Between heavy weapon, hacker and sabre.

[Frosty]

What is the difference and uses?
Stat requirement to use it efficiently.
I have 1 using heavy, and 1 using hacker, both of them are quite slow anf weak. Lol.
Any advise please.

[Omaeka]

Hackers and Heavy are mostly strength dependant, a good Hacker weapon will weigh 30+ KG, and lower tier ones like refitted blades are in the teens in weight meaning 40+ strength is safe to use even low quality hackers. The way Kenshi works is to wield a weapon you have to have it's weight x2 in strength, if you have lower than what is required you swing the weapon and block with it incredibly slowly, and you also do about the same damage with the weapon as you would with a lower grade weapon closer to your strength level. If something weighs more than twice a characters strength don't use it, unless you want to train strength on weak enemies by purposefully using weapons that are too heavy.

I got a characters strength into the 90s by whacking Bandits with an Edge 3 Fragment Axe lol, but against anything even remotely strong it would of been suicide without the proper strength to wield it.

If you want to train strength fast to use the hacker and heavy weapon, fill a backpack with iron ore and have a character carry it around somewhere safe while carrying a corpse/friendly on their shoulder. Doing this for every character is a good idea, because strength is very useful even on DEX characters for the purpose of carrying loot/gear. Stealth based scout characters pretty much require high strength if you want to stay stealthy while hauling loot from ruins/towns.

EDIT: https://gfycat.com/WebbedMaleHare

To showcase how to level strength easily, their backpacks are full of iron ore and generator cores, carrying dead raptors and they started as liberated slaves with 1 STR now they are all close to 90 in a few hours lol.

[Plom]

For heavy weapon :
strength = more blunt damage, faster attack & block if you have 2x more than the weight of the weapon
dexterity = more cut damage, no stat requirement

The best heavy weapon I belive are "Fragment Axe" and "Falling Sun".

Fragment axe = super heavy so longer time spent to train strength, do mostly blunt damage meaning you can take any heavy armor even with dex malus.

Falling Sun = lighter so less time needed to train strength, it does blunt & cut damage so you still need to train both str & dex, and with the cut damage it's preferable to take Samurai Armor as to not get a dex malus, and that armor has a not so good coverage.

Training str = get heavy item and walk (you can follow a caravan)
Training dex = fight with a fast cuting weapon like katana or saber.

In my opinion, the best is Fragment Axe. It's easier to train strength only, and with it you can wear any heavy armor, so it's better.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Training in Martial Arts with a backpack full of Generator Cores trains your strength faster than anything, but you need to have someone ready to rescue the trainee lol

Originally posted by Plom:

For heavy weapon :
strength = more blunt damage, faster attack & block if you have 2x more than the weight of the weapon
dexterity = more cut damage, no stat requirement

The best heavy weapon I belive are "Fragment Axe" and "Falling Sun".

Fragment axe = super heavy so longer time spent to train strength, do mostly blunt damage meaning you can take any heavy armor even with dex malus.

Falling Sun = lighter so less time needed to train strength, it does blunt & cut damage so you still need to train both str & dex, and with the cut damage it's preferable to take Samurai Armor as to not get a dex malus, and that armor has a not so good coverage.

Training str = get heavy item and walk (you can follow a caravan)
Training dex = fight with a fast cuting weapon like katana or saber.

In my opinion, the best is Fragment Axe. It's easier to train strength only, and with it you can wear any heavy armor, so it's better.

Fragment Axe is NOT the best Heavy Weapon, it is actually the worst. It's simply the easiest to reach an extreme level of lethality with.

Falling Sun is the best, followed closely by Plank. Both of which require a considerable DEX investment to unlock their relatively high Cut damage, which is why people prefer Frag axe, which requires just following someone while overencumbered, for about 3 hours.

[Plom]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Training in Martial Arts with a backpack full of Generator Cores trains your strength faster than anything, but you need to have someone ready to rescue the trainee lol

Training with heavy inventory work on a whole team while being AFK and get constant exp.
Training with MA work with much smaller team, require a lot of prisoners or venture in the wild (so without constant exp and lots of risk).

Also, when I tried it wasn't as fast as you say, maybe they patched it.

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Both of which require a considerable DEX investment to unlock their relatively high Cut damage

That's the problem, you need to train by fighting with another weapon before, and in the end you can't use a better armor than Samurai, so not a good survivability.

[Bragdras]

The advantage of the fragment axe is that you can equip full crab armor without worrying about the dex, you get the benefit of having the best protective overall in the game while not reducing your outgoing damage. Other than that, Falling sun is simply unmatched if you use literally any other armor in the game, plus, slapping a beak thing unconscious in one swoop is therapeutic.

Plank is the stepping stone to Falling Sun if you're going that route, still a great weapon, but discarded once you buy the recipe to manufacture big brother.

[Frosty]

Based on discussion here, not many prefer using hachers or sabre type weapon.
Can you let me know why?

[Bragdras]

They're simply inferior once your characters reach decent combat skills, it doesn't go much further than this.

It doesn't mean they're bad choices though, a skilled fighter will do well with any weapon as long as the quality follows, but the higher it goes, the more natural it is to opt out of everything but the heaviest hitter.

Stats on weapons were supposed to promote diversity, and they do to some extent, just not for high stats characters, just like armor.

It's also good to mention that as it depends on the kind of player you are and the kind of playthrough you go for, some people will enjoy diversifying their people, give them signature weapons etc, some just look at the numbers, some do a little bit of both, that kind of things.

[Guts]

Sabres are basically training weapons. They're a stepping stone to better options.