Breach axe

Breach axes are melee weapons that trade general efficacy for extra damage against buildings, and is commonly carried by tribal breach raids.

Note: Although classified by the Ideoligion Weapon Preferences as a 'Melee Piercer' weapon along with weapons that predominately deal sharp damage, it only has attacks that deal blunt damage. It is unknown if this categorization is a bug or intended behavior.

Acquisition

Breach axes can be crafted at either a fueled or electric smithy once the Smithing research project has been completed. They require 50 Stuff (Metallic, 500 for SMVs), 5,000 ticks (1.39 mins) of work, and a Crafting of 3

They are also carried by breachers during Tribal breach raids.

Summary

Like its mechanoid equivalent, the thump cannon, the breach axe does significantly more damage to buildings than to pawns on average. However, only the Head's "demolish" attack has the multiplier - dealing 10x the damage to buildings. As this multiplier is not taken into account when choosing which attack to perform,other attacks can still be chosen and its resulting DPS versus buildings is not simply 10x that when used against pawns.

Analysis

Although relatively weak against pawns, it is dangerous against buildings. Generally this specialization makes it more effective when used against the colony than by the colony. Typically colonists do not need to destroy buildings rapidly and raids of tribal breachers, while not as dangerous as their counterparts from other factions, will still use the axe to level buildings and poke holes in defenses fairly rapidly.

A niche use for players may be against mech clusters, where the ability to access them in the early game and high building damage can aid in rapidly destroying turrets in a few strikes. At high qualities and with the right material, this can even kill the large turrets in a single strike.

Another potential use is for ideoligion with the Melee Piercers set as Noble weapons, providing a blunt weapon option that grants mood buffs instead of penalties.

Its performance outside of these niches is lackluster however, thoroughly outperformed by the mace, which has similar costs and research requirements. Even the club is superior to all but very high quality breach axes of the same material

As all attacks performed by the breach axe do blunt damage, uranium is the ideal material.