When to change weapons?

[Matrik]

I can't seem to get anything done without spears. My furthest run just ended day 40ish right after I tried to switch a couple spearmen to sword and flail. Both around 61-65 melee skill which is the highest I've mustered.

When do you feel accuracy is improved enough to use a weapon besides spear? Should I instead be keeping my four man front with spears and just expanding crew to use other weapons or something? I typically am running 6-8 bros, 3-4 spear front, banner, 2 archers and a polearm.

[AxeHunter]

below 70 melee , i only use swords and spears. If it's a dedicated shield tank, then it's fine permanently, no need to switch.
otherwise i'll wait until 80

[w.f.schepel]

Originally posted by Matrik:

I can't seem to get anything done without spears. My furthest run just ended day 40ish right after I tried to switch a couple spearmen to sword and flail. Both around 61-65 melee skill which is the highest I've mustered.

When do you feel accuracy is improved enough to use a weapon besides spear? Should I instead be keeping my four man front with spears and just expanding crew to use other weapons or something? I typically am running 6-8 bros, 3-4 spear front, banner, 2 archers and a polearm.

There are a number of ways to increas to hit chance. You can use terrain (high ground gives a bonus) and surround targets. Also, morale influences combat stats.

Without any bonus/malus factors, I generally stick to a spear until 75 (ish) Matt. Up until 85 (ish), I stick to swords. Above 85: whatever.

Focus on your Mdef first, though. The harder it is if for the AI to get a hit in, the less crucial it gets for you to land hits. :-)

[UnluckyNoob]

I switch to swords at around 60 mskill. Flails are useable at 60 mskill as well but requires very high fatigue. Anything else only for specialised bros with corresponding weapon mastery.

[bulbatrs]

if you are struggling in the early game try to take backstabber and equip 2h mace or hammer. you can buy them for just over 2k or get from barbs. 60+ ma and backstabber makes them quite reliable and offer a lot of damage. don't take it on bros that will get over 85 ma, just on some early trash. Also focus on getting nimble over forged early.
It's best to not use archers early. replace them with polearms/2h spears - a lot more effective.

[Matrik]

Thanks all for the tips. My archers tend to be my work horses I feel like. Crossbow though, not regular bows. I haven't made it past weapon mastery level yet to play with some of those nice perks like nimble/forged. I'll try dropping an Xbow for a lance for sure.

The terrain is a good tip, learning that one was what boosted me past getting wrecked in the first few days. Now every fight I take a good hard look at the map for positioning and various advantages.

I'll try more reach weapons. I realize a moment ago part of the reason I struggle to grow the group is because newbies just become demoralizers when they die right off the bat. Gotta stop putting them on the front line right away :D

Def starting to think I spend too much on defensive perks. Will try out that backstab.

[Antifringe]

I've been thinking about starting a thread on this very topic! I'll just dump my thoughts here.

I handle weapon allocation a bit differently from most people. I base it on the final hit probability of a "baseline opponent" (I'll define that in a bit). My goal is to reach a 65% hit rate against my "baseline opponent." I chose this number because 1) It's nice and round, and therefore easy to compute and 2) 65% is very roughly when you score two hits for every one miss. I've found this 2-1 ratio to be the psychological sweet spot for me. It's a level of variance that feels tolerable. You can aim for an even better ratio, but getting past 65% isn't all that easy with new recruits.

Anyways, my baseline scenario is an unshielded enemy with a Melee Defense of 10, and my attacking brother is assumed to have one partner to grant the +5% surround bonus. Melee Defense 10 is the same as an upgraded Brigand Raider, and is a fairly typical value across most enemy types. Getting a +5% surround bonus is very common; it's actually more rare that you don't get at least that much!

So what this means is that my bro needs to chew through 5 net points of defense (10 Melee Defense, offset by the 5 point surround bonus) and still end up with 65%. Well, the average Melee Attack for an Apprentice (the baseline background that all others are variants of) is 52. That's way too low. But if you hand him a spear, he effectively gets a +20% bonus. Against the baseline scenario, his odds are now 52 + 20 -10 +5 = 67%. That is almost exactly a 2-1 hit-miss ratio, so that's perfect, and is also easily obtainable with Day 1 resources.

When a bro gets 60 points of base Melee Attack, I start considering giving him a sword instead. Swords have slightly better damage characteristics (but lose the powerful control options of spears!), and bring a +10% hit bonus on their primary attack. A sword bro with skill 60 has 60 +10 -10 +5 = 65% odds of hitting my baseline opponent.

I don't literally start replacing all of my spears at skill 60, that's just when I start filtering in any good captured swords that I happen to have.

At skill 70, I start equipping axes. A militia-tier background can reasonably achieve this around level 5 or 6, or sooner if he has stars. Axes are solid all-arounder weapons, with good base damage, good armor damage, and moderate armor bypass. They are the "rarely optimal, never wrong" option. Everyone treats axes as shield breakers, but I don't think that capability is actually very good. Their real strength is in their well-rounded numbers.

Flails and maces require special consideration.

I don't really make dedicated flail guys, at least not in the beginning. Instead, as I start to capture decent flails (Reinforced Wooden Flails or actual Flails, but never those trashy Wooden Flails), I put them in the pockets of my front-liners, prioritizing the higher-skill bros first. Raiders often spawn with little to no head protection, and having flails in everyone's pocket makes it easy to exploit this. Otherwise, flails aren't that great until you start fighting higher-tier enemies, so I don't really want them as my dudes' default weapon.

The first bro to hit Melee Attack 70 gets the nicest mace I have in my wagon, and also picks up Mace Mastery. Stunning is a very useful ability to have added to the team. That bro will eventually morph into a Greatmace user or a mace duelist.

At level 7, everything changes. Nimble and Battleforged become available, and ditching your shields for two-handed weapons becomes viable. At this point I start specializing according to the needs of the team, and the availability of high-end famed weapons. A few rules of thumb when deciding who gets what:

Greatswords get a bonus to hit (depends on the specific skill being used) and are good weapons for bros with underwhelming Melee Skill.

Greatmaces have a very efficient primary attack. You'll almost never want to use the more expensive special attack. Greatmaces are good for guys with solid Melee Skill but poor fatigue.

Greataxes have terrifying single-target damage and are decent armor-strippers in their own right. They have terrible area control (Round Swing is not very practical). A bro that would make a good mace dude will also make a good axe dude.

Two-handed Hammers are for set up. They smash armor and reset enemy initiative. You want them to go first. Put these on your bros that already have naturally high Initiative.

Cleavers are for clean up. They have bad performance against armor, and their powerful Decapitate attack only works against wounded foes. Decap is also a very expensive skill to use. Cleavers typically go on bros with good fatigue and bad initiative.

Two-handed Flails are good now. By the time you start fielding these things, you want them for the accuracy, and not for the head shots (you can make headshot builds work if you want to). A good choice for that odd Shepard you hired on Day 1 that had no real talents but made it to the endgame anyway.

Some closing remarks:

The 65% rules is arbitrary. You can pick any number you like. I found 65% to be an acceptable level of RNG, while also being easily obtainable with Day 1 recruits.

The baseline opponent scenario is also arbitrary. If you want your baseline to be a Raider Brigand with a shield, that's your choice, but it's going to be very, very hard to reach the 65% threshold with your starting bros. Assuming spears, you would need 65 +15 +10 -5 -20 = 65 skill to reach that, which you aren't going to get on new recruits on Day 1.

It makes sense to move the goalposts as the game progresses. As new foes emerge, and as it gets easier to find and equip skilled bros, you can adjust your minimal Melee Skill requirements.

The 65% is a minimum threshold, not an end goal. I don't stop at 65%. 65% is the minimum number I want to see before putting that guy on my front line.

If a bro can't reach that number, then I do one of two things:
1) If he has a good combination of health/fatigue/defense, he can become a dedicated tank unit,

2) If not, he gets patched up with Fast Adaptation, maybe Backstabber, and janky things things like 9-Lives so that he can take risks for the rest of the team.

[The Duck Knight]

even with swords there are some really decent builds you can carry way into lategame.
One of my favorite is the swordmaster crippler.
Give him a southern sword; (that gash skill with swordmastery and crippling strikes....)
Use crippling strikes, swordmastery and executioner as mainperks, This corebuild works with everyone. level up the regular melee frontliner stats (melee, Mdef, Hp, fatigue and resolve) as you see it fit (depening on rolls and basestats)




depening on his stats go either duelist or or shieldmastery as addition with that, both work rather well. works either as battle forged or nimble build.

Great build against nearly every living enemy, crippling orc warlord and unholds with every hit. A shieldmaster tank version can fight off several Unholds alone without problems, the duelist version kills them off surprisingly fast.


slightly less effectiv against undead enemies.

[Cat®]

At 65 I feel it's time to move away from spears, but it's important to leverage the adjacency bonus and make sure that you're surrounding the target. Using sub-65 m.att units to simply body block and provide adjacency isn't a terrible use of their health. That said, early on anyone with decent m.att becomes a polearm user to minimise risk in my bands.

[Melkolf]

Originally posted by Matrik:

Now every fight I take a good hard look at the map for positioning and various advantages.

It is for this very reason that I ALWAYS place a falcon on my first moving bro.

Those little beauts are apparently one of the most underrated items amongst the fixation on what weapon when headcases.

Never venture out without a falcon, never let loose the hounds too early, and always carry a net in one or two backpacks.

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Originally posted by Melkolf:

It is for this very reason that I ALWAYS place a falcon on my first moving bro.

Same. Bro with impatient trait gets the falcon.

[Matrik]

I do love the falcon as well. Would never have bought one, but was lucky enough to receive one in loot. Now I always have one. Real handy in lots of situations. Dogs I haven't messed with, will need to try those out.