Gladius

The gladius is a melee weapon in RimWorld that does a moderate amount of damage, has a moderate cooldown, and deals sharp damage.

Acquisition

Gladii can be crafted at either a fueled smithy or an electric smithy once the Smithing research has been completed; from 50 of any metallic or wooden material, and 12,000 ticks (3.33 mins) of work. It requires a crafting skill of 3 to craft.

Gladii can also be purchased from any outlander and orbital combat suppliers, or obtained from outlander and pirate raiders.

Analysis

As is typical with any sharp weapon, gladius attacks cause bleeding, and generally fares poorly against armor when compared to blunt weapons.

The gladius is one of the most well-rounded melee weapons in the game; striking an excellent balance between damage per hit and cooldown, and not being too expensive either. While the gladius is slightly better at nominal DPS, the mace performs significantly better against armor since it deals blunt damage, which puts the gladius in a tough spot. Plasteel gladii, however, offer excellent base DPS which establishes a slightly noticeable lead over a plasteel mace in this aspect; combining knife-like cooldown with spear-like damage.

Still, the gladius offers significantly more performance than the knife while not really being that much more expensive to produce, possibly even outclassing the knife as a 'budget' melee weapon - but again, the mace is still the better choice.

Against armor, a steel gladius has considerably worse performance than a stone club. Therefore, even wooden clubs significantly outperform a steel gladius in this department - and a steel mace offers nearly double the damage output. When factoring in plasteel though, the gladius claws back slightly but still falls slightly behind even the wooden club, so a plasteel mace is going to be leaps and bounds ahead.

Overall, the gladius is by no means a bad weapon, because it's actually a decent melee weapon, but there are better options out there just for forking out slightly more silver or ingredients. At the end of the day, the mace is to the gladius what the gladius is to the knife - even when factoring in plasteel.

Gladius vs. Comparable Weapons

This section goes over how well the gladius 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 melee
No pawns have any traits that affect combat performance
All pawns are of 18 years of age and completely healthy

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

The following armor categories are:

Unarmored - Plainleather button-down shirt and plainleather pants
Flak - Steel simple helmet, flak jacket, flak vest, plainleather button-down shirt and flak pants
Marine - Marine helmet, marine armor, plainleather button-down shirt and plainleather pants

Steel gladius vs.	Unarmored	Flak	Marine
Steel knife	57.25%	56.15%	56.65%
Steel ikwa	55.00%	53.50%	48.90%
Steel mace	52.25%	34.15%	14.60%
Steel spear	53.60%	39.55%	30.40%
Steel longsword	36.10%	32.85%	31.65%
Plasteel gladius	28.20%	30.65%	28.55%

Plasteel gladius vs.	Unarmored	Flak	Marine
Plasteel knife	57.70%	57.40%	60.95%
Plasteel ikwa	53.65%	54.15%	51.80%
Uranium mace	45.10%	28.45%	10.05%
Plasteel spear	51.00%	40.85%	32.65%
Plasteel longsword	36.05%	33.35%	29.10%
Steel gladius	71.80%	69.35%	71.45%