Weapons... wich ones to use.

[mehguy22]

Guys before me did a really good job explaining ranged weps, better than I could, but I wanted to put in my 2 cents on melee weapons.

MELEE 101- TEACHING YOU ABOUT MEHGUY'S OPINIONS ON MELEE B/C HE USES THEM TOO MUCH.

Spears and Longswords- Big damage, slow swinging. Good if you have a brawler or good melee. Longswords are better but spears are basically cheap, common longswords in terms of dps factors.
Gladius- In between Longsword and Knife. Good all-around weapon. Less likely to destroy limbs than Longsword but still does decent damage.
Knife- Quite low damage and fast swinging. Use only if focusing on incap rather than pure damage or if you're in a pinch. Also good for lower melee stats, as the fast swinging means that at least you'll land some hits, even with super low melee.
Club- Kind of like the knife in that it's better for focusing on incap rather than pure damage, but slower swinging and more damage. Outside of trying to get captures it's a little ineffective.
Shiv- DO NOT USE THESE. PERIOD. You're better off using fists, wooden log, or beer bottle 9 times out of 10. Use them only if you have a super duper shiv (legendary plasteel?). Otherwise it's basically a death wish. Although... one time a visitor to my arctic colony with a shoddy wooden shiv DID take on a Centipede for 2 days straight before finally getting his skull bashed in. Okay then, correction- only use shivs if they're super duper shivs OR if they are imbued with the favor of the void gods.
Items (Wooden log, beer bottle)- Use in a pinch if you must. Don't use over a better alternative.
Prosthetic weapons (scyther blade, power claw)- Recommended only to use these on Assassins and such who do bugger all aside from fighting and eating your food. Since they affect manipulation you shouldn't use them on people who can do anything that requires that (which is almost everything). Note that if you use these, you should put them on BOTH hands. If you don't, in combat they'll alternate between hitting with one hand then the other- if they only have one weaponized prosthetic this means they'll lower their own dps by using their lower damage regular hand half the time.
Fists- Last resort, but also great for incapping. It's fun to find a raider whose legs got hurt bad, cause when they start running away, you can catch up to them and have all your shooters stop firing and punch 'em down, hoping for an incap, since fists are probably the best melle for chance of incap.

There's my 2 cents on melee b/c I use them too often.

[b0rsuk]

What's the point of heavy SMG ? There's charge rifle and LMG already.

[Panzer]

What's the point of heavy SMG ? There's charge rifle and LMG already.

Fast firing short range gun, I always like to have some of my careful shooters with those.

Great bows and pilas are the tribal equivalent of survival rifles and sniper rifles, the damage pilas deal is nothing to laugh at, and great bows are almost as good as survival rifles, same dmg, almost same range and firing speed, if I find some good ones (superior and above) I always use them well into my 2nd year.

When I have a shooter with high melee skill I always see to it that he gets a power claw and a bionic arm, that guy can defend himself even when he gets rushed by melee fighters.

And lastly, miniguns. Those are superb for mech disposal. Stun them and get some miniguns up close and personal, you got 50% accuracy at touch! Insane damage, usually 2-3 volleys are enough to dispose of one of them

[Listy]

There is no Best weapon. Well, maybe any weapon is better than no weapon, but I generally use a mixture of weapons.

General issue weapons: I give these to my average colonists: IE: one who isn't destined for my Melee squad or have any other combinations of traits or sats that means he'd do well elsewhere. In order of preference:
Assault rifle> Charge Rifle> PDW

For Trigger happy guys:
Mini-gun> SMG

For high shooting skill:
Sniper rifle> Survival rifle

Any gun not listed there is pretty much still in the early stages of the colony so any gun is a good gun!

I tend to use a killing ground with my colonists defending as I play long term. And you can get some quite silly levels of tribal attacks long term. When you get a horde of Tribals all clumped together four trigger happy mini-guns really shine!

Back a few patches I had a lot of success with Trigger happy grenade throwers, but that was back when you could make effective barricades, since that got removed then the grenade became pretty pointless.