OK the toon in question is a KDF, however this thread could be for any faction. Any advice for a good Melee only away team? Weapons, traits, species and so on.
PS: while on the subject isn't it about time they released the d'k tahg and mek'leth klingon weapons among others.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Klingon_blade_weapons
and the Fed security officer armour and helmet costume
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090531062301/memoryalpha/en/images/9/92/Perez.jpg
Monkey see, Monkey do. Monkey flings Feathered Monkey poo...

Comments
As for suggestions, Klingons and Gorn have natural melee bonuses.
Lunge is a good way to close the gap with Bat'leths, which are a bit slow to get on target... not to mention the fact that Lunge is a nice melee attack.
Hypospray Dylovene is pretty powerful for a Sci BOFF.
Otherwise, I can't say that I did anything different with my BOFFs other than throwing melee weapons on them.
For Klingons, as many Bat'leths as possible. Nausicaans should get their Nausicaan swords. I liked putting a sword on the Jem'hadar guy.
EDIT: I typically use a Nausicaan Tegolar Sword, or sometimes the Nukara Lightsaber. I prefer the Tegolar, though, because it sits on your hip rather than on your back when not in use. It's all about appearances, really
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
Sweeping Strikes is useful
Physical Augmentation Armor buffs your melee damage
Some Rep Traits buff your melee damage
Some Races buff melee damage: Vulcan, Romulan, Android, and some others
Weapons:
The Crystalline Sword aka the Lightsaber (from either the Rep Store or the Lobi Store) is a nice weapon. It absorbs incoming energy fire to buff the weapon. Which buff you get depends on what energy type is absorbed.
Unarmed Martial Arts is what I find to be more fun. Yes, it does less damage than a weapon but it is faster and has a lot more combos with a lot more status effects (use the wiki to learn them) to balance it out. Tactical Captains get a buff to unarmed damage, or so I hear.
However stats wise
Race - Ferasan, Catian, Klingon, Gorn, Bajoran, Aenar, Rigelian, Lethean, Orion, Tellarite
and Jem'hadar along with some of the other special ones I would imagine.
Trait's wise I'm partial to Lucky then whatever damage or utility type ability's you can get really.
Ability's :
Tac - Battle strat, lunge, target optics, smoke grenade would be pretty decent lunge as high as possible.
Sci - Gravitic field, tric scan, dylovne, heals probably the best bet
Eng - mines, shield rech, reroute, med gen, support drone's or something possibly
Weapons wise really comes down to personal choice however swords are probably the more useful since you do a little charge to close in and then attack which should allow for fewer misses in theory.
Armor - forget the name but the stuff that give's CritD or rep set/jem are probably the better way to go the phys stuff might be decent as well.
Really haven't messed around with a melee team much usually I like them to be firing from one side while I lunge in and through to go for a massive pulsewave flank shot. Lunge boff's are quite good with pulsewaves as well as would the cats I imagine.
and they give you carpal tunnel with the constant rejusting of character position to keep in attack range. frankly I am a bit surprised that the lirp and the bat dont do what the sword does (run toward the target automatically)
Though they try to get back to some distance if they can to switch back to their main weapon.
I always wanted to make a melee team, but i discovered that in STO, there are too many problems to make this work. Too many.
Good:
Andorians; bonus damage at low health(Fury), their other traits let them resist immobilization
Borg; tough as nails, and Neural blast is a great way to setup for melee, some have efficient though.
Caitians/Ferasans I know Ferasans have bonus melee damage, I think Caitians are defensive, but both are great since they have pounce.
Gorn/Saurians; Reptilian strength!, ones with efficient are best left on your bridge, but the others are good for ground
Jem'Hadar; shroud works really good comboed with melee
Klingons; probably have the biggest boost to melee combat of all the races
Nausicaans; make good melee fighters due to physical strength too
Orion; MALE orion characters excel in melee combat, Boffs? Boffs have either Physical strength or seductive at random, those with it rock in melee, Seduce is a fun way to incapacitate enemies while you stab them.
Remans/Romulans/Vulcans have physical strength to boost melee, and generally good ground traits, though Remans and Romulans usually have at least one space trait too.
Okay:
Aliens; have random traits so you never know what they'll come with...
Bajorans; kinda average, but useful, their abilities just buff ground combat, but do it well
Betazoids; generally good ground boffs, Pacification would give an easy opening for a melee hit, somewhat defensive though
Ferengi; good ground boffs, not melee focused though
Pakleds; can have physical strength, and have generally good ground traits, but their species trait is more of a con than a pro
Rigelians; not bad, but largely defense oriented on ground
Tellarites; good ground boffs in general
Trill; boffs have all ground traits, and useful ones, but nothing specific to melee or ranged
meh:
Aenar; primarily defense fighters
Bolian; all ground, but their traits aren't that good for melee
Breen; ranged combat focused traits
Humans; like Bajorans, but with only 3 ground traits on boffs.
Letheans; more of a ranged race than anything else
My character Tsin'xing
This. A million times this. The melee AI is terrible. Melee boffs, even the ones with lunge and swords, will wander around staring into space. For the few times they manage to find a target, they'll run back to you after killing it, look around, and then occasionally amble over to a new target (by which time the ranged boffs will have finished off everything anyway). Melee boffs are terrible, don't use them.
i've tried it myself on my kdf toon for role playing purpose. it went very very bad. because of very bad path finding of bridge officers. they literally stand still one step away and doing nothing about 80% of the time.
Sci should have nanite health monitor, dylovene, and either other heals or immobilization debuffs. If you're going the hold route it might be a good idea to try finding a telekinetic boff. It's not easy and fed-side it's something only found on aliens.
Eng work well with bombs and drones
Tacs are best, since they have actual melee skills. Lunge and sweeping strikes make it so much better. squad buffs are also good.
My character Tsin'xing
Sadly, the boff AI is still incredibly stupid when it comes to just using melee weapons. Pairing up melee weapons with sweeping strikes and lunge does help though. But it is pretty pointless to give a Sci or an Engi boff melee weapons (unless the Engi is set up for bombs and mines).
Also, if you are drowning in EC, the purple tactical melee kit modules are a huge buff over the old melee kits. But it will cost you a lot.
I dont think so. I still have 1 melee unit in every character, and he acts really terrible most of the times. I only have em cuz i put the special khaless sword of the anniversary in em lol. Thats the only reason.
No, you must be playing another game. In 75% of the cases, my melee boff will stand besides me without doing nothing, unless you are really close to your target (and he already have the lunge and sweeping strikes skills). He will eventually go to attack my target, do 1 lunge, 1 attack and come back to me to stay besides me without doing nothing, again.
I have really learned that when i use a team of 3 ranged weapons + 1 melee, it is like if my team is formed by 3 guys, not 4.
And this is the classic behaviour of a melee toon. And never changed since, well, since i have memory. Not to mention, the ones with stealth abilities.. lol, dont even try it.
The AI of ground fights is terrible in STO, and melee stuff is even worst. I only have melee away members for the visuals lol, nothing more..
It works well enough. Some of us KDF players took to doing Assimilation (Elite) with pure melee using our Bat'leth collections while rounding out our kit module collections.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
My character Tsin'xing