Tacky, I really HATE demotivating people, because I think it's always bad, but this time I agree with some other posters here in this thread:
I have the bad feeling that you will overreach yourself. (overreach = internet translation = to want to do more than being capable of - right?)
I am asking myself: why do you want to make a COMPLETELY different mod? As soon as the automatic fire appeared on the battlefield meele fights disappeared. Only the fact that 90% of the battles took place in trenches caused an overlapping in the 1st WW.
And to show the few meele fights that existed after WWI due to jungle fights with Japanese or primitive cavalry attacks on the eastern front (in the early period of WWII) you don't need to use a meele-based game.
Ranged fights are really primitive in M&B, and there is no possibility of changing the "one-shot-crosshair-has-to-tighten-before-shot-behaviour" without some decent coding skill. Perhaps even the best coder can't change this.
(Things like Rhodok Crossbow indeed are a bigger change, but still far away from an MG42!)
I fear that you will spend a lot of time, labour and effort to this mod, just to recognize after some time that it will never be released. And THIS will demotivate you TOTALLY. So I will demotivate a little bit you before that happens
Try to make some new weapons. Or armours. Later on you can try to make a new map and new factions. But the "deluxe stuff" like battle formations, new functions and so on should be left for the capable coders. (There's always the possibility to ask if you could use some already developed features for your mod).
Just get a new and creative idea, that will be motivation enough. The only condition ist, that the idea is not too far away from M&B.
How about some "biblic mod"? With all the antique factions that existed at that time? Philisters, Persians, Babylon, Egypt, Kanaan and so on? That doesn't exist already, has a special flair and is not too far away from native. And I got that idea whilst writing this post.
(If you won't do this mod, I will... man, the more I think about it the more I like the idea
)