Weapons

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Weapons

For ways for both countering and using each kind of weapon, see Weapon Guide.

Weapons are used by colonists and raiders alike to fight each other (and sometimes to put down enraged animals). Weapons have several characteristics that make them useful in different combat situations. They currently do not consume any ammunition, but instead take time to aim and additional cooldown time for subsequent shots.

If left exposed with no roof, a weapon on the ground will deteriorate until it disintegrates without a trace. Weapons stored in a shelf will not deteriorate, even if left outside.

Weapons of quality Excellent or higher have an engraving that can be read by clicking the Art tab from the inspect pane.

Ranged weapons

Range weapons consist mostly of firearms, as well as other non-gunpowder weapons like bows and throwing spears, and also the advanced charge rifle and incendiary launcher. A ranged weapon's accuracy and damage are also affected by its quality level.

Stats listed in the table below are for weapons that are of normal quality. The ranges are measured in tiles and correspond to:

Touch = 3
Short = 12
Medium = 25
Long = 40.

Between those ranges, accuracy stats are interpolated. A weapon will never fire past its range stat, even if it has an accuracy value listed for longer ranges. E.g. a pump shotgun, with range 15.9 and acc. stats 80-87-77-64, will never fire at medium (25) or long (40) range, yet the medium stat does still bear relevance to its accuracy at 13-15 cells; you can think of its accuracy stats as 80-87-77-0 instead.

DPS (Optimal) refers to the theoretical DPS if every single shot were to hit the target. DPS for the various ranges takes into account the weapon's accuracy at the start of the defined range.

Some ranged weapons fire in bursts with each shot having individual hit chances. Cooldown starts once all shots in a burst are fired.

Ranged weapons also can't fire in melee range unless the target is downed or not immediately hostile to the player's faction.

	Range (tiles)	Damage	AP	Stopping Power	Warm-Up (ticks)^[A]	Cooldown (ticks)^[A]	Burst Count	Burst (ticks)^[A]	Bullet Speed	Accuracy (Touch)	Accuracy (Short)	Accuracy (Medium)	Accuracy (Long)	Miss Radius	Blast Radius	DPS (Optimal)^[B]	DPS (Touch)^[B]	DPS (Short)^[B]	DPS (Medium)^[B]	DPS (Long)^[B]	Value
Assault rifle	11	16	0.5	60	102	30.9	3	10	70	60%	70%	65%	55%	-	-	10.88	6.528	7.616	7.072	5.984	480
Autopistol	10	15	0.5	18	60	25.9	1	-	55	80%	70%	40%	30%	-	-	7.69	6.152	5.383	3.076	2.307	139
Bolt-action rifle	18	27	1.5	102	90	36.9	1	-	70	65%	80%	90%	80%	-	-	5.63	3.6595	4.504	5.067	4.504	255
Chain shotgun	18	14	3	72	81	12.9	3	10	55	57%	64%	55%	45%	-	-	18.73	10.6761	11.9872	10.3015	-	405
Charge lance	30	45	1.5	102	162	29.9	1	-	120	65%	85%	85%	75%	-	-	6.82	4.433	5.797	5.797	5.115	1,355
Charge rifle	15	35	0.5	60	120	25.9	3	12	70	55%	64%	55%	45%	-	-	13.24	7.282	8.4736	7.282	5.958	1,010
Doomsday rocket launcher	50	10	0.5	270	270	36	1	-	50	-%	-%	-%	-%	1.9	7.8	5.56	-	-	-	-	1,000
EMP grenades	50	-	-	90	160	12.9	1	-	12	-%	-%	-%	-%	1.9	3.5	12	-	-	-	-	315
EMP launcher	50	0	-	210	210	23.9	1	-	40	-%	-%	-%	-%	1.9	1.1	7.14	-	-	-	-	505
Flamebow	6	9	0.5	81	99	22.9	1	-	44	75%	65%	45%	25%	-	-	2	1.5	1.3	0.9	-	45
Frag grenades	50	10	0.5	90	160	12.9	1	-	12	-%	-%	-%	-%	1.9	1.9	12	-	-	-	-	265
Greatbow	17	15	1.5	120	90	29.9	1	-	49	65%	85%	75%	50%	-	-	4.86	3.159	4.131	3.645	2.43	104
Grenadier armor	50	10	0.5	90	60	12.9	1	-	16	-%	-%	-%	-%	1.9	1.9	20	-	-	-	-	2,305
Heavy SMG	12	18	0.5	54	99	22.9	3	11	48	85%	65%	35%	20%	-	-	12.34	10.489	8.021	4.319	-	355
Hellcat rifle	10	15	0.5	66	102	26.9	3	10	70	60%	70%	65%	55%	-	-	9.57	5.742	6.699	6.2205	5.2635	480
Incendiary launcher	10	0	-	210	210	23.9	1	-	40	-%	-%	-%	-%	1.9	1.1	1.43	-	-	-	-	340
LMG	11	16	1	108	108	25.9	6	7	46	40%	48%	35%	26%	-	-	15.78	6.312	7.5744	5.523	4.1028	425
Machine pistol	6	9	0.5	30	54	19.9	3	7	55	90%	65%	35%	15%	-	-	11.02	9.918	7.163	3.857	-	220
Minigun	10	15	0.5	150	138	30.9	25	5	70	15%	25%	25%	18%	-	-	36.76	5.514	9.19	9.19	6.6168	1,160
Molotov cocktails	10	-	-	90	160	12.9	1	-	12	-%	-%	-%	-%	1.9	1.1	2.4	-	-	-	-	245
Nerve spiker	11	16	0.5	87	99	29.9	1	-	44	70%	78%	65%	35%	-	-	3.55	2.485	2.769	2.3075	1.2425	62
Pila	25	10	2.5	240	240	18.9	1	-	26	50%	71%	50%	32%	-	-	3.13	1.565	2.2223	1.565	-	109
Pump shotgun	18	14	3	54	75	15.9	1	-	55	80%	87%	77%	64%	-	-	8.37	6.696	7.2819	6.4449	-	255
Recurve bow	14	21	1	87	99	25.9	1	-	56	70%	78%	65%	35%	-	-	4.52	3.164	3.5256	2.938	1.582	66
Revolver	12	18	1	18	96	25.9	1	-	55	80%	75%	45%	35%	-	-	6.32	5.056	4.74	2.844	2.212	135
Short bow	11	16	0.5	81	99	22.9	1	-	44	75%	65%	45%	25%	-	-	3.67	2.7525	2.3855	1.6515	-	45
Smoke launcher	0	-	-	210	210	23.9	1	-	40	-%	-%	-%	-%	1.9	2.4		-	-	-	-	380
Sniper rifle	25	38	1.5	210	138	44.9	1	-	100	50%	70%	86%	88%	-	-	4.31	2.155	3.017	3.7066	3.7928	530
Tactical turret gun	12	18	0.5	0	288	19.9	2	8	70	77%	70%	45%	24%	-	-	4.86	3.7422	3.402	2.187	-	?
Triple rocket launcher	50	10	0.5	270	270	36	3	20	50	-%	-%	-%	-%	2.9	3.9	15.52	-	-	-	-	1,000

^A At normal game speed, there are 60 ticks to one real world second. See: Time.

^B This DPS assumes a single target - weapons with a blast radius may have higher effective DPS by virtue of hitting multiple targets.

Quality modifiers

Quality	Accuracy Modifier	Base Damage Modifier	Armor Penetration Modifier
Awful	0.80	0.90	0.90
Poor	0.90	1.00	1.00
Normal	1.00	1.00	1.00
Good	1.10	1.00	1.00
Excellent	1.20	1.00	1.00
Masterwork	1.35	1.25	1.25
Legendary	1.50	1.50	1.50

Accuracy

Ranged weapon accuracy follows the following equation:

Accuracy = Shooting Accuracy^Range * Weapon Accuracy * Weather * Smoke * Cover

Where:

Shooting Accuracy: Is the stat of the shooting pawn
Range: Is the distance in tiles between the shooter and the target
Weapon Accuracy: Is the weapon accuracy of the weapon at that range, if it is not one of the listed values at 3, 12, 25, or 40 tiles, it is linearly interpolated between the two points on either side.
Weather: Is the accuracy modifier for a given weather ranging from 50% for Fog, to 100% on a clear day.
Smoke: If smoke occupies any tile directly between the shooter and target, it reduces the accuracy by ?? (see smoke for details over whether offset or multiplier)
Cover: ?? (Conjecture: Appears to function as % chance of item providing cover taking damage instead of the pawn or item it provides cover to, but the exact mechanics elude Aazard)
Darkness Combat Prefered Precept: Up to +25%/-20 ranged accuracy & +10%/-10% melee accuracy in darkness/brightly lit environments, respectfully.

Related to accuracy, there are also friendly fire mechanics that prevent misses from hitting nearby allies within a certain radius. See friendly fire for details.

Unobtainable weapons

These weapons are equipped by either mechanoids or by turrets and cannot be obtained independent from their regular users without the use of dev mode. They include: the autocannon, the heavy charge blaster, the inferno cannon, the turret form of the inferno cannon, the light charge blaster, the mini-slugger, the mini-turret gun, the needle gun, and the uranium slug cannon. When a normal pawn equips a debug-spawned weapon and then drops it, the weapon will disappear.

Melee weapons

These are touch-range weapons. Besides dedicated melee weapons, all ranged weapons can also be used as makeshift melee weapons.

The exact damage of a melee weapon is based on its quality level, with a low quality weapon dealing less damage and a high quality weapon dealing more.

Note that melee accuracy is determined by a colonist's melee skill and further modified by health stats of manipulation and sight, as well as the opponent's dodge chance.

Weapons of quality Excellent or higher have an engraving that can be read by clicking the Art tab from the inspect pane.

Base melee stats

The following stats are for weapons that are of normal quality and made out of steel (the baseline material).

	Average cooldown	Weakest attack damage	Strongest attack damage	Average DPS	Damage type ^[A]	Average AP	Value
Unarmed human	2 s	5	8.2	2.29	Blunt	-	-
Axe ^[E]	2 s	9	15	6.71	Sharp	20%	-
Breach axe	1.67s	7.5	9	6.22	Sharp	12.33%	-
Beer ^[B]	2 s	9	9	4.50	Blunt	13%	-
Bionic arm ^[B]	2 s	12	12	6.00	Blunt	18%	1500
Club	2 s	9	14	6.27	Blunt	19%	-
Elephant tusk ^[B]	2.48 s	9	18.2	6.89	Sharp	27%	80
Gladius	2 s	9	15	7.52	Sharp	23%	-
Ikwa	1.91 s	9	15	6.71	Sharp	20%	-
Jade knife ^[C]	2.76 s	12	13.5	5.35	Sharp	20%	159
Knife	1.82 s	9	13	6.50	Sharp	18%	-
Longsword	2.5 s	9	23	8.60	Sharp	33%	-
Mace	2 s	9	15.7	7.02	Blunt	21%	-
Monosword^[D] ^[E]	2 s	12	28	13.33	Sharp	84%	2000
Persona Monosword ^[D] ^[E]	1 s	12	32	30.69	Sharp	85%	1300-2900
Plasmasword^[D]^[E]^[F]	2.6 s	12	21	7.85	Sharp + Burn	28%	2000
Persona Plasmasword ^[D]^[E]^[F]	1.3 s	12	23	11.11	Sharp + Burn	33%	1500-2100
Eltex staff ^[D]^[E]	2.6 s	12	12	4.62	Blunt	?%	1000
Spear	2.5 s	13	23	7.35	Sharp	38%
Thrumbo horn ^[B]	1.85 s	15	15	8.11	Sharp	41%	800
Warhammer ^[E]	2.6 s	11	20	6.89	Blunt	27%
Zeushammer ^[D]^[E]	2.75 s	15	31 + 9 EMP Damage	9.95	Blunt + EMP	42%	2000
Persona Zeushammer^[D]^[E]	2.05 s	15	31 + 12 EMP Damage	13.40	Blunt + EMP	42%	2600-4200

^A All sharp melee weapons come also with (weak) blunt attacks.

^B Material cannot be changed for these. They also do not come in varying quality levels. The average DPS is always the final value and no formulas are needed for them.

^C Jade knifes can only be obtained via the Lost tribe scenario; they cannot be crafted nor purchased.

^D These weapons cannot be created by the player, they are able to be obtained through quests and purchasing them from Merchants. Both of these are also able to come in "persona" variants that cannot be wielded by anyone other than the bonded pawn unless it has the "freewielder" trait, so make sure you choose a good and unlikely to die pawn to use them.

^E These weapons were added by Royalty (DLC)

^F These weapons also have a 75% chance to set a pawn on fire. This damage is included in the DPS.

Material / Quality modifiers

Material	Cooldown speed factor	Damage factor (Blunt)	DPS factor (Blunt)	Damage factor (Sharp)	DPS factor (Sharp)	Max HP factor
Sandstone	1.30	1.00	0.77	0.50	0.38	1.4
Granite	1.30	1.00	0.77	0.65	0.50	1.7
Limestone	1.30	1.00	0.77	0.60	0.46	1.55
Slate	1.30	1.00	0.77	0.60	0.46	1.3
Marble	1.30	1.00	0.77	0.60	0.46	1.2
Silver	1.00	1.00	1.00	0.85	0.85	0.7
Gold	1.00	1.00	1.00	0.75	0.75	0.6
Steel	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.0
Plasteel	0.80	0.90	1.13	1.10	1.38	2.8
Wood	1.00	0.90	0.90	0.45	0.45	0.65
Uranium	1.10	1.50	1.36	1.10	1.00	2.5
Jade	1.30	1.50	1.15	1.00	0.77	0.5

Quality	Base Damage Modifier
Awful	0.80
Poor	0.90
Normal	1.00
Good	1.10
Excellent	1.20
Masterwork	1.45
Legendary	1.65

Do note that stone blocks can only be used with clubs.

Melee formulas

General formulas

Damage for any melee weapon is Base Damage x Material Modifier x Quality Modifier

Cooldown is calculated as Weapon melee cooldown / Material melee cooldown

DPS (damage per second) is calculated as Damage / Cooldown. Note that you must use Cooldown (seconds) to get DPS, otherwise if you use Cooldown (Ticks) you'll calculate DPT (Damage Per Tick) which you probably don't want.

AP (armor piercing) defaults to 0.015 x Damage if no value is specified

Chance Factor defaults to 1 if no value is specified

Listed DPS on weapons

The DPS listed on the info tab for weapons is deceiving as it is no longer used when a pawn equips the item (see below). Regardless this is how it is computed based on the melee attack options the weapon has:

For each attack option compute the Selection Weight = Damage x Damage
For each attack option compute the Selection Chance = Selection Weight / SumOfAll(Selection Weights)
Compute the Average Damage = SumOfAll(Damage x Selection Chance)
Compute the Average Cooldown = SumOfAll(Cooldown x Selection Chance)
Compute the Average DPS = Average Damage / Average Cooldown

Note that this is mathematically incorrect (see below for more details). Below is an example with a Normal Persona Zeus Hammer:

Attack	Damage	Cooldown	Selection Weight	Selection Chance
head	31	2.2	961	81%
handle	15	1.6	225	19%

Average Damage = 31 x 81% + 15 x 19% = 27.965

Average Cooldown = 2.2 x 81% + 1.6 x 19% = 2.086

Average DPS = 27.965 / 2.086 = 13.40

You can find more of these values in Dev mode >> Logging Menu >> Tools. There are also values listed for pawns and these are computed the same as above except that in step 1 you also multiply by 0.3 and the Chance Factor if one is specified. Note that just like the item values these are not actually used in the game anymore (see below).

Listed DPS on pawns

This is a system used since version 1.1.2610 and it is based on a category system. It is based on the attack options available however now we take both the options from the weapon as well as the options from the pawn (eg. fists) into account:

For each attack option compute the Initial Selection Weight = Damage x (1 + AP) x Chance Factor / Cooldown
For each attack option determine the Category based on the highest weight value we just computed:
- Best if Initial Selection Weight >= 0.95 x MAX(Initial Selection Weight)
- Worst if Initial Selection Weight < 0.25 x MAX(Initial Selection Weight)
- Mid Otherwise
For each attack option compute the Final Selection Weight based on the categories:
- 0.75 / NumberOfOptionsIn(Best) if the option is in the Best category
- 0.25 / NumberOfOptionsIn(Mid) if the option is in the Mid category
- 0.0 if the option is in the Worst category
For each attack option compute the Selection Chance = Final Selection Weight / SumOfAll(Final Selection Weights)
Compute the Average Damage = SumOfAll(Damage x Selection Chance)
Compute the Average Cooldown = SumOfAll(Cooldown x Selection Chance)
Compute the Average DPS = Average Damage / Average Cooldown

Below is an example with a pawn carrying a Normal Persona Zeus Hammer (note that AP is not specified and therefore is defined as Damage x 0.015):

Attack	Damage	Cooldown	Chance Factor	Initial Selection Weight	Category	Final Selection Weight	Selection Chance
head	31	2.2		20.64	Best	0.75	75.0%
handle	15	1.6		11.48	Mid	0.125	12.5%
left fist (archotech arm)	14	2		8.47	Mid	0.125	12.5%
right fist	8.2	2		4.60	Worst	0.00	0.0%
teeth	8.2	2	0.07	0.32	Worst	0.00	0.0%
head	5	2	0.2	0.54	Worst	0.00	0.0%

Average Damage = 31 x 75% + 15 x 12.5% + 14 x 12.5% = 26.875

Average Cooldown = 2.2 x 75% + 1.6 x 12.5% + 2 x 12.5% = 2.100

Average DPS = 26.875 / 2.100 = 12.80

Note that in this case upgrading the left arm actually decreased the average DPS (from 13.17 to 12.80) by moving an inferior attack option from Worst to Mid.

There is a peculiarity in the description above as it seems that the AccuracyTouch properties of ranged weapons is not used. This may be a bug as it seems intended that it should have been used.

Stopping power

Stopping power is the ability of ranged weapons to cause stagger when hitting a target, slowing them down for a short^{How short?} period. The size of the number relates directly to the body size of the pawn that can be staggered by the weapon - thus, to stagger humans a stopping power of 1 or higher is required while to stagger an elephant a stopping power of 4 would be needed.

Most weapons have stopping power of 0.5, insufficient to stagger a human pawn, however the following weapons have higher stopping powers: Antigrain warhead, Bolt-action rifle, Chain shotgun, Charge lance, Greatbow, Hellsphere cannon, LMG, Mini-shotgun, Needle gun, Needle launcher, Pila, Pump shotgun, Recurve bow, Revolver, Sniper rifle, Thump cannon, Toxic needle gun

Biocoding

Weapons can be biocoded. These weapons are found on raiders, guests and other pawns and are only usable by the specific pawn that the weapon is biocoded to. They can be smelted and have a specific option in the bill menu to allow their sorting.

Version history

0.0.245 - Shooting accuracy split into into misses due to equipment and misses due to skill.
0.0.250 - Melee attacks incap more than guns and explosives. N.b. That this change may or may not be represented in the current version. It was only added in this previous version.
0.8.657 - Melee weapons have a quality. Can now craft any kind of melee weapon from appropriate materials.
0.9.722 - High-quality weapons have art engraved into them. All weapons now have quality levels, including guns and bows. Quality affects accuracy.
1.1.0 - Biocoding added