A jolly good punch up

[Listy]

I fear I'm missing something about melee combat.

I have the obligatory brawler type, just waiting round a corner for the first raider to scream "Leeeeroy Jenkins!" and rush past him facilitating a bop on the head, however I'm looking at all the weapons and scratching my head.

At the moment my Brawler is armed with a knife. This is where I start to get confused.

I can see the damage numbers going up. However so does the Cooldown/Warm up times, which mean the knife actually has one of the best DP' and is better for pursuit.

The latter came about when I realised my colonist was catching an enemy swinging and then waiting half an hour before setting off again after the fleeing ruffian, whom my brawler had sportingly given a head start too.

So again the Knife seems better for backstabbing.

I was thinking of upgrading to a longsword, but in a game where I crafted a good quality plasteel longsword, well I was expecting something akin to al ightsabre, but instead I got a longsword... seemingly exactly the same as the cheap wooden ones you can get off a trader.

So what have I missed?

[Halinder]

Well, first of all you have to look at the types of weapons. I'm not too familiar with melee weapons myself but perhaps we can make sense of this together.

From what I've noticed, the material of a weapon changes the base damage, and the quality of the weapon changes the damage multiplier -- for example, a normal plasteel knife would have a base damage of 8 (or so I recall) but a masterwork plasteel knife would have damage of 8 plus a multiplier of around 2.41, letting it do a lot more damage. I could be wrong on this part.

Moving on. Shivs and knives appear to be fast-hitting but low-damage, and don't seem to hurt bones much. They also deal 'sharp' damage, which is a shame as most armor has protection against sharp damage more than anything else.

A gladius is the bridge between knife and longsword. It deals average damage and hits decently fast.

Shivs and knives are meant to be very fast, but do poor damage compared to other weapons. Sharp damage, again.

A longsword is great because, if you build one of great quality and good material, you can easily dismember someone in a single hit. It's still slow, though.

I'm not particularly sure if this answers your question. BUT as a word of advice -- if you're dealing with tribals, use sharp weapons, but mostly a blunt weapon can be a lot more useful.

Blunt weapons, namedly the club and mace, hit in decent succession as well as deal blunt/brute damage. This surpasses most armor considerably better than sharp damage, and while it may not cause the enemy to bleed to death, chances are you'll bludgeon them first anyway. They have a tendency to damage bone which leads to extra devastation. So uh. That.

[wooaa]

Melee attacks also reset the cool down for ranged weapons. Against mechs i find melee weapons to be the best because it wont let them get a shot off with one of their supper guns. I did not know that knives attacked so fast, I will need to start making a few.

[Halinder]

The thing about mechanoids is that they'll occasionally lower the cannons and just punch you to death, and they are strong enough to kill a colonist in one hit -- even worse, they attack using blunt/brute damage.

[wooaa]

Hmm. While I have not lost a lot to mech melee damage, It is still less than dying by inferno cannon.

[Listy]

I did not know that knives attacked so fast.

Whoa there Tex!

I do not know, 100% for sure that knives attack fast. It's just what seems to be the case from looking at stats, and pure speculation on my part.

Hence one of the reasons to start this thread to see if anyone knows the details and if I'm right.

[Listy]

Now that's interesting.

I've been collecting knives since I started this run through, and I've finally gotten a pair the same quality but different material.

Both of these are normal quality:
Plasteel/Uranium:
Damage: 9/9
Cooldown: 1.67/1.67
Flammability: 10%/0%
Max health:280/250
Melee Agility: 1.35/0.6
Melee Blunt Damage modifier: 1/1.4
Melee Sharp Damage modifier: 1.2/1.1

The interesting bit is the last three stats. So it appears you might not actually have a "best" Close combat weapon, but they all do different things.
I wish I knew how those stats effected combat and worked into the game as well.

Edit:
From checking two identical weapons of different quality it seems the difference between Normal and Poor is 0.15 in the Melee Blunt and Melee Sharp Damage modifier.

[amul]

I would have hoped that different materials also affected the Cooldown, but it doesn't.

[Listy]

I would have hoped that different materials also affected the Cooldown, but it doesn't.

I don't know if the "Melee Agility" effects that though.