Pila

Pila are slightly heavier, single-shot ranged weapons in RimWorld which deal a high amount of damage per shot; very long time between shots; slightly shorter range and moderate accuracy.

Overview

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 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 hit 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	Cooldown	Likelihood	Base DPS
Overall	-	-	9	2.00s	-	4.50
Shaft	Blunt	Blunt	9	2.00s	50.00%	4.50
Point	Stab	Sharp	9	2.00s	50.00%	4.50

Obtaining

Pila can be purchased from neolithic war merchants and orbital combat suppliers, tribal and outlander settlements, or obtained from the following raider kinds:

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

Pila can also be manufactured at any smithy once the smithing research has been completed; from 70 wood and 7,000 ticks (1.94 mins) of work. A crafting skill of at least 3 is required.

Conclusion & Comparison

Being capable of instantly crippling limbs and destroying vital organs, pila can be very dangerous weapons if your colonists are either not armored or poorly-armored; a pilum is the second most damaging non-explosive ranged weapon in the game, only being surpassed by the sniper rifle. However, due to the arbitrary nature of combat, a pilum could also be 'wasted' by it only hitting an extremity such as a toe, or a nose - that combined with the fact that the pila's also the slowest 'firing' non-explosive ranged weapon in the game can be very detrimental.

A pilum's also one of the slowest projectiles in the game, seeing as it's thrown rather than fired: 15.6 c/s versus a mere 7.2 c/s for any grenade, or 24 c/s for an incendiary launcher bolt.

Compared to other neolithic weapons, the pila consistently gets beaten in a 1 vs. 1 against a recurve bow and against a greatbow, and trades blows with the short bow since they have similar sustained DPS. Therefore the pila's best used as a flanking weapon.

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.