Not tried much melee, but this looks like it might help:

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=97085

true story?

Thank you, that is tons of great info.

That guide is fantastic! Thanks for linking it.

I had one last question on the subject, for federation tactical officers what skills would you put points into to increase the Bat'leth effectiveness?

I find martial arts to be a very effective alternative to ranged weapons. It works especially well against enemies that heal shields. The lunge attack from the Tactical kit is also an exploit attack. If you use melee combos, you can do good singletarget and AE damage.

The best part about it is that melee attacks ignore shields.

The Batleth will actually do a lot of damage, both of the exploit attacks will give you two chances to expose the target while performing the combo plus the added bleed damage is based on how much the attack does.

At commander 1 to commander 5ish i would see 200-300 hits jumping up to 400-600 if the target was exposed. a quick and dirty guess would put the bleed damage at about 50% of the initial attack.

All this is on a fed char with no physical strength traits, i do have all the melee skills maxed and a 7.5% physical strength piece of body armour.

meh, batleths are fun but after a while they get boring.

Hey all. Just so you know, Bat'leths are exceptionally powerful in PvE and can be deadly in PvP as well, especially if combined with an "Operative" tactical kit. For PvE I usually prefer the "Close Combat" tactical kit. If you're not a tactical officer... see my guide for more info (see link previous in this thread).

About the only place that I don't use them is large-scale PvE fights because I get stunned too much at close range.

While my guide has more info, just keep in mind that Bat'leths are incredible combo weapons - their basic attacks all expose and their finishing moves exploit. Also, all melee damage ignores shields. Very very effective vs. Borg especially.

Unarmed combat is also nice, especially since it can disable the enemy and spin kick is an AoE exploit attack. No kidding. I usually use Bat'leths, but hey, I *am* a Klingon

As to the skills relevant to it, it's these:

Close Combat Training
Special Forces
Martial Arts

PM me if you have questions!

In addition, on your Skills menu, there's a drop-down in the upper-right corner were you can select your powers, including attacks for equipped weapons like a bat'leth. When you select an attack/power, the Skills menu will display the Skills relevant to that attack/power.

The More You Know!™