What will be the place for close combat characters

Hi,
I just went trough the first playtest report that was made available https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sidw?Reports-from-the-Field-Starf inder-Second
and even if this look promising I am starting to fear that close combat characters won't have enough spotlights.

the 4 classes presented in the report, especially the operative and the soldat where describe as class that would focus on ranged combat. However, it would be unfortunate that starfinder 2e becomes a "ranged-battles" only systems.

In space fantasy stories, ranged battles are extremely frequent, though you always have close combattants that reach those ranged combattants forcing them to switch to close combat.

I really hope that the solarien won't be the "only" class with close combat capabilities but that the Operative and the Soldier will see a few options as well. Unless envoys will be THE close combattant ( : -) )

We've already seen a close-combat Soldier class path: debuff enemies with melee strikes to slow them down so getting away is impossible, penalize their accuracy for fighting back (bringing them in line with your own strength-secondary stats), and have a reaction to punish them if they try to get away or only have a ranged weapon to fight you with.

The field test has not gotten to the solarian, vanguard, and evolutionist yet, those are all more melee orientated classes.

The field test is never going to get to the vanguard or evolutionist, those won't be in the playtest or SF2 core rulebook. We're getting soldier, operative, envoy, solarion, mystic, and witchwarper, it seems.

I'd like to see an environment where most of the people will be inclined to use ranged fire most of the time, where it may be important to have a melee fallback option, and where a melee-focused character is possible and viable, and gets their own stack of awesome, but is seen as a bit of a niche build. Like, "character who specializes in melee" and "character who specializes in grenades" might be pretty close to one another in how common/normal they are.

That... actually sounds like about where they're putting it, too, which is cool.

The field test is never going to get to the vanguard or evolutionist, those won't be in the playtest or SF2 core rulebook. We're getting soldier, operative, envoy, solarion, mystic, and witchwarper, it seems.

Then Solarian is the melee class for the core it would seem. I wonder if the Core rule book will get split up like the remaster of pathfinder. If so and there is a player core 2 coming out not too far behind the first we'll have all the classes back fairly quickly.

Then Solarian is the melee class for the core it would seem. I wonder if the Core rule book will get split up like the remaster of pathfinder. If so and there is a player core 2 coming out not too far behind the first we'll have all the classes back fairly quickly.

I'd expect that Solarian would have both ranged and melee builds, much like the Soldier has ranged and hybrid builds. Solarian might have a hybrid build as well.

I imagine the operative might see a melee build as well, since there's a SciFi archetype around knife fighting too.

I'd like to see an environment where most of the people will be inclined to use ranged fire most of the time, where it may be important to have a melee fallback option, and where a melee-focused character is possible and viable, and gets their own stack of awesome, but is seen as a bit of a niche build. Like, "character who specializes in melee" and "character who specializes in grenades" might be pretty close to one another in how common/normal they are.

That... actually sounds like about where they're putting it, too, which is cool.

Maybe not quite that extreme, but I definitely want them to really lean into "ranged is the main form of combat". What I absolutely like, though, is the idea of melee as a common fallback option - basically as ranged weapons are for many melee characters in PF2. The whole idea of "if everything else fails, it's back to straight silver" is one of those things that is way too cool not to include.

What I want from melee specialists is basically the opposite of existing ranged combat - high risk, high reward, high octane gameplay. They are the insane ones that decided that when the chips are down, their plan is to run into the hail of pure death from both sides and swing around a big stick. There are definitely several places for it, but those should reflect this change in the combat environment and that it probably won't be the first choice for the majority of people.