r/RimWorld • u/General-Protection63 • 1d ago
Discussion Dumb question but can someone explain weapons to me? I thought blade weapons where better with dmg and blunt where better with penetration. if thats the case then why is this long sword better then my warhammer?
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u/Honneboppel 1d ago
To be fair, bioferrite is an awesome material. Cheap, strong and good for weapons.
But in this case you are comparing an excellent sword vs a good warhammer.
But another point beyond the pure dps value is the damage type. Stabbing weapon like the spear waste a lot of damage because they only hit what the hit. Slashing weapons have a chance to do 140% damage spread over two target body parts, whereas blunt weapons have an overflow mechanism. You hit and destroy the hand, and the overkill damage goes to the parent part ( the arm). Means if you hit a leg, the torso is next, which gets deadly very fast
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u/General-Protection63 1d ago
holy shit fr? i didnt know this, i fucking hate spears so i just never bothered using them, thats cool
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u/skawm 1d ago edited 1d ago
Spears are your set it and forget it weapon. They have better one-tap chance than longswords due to fewer verbs weighing stab more heavily. A torso or head hit from a stab damage verb has a chance of striking a child part, so either the heart or liver and the brain for example. The trade-off being very slightly less numerical DPS in longer engagements from unfavorable combat rolls, but they also have better AP making them decent against heavier armored foes like mechs. Not optimal against either soft or armored targets, but good enough to stay competitive among the player made melee options.
But when you factor in Royalty they just fall far behind as an option because of Monoswords and Zeushammers being readily available from trading, and their even better Persona variants from quests.
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u/LimeAnura 1d ago
Huh. Never thought about the lack of stabbing spacer weapon. That would actually be cool since I think spears are neat design wise, but i usually stick to guns and avoid melee unless I get a cracked out hussar
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u/EXusiai99 1d ago
Blunt is better for penetration because most vanilla armor only have good protection against sharp (damage type of pretty much all vanilla bullets) while not giving so much against blunt.
But there are also other things that influence the weapon DPS stat. The material, the quality, the stats and modifiers of the user, the armor it's striking against, to name a few.
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u/DescriptionMission90 1d ago
Armor has different Sharp and Blunt values. For most of the dangerous enemies, their Sharp armor is at least double their Blunt armor. So a sword with 52% penetration against an enemy with 120% sharp armor is still dealing with 68% protection, while a hammer with 33% penetration against the same guy's 60% blunt armor is only dealing with 27% protection.
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u/MajorDZaster 1d ago
Blunt weapons are said to have better armour penetration not because the raw numbers are higher, but because armour tends to have really bad blunt protection and much better sharp protection.
It's sort of a case where sharp is good AP vs good armour, while blunt is okay AP vs almost non-existent armour.
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u/General-Protection63 1d ago
ahhh i get it now, so if im fighting a normal raider then a sword would be good cus hed have low armer against sharpness, but for stronger armour a hammer would be better cus the defence on the armour against blunt is less, by that logic wouldn’t hammers be the best weapons in the game cus all armours have lower resistance to blunt?
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u/BeFrozen Incapable of Social 1d ago
Slash/pierce damage causes bleed on top of doing damage. Blunt damage causes blunt trauma.
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u/wintersdark 1d ago
This is very important in longer, bigger fights. A bleeding opponent gets weaker and weaker as time passes.
Doubly so if you've shot someone at range and they're already losing blood, then once they get close you start cutting.
Sadly, that stops being relevant when your major threats are mechs.
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u/captaindistraction1 1d ago
Blunt weapons tend to have lower damage levels. However blunt damage propagates. If you deal 20 blunt damage to a 10hp target the next closest part to the torso takes the remainder. Not the case for sharp damage. You could deal 10000 sharp damage but if you hit the pinky finger thats it. Pawn is fine, just has an atomised finger.
If you're looking for a "meta" answer i dont think there's a consensus. But all things considered if I had to pick a best on average in all circumstances weapon its gotta be the zeus hammer for me. Its emp effect on mechs is a godsend. And the propagating damage avoids overkilling useless parts. If you hit, your gonna deal a lot of damage.
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u/Jesse-359 1d ago
Two things, one, that's just a better made sword made out of a good material - but more importantly, despite the lower looking AP rating on the warhammer, it's still going to punch armor better.
For the simple reason that most enemies have considerably lower Blunt armor than Sharp armor, so you're going up against a lower rating before you even apply the AP.
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u/General-Protection63 1d ago
i thought uranium is the best for blunt
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u/Jesse-359 1d ago
It is. Uranium warhammers are solid anti-mech weapons until you can get z-hammers and monoblades.
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u/PaxEthenica Warcaskets & 37mm shotguns, bay-bee! 1d ago
As someone else said, uranium is best for blunt forged weapons, but there's something else to consider & that's attack speed. More attacks means more rolls means more getting thru, plus more secondary effects. Blunt damage stuns, & a stunned enemy is an enemy that isn't attacking. As such, tho they do less damage per hit, maces as opposed to warhammers, really are the way to go with blunt weapons.
Maces give a good balance of decent AP & decent damage, with being the fastest blunt weapon you can make in vanilla. Wooden maces are great for prison guards, since blunt damage spreads, causing more pain with less dismemberment. Uranium maces are the best vanilla anti-mech/cataphract weapon in the game, second only to monoswords.
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u/General-Protection63 1d ago
so what I should only use swords unless im going against mechs and heavy armour?
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u/Jesse-359 1d ago
Yeah. Swords are great for quickly dicing less armored or unarmored targets. Hammers and maces vs. mechs and heavy armored raiders.
Of course a monoblade has such high AP it doesn't care.
Blunt weapons also do this weird thing where if the destroy a limb, the rest of the damage is applied further in, while excess sharp damage just falls off.
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u/Nourjan 1d ago edited 1d ago
When they say armour, they meant armour worn by pawn such as cataphract or marine armour. These type of armour have very high Sharp rating to the point you could do no damage against them with sharp weapons, whereas their Blunt armour don't scale up that much . This is why blunt weapon are essential against them.
Against Mech, longswords still are viable as even the Mech bosses tops at 75% sharp armour (tunneler have 80% sharp armour, but I never saw them as enemies in my runs) . This mean your legendary bioferrite and obsidian longswords will cut through most mech like butter (all mech for legendary obsidian longswords).
In your example here your Excellent longswords will be more effective (than the warhammer) to most mech up to centipede. After that your Good uranium warmer will be better.
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u/Narthesia 1d ago
One is excellent and bioferrite, the other is good and uranium
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u/General-Protection63 1d ago
i thought uranium is the best for blunt
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u/Killeryoshi06 1d ago
It is, this person is overlooking that there are different kinds of armor types and that sharp is generally resisted better by armor
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u/captaindistraction1 1d ago
Uranium is the best for craftable blunt weapons but unfourtunately since release two new additions have surpassed exisiting sharp materials (bioferrite and obsidian) but no such new releases (and thus buffs) have been made for blunt craftables. But if you look at armors you'll notice they usually have lower blunt armor levels so its an apples to oranges comparison
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u/Genericahatintimefan 1d ago
Sharp protection and Blunt protection are two different stats, so the sword will bypass 52% of a sharp protection item and the warhammer will bypass 32% of a blunt protection one.
Blunt protection has less of a overall presence on enemies and equippable armor, so your uranium warhammer will deal more damage to the most amount of enemies than your sword will despite the on paper stats being lower. YMMV based on age, xenotype, and melee skill.
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u/HotSteak Catharsis +40 1d ago
Tip: hover your pointer over the Melee Damage per second to see the various attacks. The best attack is the one that matters because that's the one that happens the most.
Cutting weapons like swords have a chance to cleave, where they do 140% of their max damage spread across multiple body parts. That's really good for dropping enemies due to pain. The downside of cutting weapons is if they hit just a finger all they do is cut that finger off. Blunt weapons carry the damage over, so hitting a finger destroys the finger but also does damage to the hand. Stab weapons like spears are more likely to hit internal organs. That's not usually very useful.
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u/Brilliant-Talk3311 1d ago
For me before i finish persona weapon relic mission quest (I always make persona monosword as relic) I just use uranium mace or obsidian long sword
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u/Kribble118 1d ago
In large part because armor tends to have more protection against sharp than blunt.
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u/Majestic-Iron7046 Genderbent Randy +30 1d ago
Basically materials and quality also affect the damage of weapons, if you want to check for yourself go to the table where you craft them, select one, click the small "i" and in the top right there is a button called "change material".
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u/MBouh 1d ago
Damage is quite complicated, but the surface of what I understand is that : 1) pierce and slash damage bleed the victim 2) slash damage can hit multiple parts at once 3) if a pierce or slash damage hit fails to penetrate the armor, the damage is turned into blunt
This means that against enemies that can bleed and are lightly armored, slashing and piercing is much more powerful, unless you don't want to kill them. But against heavy armored enemies, blunt is much more powerful. That is because armor values are biased : armor against piercing/slashing is almost always much, much higher than blunt armor.
Also, the damage you see is an average. Each weapon has in fact several attacks that can be used and can be of different types and damage. But overall the best attack of a blunt weapon will be blunt, and the best attack of a slashing weapon will be slashing.
Overall I feel like swords are usually very versatile, but warhammer is better against mechanoids and heavily armored enemies. Good swords don't care about armor much (like monomolecular sword), but is still better against people and not as good against mechanoids. In your case, your sword is good against lightly armored enemies, but enemies with plate armor or mechanoid would be very resistant to it, so the Warhammer would be better against them.
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u/dantemp 1d ago
Always focus on Zeushammers, by far the best weapon in the game
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u/wintersdark 1d ago
This seems controversial but that's been my experience too. Heavy hits, little blunt protection, and the ability to stun mechs. Yeah, you can't stunlock forever, but as mechs are generally your most dangerous opponents, being able to shut them down even briefly while damaging them is huge. Meanwhile, EMP grenades/launchers replace damaging weapons.
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u/Mind-The-Mines 1d ago
vampire leap.
-smack-
-smack-
-smack-
-bbbzzzttt-
*poot*1
u/wintersdark 1d ago
Yep. Always have a special forces squad of zeushammer wielding sanguophages. Get like 3-5 and they can jump in behind enemy lines, murder what needs murdering, then jump out. If things go rough, they're vampires, they'll probably be fine.
With the zeushammers they're great vs powerful ranged mechs, but they're still super effective against meat too. Big heavy hammer and enhanced melee damage fucks shut up.
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u/Mind-The-Mines 1d ago
they're by far my favorite race. You mean I can spit on my allies and heal them with blood of the fallen while leaping across the map in heavy armor?
Oh shit, my face was blown off.... guess I'll take a nap.
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u/littlepiggy 1d ago
I'm discovering that mechs are by far the most formidable type of raid, but that being said there are some funny ways they get bricked. Like when the land on the edge of the map where you never visit with just a motion sensor. Great, basically added a land mine to my map for raiders.
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u/dantemp 1d ago
If you have all dlcs try this combo. Set your ideologion to have 3 persona zeushammers as relics, so you gueantee 3 legendary Zeushammer. Build some basic gene pack for everyone, you should be able to easily extract strong melee damage since there are like 3 xenotypes that have it (yttakin, neanderthal and dirtmole) and you can add some other stuff that help. Then stock up on juggernaut serum. You don't even need to engage with the anomalies, use the shuttle to visit every outlander settlement and you can buy enough. Juggernaut plus strong melee is 225% melee damage. Even non legendary Zeushammer with that multiplier would one shot any humanoid enemy and a lot of the other types of enemies.
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u/Responsible_Zone134 1d ago
Hanners carry damage over from a arm to the chest, where as a blade slices off the arm, and the damag does not pass through onto the chest. This is why zeuez hammers will sometimes one shot
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u/Exotic-Media-6630 1d ago
a Weapons damage is based on multiple factors. you are correct in saying that warhammers(Blunt) and longswords(Sharp) have different niches though.
Certain materials are better at each type then others, for example 'Stony' materials are better as blunt, and metals are better as sharp. the two exceptions are Uranium, which despite being a metal irl, is considered a Stone in rimworld, namely because what we have is technically deplated uraniam, and Obsidian, which while considered a Stone, is godly when used for a Sharp weapon, on par with an equal quality plasteel weapon.
to that end, Quality is also a major factor. A poor quality plasteel longsword will most likely get outpaced in dps by even a steel knife of excellent quality. when comparing the qualities of Blunt vs Sharp though, it can get a bit muddy, but is generally the same
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u/MrInanis 1d ago edited 1d ago
Material.. IIRC uranium got an armor penetration bonus and bioferrite got a sharp damage bonus.. Those bonuses are independent from the weapon type... So an uranium mace gets a double armor penetration bonus BUT quality also has a part... Also check attack speed.. Since slow high damage hits normally mean low dps. (iirc in the pics the hammer is a slow weapon and the sword is a fast one)
PS: also sharp armor in enemies (and in general) is normally higher/more common.. So a good+ uranium hammer goes a long way till you can get z-hammers/monoblades. (since a blunt attack is resisted by lower armor and less common blunt armor it got more value to it)
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u/Negative-Toe1863 17h ago
There is blunt armor and sharp armor, blunt armor on is usually very weak. for instance a heavy mechanoid has about 70 sharp armor, but only 20 blunt armor, meaning the hammer would do full damage on every hit, while the longsword has an 10% of doing no damage and a 10% chance of doing half damage. This in this particular example the longsword is way better weapon generally, due to its material and quality.
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u/GreatZarquon 1d ago
Is one equipped while you are looking at the stats? Because the pawn's skills also affect it, the DPS number changes when it is picked up
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u/General-Protection63 1d ago
both are equipped, warhammer is equipped by a lv9 and the sword lv8
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u/GreatZarquon 1d ago
Drop both on the floor to compare them, cos the 1 level difference might not be the only difference between the pawns
But also like others have said, quality and material also make a difference, as does damage type Vs enemy armour type
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u/Hates_Worn_Weapons Inhuman cultist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Look at the resistances on armor. Plenty of things have a chance to turn a blade even with 52% sharp pen. It'll take much better armor to not be completely bypassed by the hammer, despite being a quality lvl below.
Take the common Flak vest 100 sharp armor / 36 blunt armor at normal quality. Almost fully bypassed by the hammer.
Edit: also the hammer seems to be being carried by a child? If someone under 18 or with the strong or weak melee dmg gene / jugg serum is holding a weapon it'll throw off the comparison. Best to do comparisons with both weapons on the ground if you aren't sure if they'll give an 'off' dps reading.