Infestation bugs, blunt or sharp?

[ttv/thealangator]

So my tactic for dealing with infestations is a melle throttle with shooters behind. Since they have lower blunt armour I've been using uranium maces but would longswords be more efficient to increase bleeding and chance of downing them before they can get more hits in?

[grapplehoeker]

I never use pawns to fight critters.
Turrets and fire = quick elimination with no injuries

[M.K.]

If you HAVE to melee them, blunt is by far better.
blades cause bleeding, yes, and bleeding kills.. In an hour or three!!
Do you *really* want to stand there an fight a bug for three hours until it bleeds to death?

Alternate approaches:
One heavily armored melee person blocks the passage/doorway.
Behind him stands 6 pawns with chain shotguns. They are within 2 tiles, so no friendly fire. They do the killing, melee guy just keeps the bugs bottled up. This is good for up to 100 bugs
If there are *many* bugs, add 3 grenadiers behind the shotguns. aim at the ground at a safe distance past your bottleneck.
This is good until your defenders pass out from hunger... In my experience, this formation is good for at least 400 bugs. Very very few infestations are bigger than this!

But if even more bugs show up..
Just throw an incendiary at the pre-set-up chemfuel, close the door, and wait.
Bug Barbeque will be done in an hour or so, then its just the cleanup.

[Astasia]

The armor on bugs is pretty trivial, IIRC it's 40/20, that gives blunt a 10% advantage in damage, but blunt has a significantly lower overall DPS to begin with. Maces really only shine against power armor level of armor. IE the wiki says that a Plasteel Longsword and a Uranium Mace against a target in Flak armor, the Plasteel Longsword is still better by about 1%.

Bleeding wont help you drop them noticeable faster. It means when they go down they will stay down, but this isn't a concern with bugs because after they are downed they lose their faction identity and become a wild animal.

The huge advantage sharp weapons have over blunt, is body part destruction. The game has an overhit requirement to destroy a limb, this protects against one-shots. Cutting damage has the lowest overhit requirement of any weapon, 0~0.1, meaning it only has to do 0 to 10% more damage than the limb has HP to destroy it. Blunt has an overhit requirement of 0.4~1.0, meaning it has to do 40 to 100% more damage than the limb has HP to destroy it. With a sword you are very likely to lop off a limb in one attack, which significantly weakens or downs the target.

None of this is a major concern because the pawns with guns standing behind the melee throttle are going to do like 90% of the damage.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Astasia:

...he huge advantage sharp weapons have over blunt, is body part destruction. The game has an overhit requirement to destroy a limb, this protects against one-shots. Cutting damage has the lowest overhit requirement of any weapon, 0~0.1, meaning it only has to do 0 to 10% more damage than the limb has HP to destroy it. Blunt has an overhit requirement of 0.4~1.0, meaning it has to do 40 to 100% more damage than the limb has HP to destroy it. With a sword you are very likely to lop off a limb in one attack, which significantly weakens or downs the target.

Solid gold info.

Originally posted by Good, but not right:

So my tactic for dealing with infestations is a melle throttle with shooters behind. Since they have lower blunt armour I've been using uranium maces but would longswords be more efficient to increase bleeding and chance of downing them before they can get more hits in?

I would never engage bugs in melee by choice.

If you're restricted as to weapon choices, then I might suggest to try to keep your distance as long as you can. (Bows, etc.) Make them come to you, put obstacles/traps in their path, some tactically placed sandbags can break up a rush of bugs so they can't easily get to you all at the same time, etc.