for it first thing when I get home.
Yeah, -2 to +1 seems reasonable as long as the maximum high and maximum low work out to be where you want them.
Frankly there are more really bad weapons than really good weapons in the world. Designing functional weapons has been a studied process throughout history. And many weapons are designed to have a ‘role’ to play in battle, and are actually quite difficult to learn to use. Their tactical purpose outweighs the learning curve.
So yeah, this all looks good, and it’ll be a breath of fresh air to see some of the overzealous weapon designs reigned in.
You might want to consider making Balance ‘Balance/Weight.’ So very heavy weapons (that may be balanced by their nature) are properly penalized. Right now there’s nothing saying that a long iron pole wouldn’t be an exceptional weapon. When in fact it would be hard as hell to actually fight with.
Yea, you get penalized with cost to swing, but as long as you take out your target (or stagger them for long enough), there’s no significant penalty to super heavy weapons, at least in one-on-one fights, so a balance penalty would be worthwhile there.
Or we could leave them as is, and introduce a mechanic where different weapons are good in different circumstances. I think having weapons that are better under different circumstances would be a good thing.
Any penalties and bonuses that arise solely from weapon weight, though, are ones I’d like to see done programmatically, not through the guidelines mentioned here (where poorly weighted weapons are already covered by ‘balance’ anyway, you don’t need the total weight to be a factor) with heavier weapons getting penalties based on whether or not the player has “enough” strength (and if they don’t, a penalty based on how short they are of having enough)
I think wrapping that into the to-hit guidelines for basic weapon stats would be a mistake. If a person has hydraulic muscles, they should have no problems using a heavy weapon just because it’s heavy.
A fair point. Comparing the weapon weight to strength and then applying a modifier based on the difference would certainly be interesting. Though it does add additional emphasis to strength for weapon usage, when there is already plenty of that.
I think that even a very, very strong person is not going to be able to swing around a very heavy object as fast as an agile person can swing around a very light one. Where it comes to putting mass into motion there are diminishing returns in getting a heavy object to move at a specific speed. But that is handled well enough by the weapon’s speed rating. How hard it is to use effectively should probably depend more on strength.
My concern is that the iron bar ticks off most of the best guidelines here, and I’m really not convinced that an iron bar is a good weapon. But it might as well be a quarterstaff. Just because something is long and balanced and has a decent natural grip doesn’t make it a great weapon. In fact, using long weapons in single combat can be very, very hard. This is why the Roman gladius was so successful against the more common hoplite spear formations; once the Romans were able to get inside the functional range of the spears (thanks to their huge shields), the short reach of the gladius actually made it wildly superior. Spears are great at their intended range and were excellent for presenting an intimidating line to approach, but they were really, really bad when the enemy was in your face. To the point where the front line of a hoplite formation would drop their spears and draw their own swords.
Quarterstaffs, spears with their business end placed far away from the user, and really any weapon which relies on the arc of a swing, is going to be harder to use when someone is inside the arc/minimum range of the weapon’s tip. Also trying to swing a quarterstaff when you have a bunch of walking bodies closing in around you is pretty close to impossible.
So yeah, that the staffs and spears are standing out as excellent weapons by these criteria, when in fact they are not easy to use under many very relevant circumstances, I think maybe highlights a weakness that could be addressed.
I’d be tempted to suggest a system where longer reach only gives a benefit on the first round of attack, or something of that nature, but that’d be getting into combat overhaul material. I actually designed a (tabletop) system for the reach dichotomy problem, but yeah. Anything along those lines is a big change. Not really the place for it. But it might be something that could be handled with unique abilities/drawbacks for weapons that make them good in some situations and bad in others.
Army tactics really don’t have much to say on the effectiveness of the sort of fighting the player is doing.
Many high quality historical armies forced their soldiers to wear equipment that would specifically leave them WORSE off in a situation where it was them, alone, fighting one or several others - Romans included. You certainly wouldn’t want to emulate THAT. Equipment was designed to make the unit an effective fighting machine, not the individuals in it. (there’s a lot more incentive to stay in formation in case of a scary enemy charge if you know the moment you break ranks your ability to insure your survival diminishes rapidly)
Spears, in game, would end up with a lower attack speed, and a lower to-hit bonus (thanks to their single-point attack, instead of an arc). I think that’s more than enough to balance them out, especially since they would just be outright better than swords in a situation where your opponent is fairly dumb and slower then you, since you can easily control the distance and keep yourself safe. 
Army tactics kinda do have a huge impact on what the player is doing. It is one guy with a spear up against an army of zombies. All a zombie needs to do is get inside the spear’s thrust range and the spear is utterly useless unless the character withdraws. Which isn’t that hard to do when there’s more than one zombie attacking the player. Whatever advantage the spear posed against one or even two zombies is going to become a massive drawback against more. That’s why the comparison is relevant.
Of course, while I think it’d be interesting to go wildly in-depth with combat mechanics and attempt to simulate that kind of thing, it’s probably not going to happen. So yeah. Attack speed being slower means more opportunity for enemies to hit the player and stun them, which is a good enough approximation.