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 a sniper, the toxic needle gun is more dangerous: it deals the same damage per shot, has 3% less armor penetration, and fires faster.

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 offer decent protection - a normal quality vest offers a 32.5% chance of negating its damage.

With each unmitigated shot increasing severity by up to 16.25%, the accumulation of Toxic Buildup is not as immediate of a threat as the damage itself. However, care should be taken to avoid pawns reaching moderate or worse levels of Toxic Buildup. Vomiting is a potentially deadly side effect, and the Consciousness loss can directly kill a pawn before they would die from thieir wounds.