Power Claws

[VoterFraudMan]

Power claws are a neat concept, but a plasteel longsword usually beats them and then doesn't impact a pawn's speed. Does installing two power claws on one pawn allow them to deal double the damage?

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by VoterFraudMan:

Power claws are a neat concept, but a plasteel longsword usually beats them and then doesn't impact a pawn's speed.

That's because the main purpose of a power claw is to give a ranged fighter an effective melee weapon to use as well.

Does installing two power claws on one pawn allow them to deal double the damage?

No. Melee attacks use one of the melee verbs available to them, almost always picking from the 2 best available. Installing a second one makes another set of good verbs available, and so if they don't have any better attacks it will mean that it'll almost always use one of the power claws to attack instead of only ~75% of the time.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by VoterFraudMan:

Power claws are a neat concept, but a plasteel longsword usually beats them and then doesn't impact a pawn's speed. Does installing two power claws on one pawn allow them to deal double the damage?

No. It does increase damage slightly, but it's more like a 15% increase over using 1. It's not worth it. If you get a power claw early game it's pretty strong, and mid-game they are ok on ranged colonists to allow them to deal with enemies that get into melee. They only cost 400s and sometimes you can get like 5 of them as an early quest reward, they aren't really meant to be effective late game.

Edit: Spent too long doing the math before hitting reply it seems. =p

[XelNigma]

If my understanding on how the melee system works is current. 2 power claws are equal to 1.
Because the game takes the strongest attacks, in this case the power claw and puts it in the strong verb. and seeing as the 2 claws are equal they both go into that verb, and its 50/50 which get chosen when the strong verb is picked. So it doesnt matter if its the left or right hand, they do the same damage. making it the exact same as if you only had 1 because then its 100% being the single power claw attack when it rolls the strong verb attack.

Now... If you have a stronger attack, say from a sword. then the 2 claws are put in the 25% medium verb and that can push out weaker attacks to the weak verb that is is never chosen, I think any way.
So using 2 claws and a sword would be slightly better dps than a sword guy with only 1 claw. But seeing as the medium verb is only chosen 25% of the time, and its got most of your attacks like kicks, punches, biting, hilt hit, ect. theres a small chance the claw will be chosen.

This is just how I understand it. I could very well be wrong about any of the details.

[Astasia]

Installing the second power claw removes the weaker attack from a human fist though. So instead of attacking 75% of the time with the power claw and 25% of the time with a fist, the colonist attacks 75% of the time with one power claw and 25% of the time with the other power claw. It is a marginal increase, only around 15% more DPS as I mentioned and surely not worth the extra speed penalty, but it is a DPS increase.

Humans do have bites and headbutts, but these do not work like normal attacks and don't really factor into combat DPS.