User:Hordes/Weapons Guide
There are a wide variety of weapons availale in RimWorld. Using them effectively can give you a sizable advantage against raiders.
Melee
Melee weapons specialize in hand-to-hand combat.
Pawns who are adjacent to each other are forced into melee combat, even if they are wielding a shotgun. A gun's barrel is quite ineffective compared to a sword. Melee lends itself well to disruptive tactics, like rushing down a sniper or peeling off enemies from your gunners. The melee block - create a chokepoint with 3 melee outside, where only 1 enemy can melee at a time - is extremely effective. You can have gunners fire just behind them.
The main con with melee is that damage is unavoidable. Enemies will vastly outnumber you in higher difficulties; a 200 tribal raid will eventually cripple your most well-geared melee fighters, even in the best scenarios. Animals will always fight back against a melee weapon, even with a 0% manhunter, making them terrible for hunting.
- Give your best melee pawns the strongest melee weapons, assuming you desire to get into melee at all. These weapons are more simple, as raw DPS is the strongest consideration.
- Combine with a shield belt to give protection against bullets.
Sharp
- Monoswords
are the strongest sharp weapon. - Plasteel longswords are the best craftable sharp weapon.
Sharp weapons are the bread and butter of melee weapons. They are the most common type of melee, dealing strong all-round damage.
A plasteel knife is roughly on par with a steel longsword. The next best weapons from longswords are spears, gladiuses, and the blunt maces.
Blunt
- Zeushammers are the best blunt weapon.
- Uranium maces are the 2nd best, and are craftable. Uranium warhammers are better against armor, but 3x as expensive.
Blunt wounds do not bleed, are much less likely to destroy limbs, and blunt weapons are often weaker in DPS than their sharp counterparts. However, blunt weapons are great for penetrating armor, as most armor protects poorly against it. They also have a small chance to stun for 45 ticks (0.75 secs) on hit. In addition, non-bleeding can help with capturing prisoners. Note that enemies have a Death on Down chance from pain, so this does not guarantee capture. Weaker blunt weapons can help supress berserking pawns.
Monoswords will beat zeushammers until facing foes in marine armor. Longswords will beat maces until flak vest-level armor, and longswords can still harm the unarmored areas of the body better.