buff the blunt armor rating??

[Morale -10]

I've heard that you are meant to in most cases use a blunt weapon versus unarmored humans like tribals but like blunt weapons most often just have an higher armor penetration than actual blunt armor for some reason
So like when I use any decant blunt melee weapon and when I face off some dude in full cataphract armor, I just imagine they are naked underneath all that armor, because it just feel pointless
So like are we also talking about the Monosword, I think it is pretty slow at killing other armored units, in that they will never win over some other dude using a Zeushammer

[Wasted]

The monosword is a DLC melee weapon that does a large amount of damage, has a fairly short cooldown, and deals sharp damage. It also boasts one of the highest armor penetration values for melee weapons in the game.

It has a great advantage against armored targets and cause opponents to bleed out fairly quickly as the Monosword lops off limbs with fair ease.

Unlike the two other Ultra-level weapons, the plasmasword and the zeushammer, the monosword inflicts no status effect, instead it has its disproportionately large armor piercing value. With this exceptional AP and a high Damage per Second, it is one of the best and most versatile melee weapons in the game, performing well against all targets while its brethren excel in specific roles.

Keep in mind however that while it does have exceptional AP, armor pieces tend to be more protective against sharp than blunt. Thus, against high tier armors that aren't negated by the either weapon's AP, the monosword is more affected by armor than the zeushammer of the same quality. For example, a normal quality zeushammer would have a higher effective DPS against a normal quality set of Cataphract armor than a normal quality monosword. When the monosword AP is sufficient to outright negate the armor, such as against a poor flak vest, then the superior optimal DPS of the monosword would win out.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Monosword

I find the monosword to be the best melee weapon vs all units . Zeus hammer might be sometimes slightly better vs a max armored foe, but most of the time your enemies aren't wearing cataphract armor. of course zeus hammer can sometimes be better vs mechs. Its good to have a mixture of both. Plasma sword I don't like very much comparatively speaking.

description:
A crystal-metallic longsword infused with mechanites that maintain a mono-molecular cutting edge. It cuts through even thick armor with ease, and its light weight permits fast attacks.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Persona_monosword

the persona section does a pretty good job comparing zeushammer vs monosword

[Morale -10]

thank you for informing me

[Astasia]

Blunt is in theory better against heavily armored enemies, but realistically you don't fight any heavily armored enemies so it's fairly moot. That is a bit of theory crafting that people do and spread around that tends to fall apart in actual gameplay. A high quality spear will fully penetrate the armor of a centipede or mechanoid boss, and like 99% of the human enemies you will fight. Maces for example do not perform better in combat against really any threat you would face in the game without mods. You use a mace when you want a higher chance to take prisoners, not when you want to win a fight more easily.

Warhammers are a bit of an exception, not because they perform better against armored targets, but because they do so much damage in a single hit, a legendary uranium warhammer will one shot human enemies very frequently making it a very effective weapon.

Monoswords and Zueshammers you use when you can get, they are both very strong in pretty much all situations. It's not something you have any real control over though, so people tend not to discuss them as normal weapon choices. It would be like saying just use an orbital beam targeter instead.

Plasmaswords are pretty garbo though and using one often does more harm than good.

[Re𝕯isia]

Absolute gem for information. Thanks I was actually looking rather to get a plasma or mono sword. (i usually only ever go ranged this was my first go) thanks 't was mono sword (persona)

[marcusaddamsson]

And aren't the DPS numbers kinda messed up these days, Astasia? I recall a (really in-depth) conversation a while back where you went into how DPS was a bit misleading... essentially you were making the case for spears as a very viable weapon (esp for early/mid). Up until then, I'd mostly been using Uranium Maces for the extra AP... and I swapped to plasteel spears after. And in general, I've been pretty happy with the results (completely anecdotally)... esp against mechs.

[Astasia]

Ya the ingame tooltip for DPS takes all available attacks for a weapon and basically averages them out as if they are all used equally as often. So a longsword says it has higher DPS than a spear because it has two higher damage attacks, a slashing and stabbing one, and one weak hit with the hilt, while a spear has one higher damage attack and two weaker hits with the handle and shaft. How combat actually works though is the highest damage attack is used 75% of the time, so the spear is using that one high damage attack 75% of the time and the longsword is doing the two equal damage attacks like 37.5% of the time, both of them using their weaker blunt attacks 25% of the time (if at all considering bionic attacks), giving them identical base DPS, but with the spear having more AP.

Like a longsword has enough AP to be just as good as a spear in most situations, as I mentioned above enemies rarely have much armor, but a longsword can't fully bypass the sharp resist on a centipede while the spear can. A legendary plasteel longsword is 61% AP, a legendary plasteel spear is 90% AP, a centipede has 72% sharp resist. So the difference is not large in practice, if you want to use longswords all the time that is entirely viable.

Somebody has actually filled out the wiki page on spears since the discussion in that thread happened going into this in more detail, also factoring in things like genes. Apparently there is a a valid argument for longswords being better than spears again with the strong melee gene. I don't fully agree with the assessment on cleave attacks being much of a factor, they don't happen all that often and I think are equally as useful at least at lower damage numbers to the piercing attack ability to target organs, but with the strong melee damage gene you are destroying bodyparts anyway and the small chance for cleave can mean the difference between destroying just an arm or hitting the arm with a cleave and still killing the enemy. This is why high quality warhammers are so strong though, as blunt damage can carry over to other bodyparts after destroying the part hit.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Spear

[Hykal]

TIL blunt damage carries over, but slash and pierce don't?

[Astasia]

Ya, a piercing/slash attack that does 100 damage and hits a finger destroys that finger and the rest of the damage potential is lost. A blunt attack that hits a finger for 100 damage can obliterate the entire arm and damage the torso. I don't know what the rate of this is, it might be every time. Each damage type has a proc effect, for slash it's cleave, for pierce it's forced internal damage, for blunt it's stun, so I don't recall if the ability to transfer remaining damage to a parent bodypart is just the nature of blunt damage or a secondary proc effect. It's frequent enough to make high quality warhammers devastating at any rate.

[Jigain]

I bet ten years from now, Astasia's going to be revealed as Tynan's alt account. I swear, they know EVERYTHING about the game.

[Hykal]

Legitimately I think Astasia should write a massive post on hidden mechanics and post it here or on the subreddit. 1300 hours in and I didn't know.

[marcusaddamsson]

I'd say that swapping 'dmg goes up the limb' for 'massive bleed wound' is a decent trade. And yea, Astasia is daXbomb/RWGOAT-infobot-y. ... See what I did there?

Thanks for your encyclopedic brain.