Elbow blade vs just a blade?

[マルコ]

What is the difference?
Does it stack with holding a blade so is like dual wielding?

[Hykal]

Compact weaponry like elbow blades are best used with shooters. Giving your melee pawn an elbow blade or knee spikes is unoptimal, and you're better off giving your melee pawn normal bionics and a good melee weapon.

[gimmethegepgun]

The overwhelming majority of attacks that a creature uses in melee will use one of their two best weapons (fists and teeth also being weapons). Having a single melee weapon and nothing else will have about 25% of the attacks be their second best "weapon", which is generally their fist, which isn't very good. If they have something better, like an elbow blade, they'll use that in that 25% instead.

[Hykal]

Ah so I found this reddit post at last, if you want an in-depth answer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/k38cn3/integrated_melee_weapons_should_you_use_them/

[Astasia]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

The overwhelming majority of attacks that a creature uses in melee will use one of their two best weapons (fists and teeth also being weapons). Having a single melee weapon and nothing else will have about 25% of the attacks be their second best "weapon", which is generally their fist, which isn't very good. If they have something better, like an elbow blade, they'll use that in that 25% instead.

It's actually worse than that. A colonist equipped with a normal plasteel longsword and two elbow blades will still occasionally throw a punch or two during a fight. It's like 75-85% of attacks use the cutting or stabbing attack of the longsword, and the remaining 15-25% is split between punches and any implant attacks installed. They never bite or use the blunt attack of the longsword's handle, the later of which surprised me and I'm not sure why. ~20 elephants died in the process of testing this.

Elbow Blades are really bad. Edit: On a melee pawn obviously.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2546724810

[8faiNt ı♣ı]

The main use of them is to give them to the shooters that dont really use melee so when they caught up on close combat, they ve got a decent enough ish DPS weapon which is the blade.

[ichifish]

If your shooters are getting into melee you’re already toast. Better to spend your money on bionic legs.

[Astasia]

Yup as Hykal mentioned a colonist equipped with a ranged weapon that is engaged in melee will primarily use their elbow blades instead of the stock of their weapon. They will still throw an occasional punch in though.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

The overwhelming majority of attacks that a creature uses in melee will use one of their two best weapons (fists and teeth also being weapons). Having a single melee weapon and nothing else will have about 25% of the attacks be their second best "weapon", which is generally their fist, which isn't very good. If they have something better, like an elbow blade, they'll use that in that 25% instead.

It's actually worse than that. A colonist equipped with a normal plasteel longsword and two elbow blades will still occasionally throw a punch or two during a fight. It's like 75-85% of attacks use the cutting or stabbing attack of the longsword, and the remaining 15-25% is split between punches and any implant attacks installed. They never bite or use the blunt attack of the longsword's handle, the later of which surprised me and I'm not sure why. ~20 elephants died in the process of testing this.

Elbow Blades are really bad. Edit: On a melee pawn obviously.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2546724810

Still seems better than no implants/bionics. At least some of the attacks are with the implants instead of their lousy fists.