Toxic needle gun

The toxic needle gun is an mechanoid-only ranged weapon added by the Biotech DLC. It is the main armament of the apocriton.

This weapon cannot be independently obtained in normal play. It is provided here for comparisons sake.

Acquisition

Toxic needle guns spawn on all apocritons. However, it is not possible to obtain it directly in normal play. Pawns carrying it will not drop it on death, downing, or complete loss of manipulation like other weapons. It can be spawned in by the Debug actions menu but, like all unobtainable weapons, will disappear after being dropped.

Summary

For each point of damage dealt with the toxic bullets, the victim receives 0.65% toxic buildup. Note that this scales inversely with both toxic resistance and body size.

Analysis

The Toxic Needle Gun has a range of 44.9 tiles, matching a sniper rifle. Compared to the sniper rifle it has 3% less armor penetration, deals 40% less damage, takes a second less to aim, and has a slightly shorter cooldown after a shot before aiming can begin again.

The Toxic Needle Gun is highly likely to deal full damage through mid-tier armor such as flak jackets, flak helmets, normal quality dusters, and neolithic options such as the war mask. Flak Vests of normal quality offer decent protection- offering a 32.5% chance of negating damage from the Toxic Needle Gun.

With each unmitigated shot increasing severity by 16.25%, the accumulation of Toxic Buildup is likely to be less immediately pressing than the wounds inflicted by the gun itself, but care should be taken to avoid pawns reaching moderate or worse levels of Toxic Buildup as vomiting is a potentially deadly side effect while fighting an apocriton and the increasing consciousness loss can lead to deaths well before a pawn would die from damage.