Topic: Melee damage
Melee damage is complicated. Personally, I use a spreadsheet to calculate melee weapon damage for my gals. People used to do that for manufacturing for profit, but now we don't need that anymore because we have the ingame info. I would like to have something similar for melee damage.
Problem is, the damage is dependent on the armor of the target. So you cannot calculate a correct damage value when you equip an item. Since meridian implemented a combat log, I would suggest to use that to give some feedback on melee weapon damage. Not the actual numbers, just some rough indicators. Like "no damage", "minor scratch", "good hit" and "devastating blow".
Logic behind that, if you are fighting someone in melee, you CAN tell if you injured him or if your blow did nothing. When you hit someone with a hammer from behind and the blow bounced right off their armor, you will know. If you chainsaw someone and their armor compleately stops it, you will know. When you hit someone in the face with fistycuffs and land a good hit, you know that you did. This should help beginners figuring out how effective their melee strategies are.