Pila

Pila are slightly heavier, thrown ranged weapons which deal a high amount of damage per pilum; very long time between throws; slightly shorter range and slightly lower overall accuracy.

Acquisition

Pila can also be crafted with skill level 3 at the fueled smithy or electric smithy once the smithing research has been completed; with 70 wood and 7,000 ticks (1.94 mins) of work. Pila can be purchased from neolithic war merchants and orbital combat suppliers, tribal and outlander settlements, or from raider drops:

Raider Kind	Chance	Average Quality	Health
Heavy Archer	50.71%	Normal	100%

Analysis

The most notable feature about a thrown pilum is its high damage amount (a double-edged sword in some cases), being higher than any other neolithic weapon's projectile and matching the sniper rifle. Stopping power is also superb, not only being able to stagger humans, but also many larger targets such as muffalo and grizzly bears.

Thanks to their aforementioned damage amount, as well as their tendency to strike internal body parts more often than other weapons, pila can easily maim (one hit can shatter a radius, femur, spine or cripple the pelvis) or even outright kill whoever's unlucky enough to be struck by them. This is a trait that's shared with the sniper rifle and the infamous charge lance. A thrown pilum's velocity is also very slow as to be expected, but the impact on overall DPS is relatively low in this weapon's case due to its extremely long warmup/cooldown cycle.

The pila's achille's heel is undoubtedly their aforementioned warmup/cooldown cycle; missing a throw can be costly not only because of the long time between throws in general, but also because that colonist will be unable to perform any actions for the entire 4-second cooldown duration. As a result, pila are the worst neolithic weapons in terms of damage output, and even the short bow bests pila in head-on fights. On top of that, a pilum has the shortest range out of all neolithic weapons, and only outranges both shotguns in-game as well as all grenade variations. Armor penetration and close-up accuracy are also both very poor, with the latter making it less-than-ideal to equip low-skilled shooters with pila.

Pila are also the heaviest neolithic-tier ranged weapons, rivalling even somewhat heavy rifle-class firearms. However, this weapon's mass should still be low enough to not have any significant effect on the wielding colonist's ability to carry items in a caravan.

Pila are more suited towards being supporting weapons in combat due to their stopping power and ability to disable targets, since their DPS is simply insufficient to effectively assume a head-on engagement role. Hunting's also a bit of a mixed bag: while the per-hit damage is great for this purpose, the pila's long cooldown along with its short range means that problems could arise if the quarry turns manhunter.

Against an unarmored human, a pilum can kill with 2 hits to the torso, 1-2 hits to the head, or 1 hit to the neck or brain; cripple or destroy limbs in 1-2 hits; and destroy eyes and digits with a single hit. It'll generally take around 3 hits (~39.8 seconds average) to incapacitate that human from pain shock.

Overall, pila are best paired with careful shooters up to level 6, then with trigger-happy shooters beyond that point.

Melee Combat

Tool	Attack	Damage Type	Power	AP	Cooldown	Likelihood	Base DPS
Overall	-	-	9	13%	2.00s	-	4.50
Shaft	Blunt	Blunt	9	13%	2.00s	50.00%	4.50
Point	Stab	Sharp	9	13%	2.00s	50.00%	4.50

Pila vs. Comparable Weapons

This section goes over how well pila fares against comparable weapons (similar value, tech level or similar characteristics) in 1 vs. 1 combat.

Methodology

All testing is semi-automated which allows for large sample sizes to be gathered per set of results with ease
All pawns have a skill level of 8 in shooting
No pawns have any traits that affect combat performance
All pawns are of 18 years of age and completely healthy
Pawns are divided by walls to prevent stray shots from skewing results in any way
Weather conditions are kept clear and no cover is used

Results in the tables below are the percentages of battles that pila either won or tied against the weapon listed in the first column of said tables, with a sample size of 2,000 battles per result. Higher percentages are better.

Unarmored

For the unarmored testing, all pawns wore normal quality plainleather pants and plainleather button-down shirts.

Pila vs.	3	7	12	18	25	32	40
Short bow	17.80%	22.40%	33.95%	35.50%	-	-	-
Pump shotgun	6.00%	6.75%	10.75%	-	-	-	-

Flak Armor

For the flak armor testing, all pawns wore normal quality steel simple helmets, flak jackets, flak vests, plainleather button-down shirts and flak pants.

Pila vs.	3	7	12	18	25	32	40
Short bow	9.85%	15.20%	25.35%	27.40%	-	-	-
Pump shotgun	2.50%	2.65%	3.95%	-	-	-	-

Marine Armor

For the marine armor testing, all pawns wore normal quality marine helmets, marine armor, plainleather button-down shirts and plainleather pants.

Pila vs.	3	7	12	18	25	32	40
Short bow	10.25%	16.55%	28.20%	29.15%	-	-	-
Pump shotgun	2.15%	2.55%	2.85%	-	-	-	-

Graphs

The graphs assume normal quality pila against an adult human that's out in the open in clear weather. For DPS, projectile speed has also been factored into the equation, with the weighting based on the base amount of attacks that it'll take to put the aforementioned target into pain shock.