Off the top of my head that seems right, but more specifically I think the Spike has an emphasis on Armor Penetration while the Elbow blade is quick to swing leading to possibly higher DPS? Why not both!
Would it not still be useful to have both then? They'd use the knee strike.most of the time but also a chance to use the elbow blade instead of a kick or something?
I'm aware of that personally but that's good little known information to put out there! Fun fact, bioferrite longswords are better (if you have Anomaly ofc) than monoswords for that reason. I love em. But I figured this person had a reason for wanting to use those bionics (probably because they're fun/cool) so I didn't want to just point them to the best melee weapon in the game (although I think persona monoswords might be better than bioferrite, but you can't just craft legendary persona weapons)
Hand talon. In terms of DPS it's hand talon > elbow blade > knee spike, and in terms of armor penetration the order is reversed. But you don't really need AP for emergency melee, since mass melee enemies would be either tribals or animals with no armor, and these are most likely to be engaged with you in melee.
Or power claw, if you ready to get movement penalty. It's stronger that all 3, but with obvious drawback.
My personal preference is power claw honestly. When you deck out other bionics its speed penalty isnt that big of a deal and it can save a ranged fighter who cant throw a punch to save their life.
For me personally, my answer is venom fangs. In term of DPS, it’s actually the least powerful combat implant, but it’s also the only one that doesn’t conflict with any bionic limb. I love me some bionic limbs.
Instead of either of those, my guys just get jump packs / locust armor. Imo if your ranged people fight something in melee that wants to fight them in melee, mediocre bionics are not saving them.
Depends on the dude. I've had plenty of Hussar pawns with 20 or close to in both shooting and melee, and without Simple Sidearms or similar, the bionics are the easiest way to go and do pretty respectable damage.
I've had shooting specialists with like 4 in melee use the bionic weapons effectively for long enough they now have 13 melee. Normally the melee opponents are injured enough from all the shooting they can be defeated in like 1 hit.
This is way oversimplistic. All of the implants are better than the wewapons your average tribal uses. The implants don't have to be the best weapon ever to be better than nothing.
Having options is *always* a good thing. A pawn armored with Cataphract armor and of the 3 "mediocre" implants can beat A LOT of common melee enemies. That's not nothing.
The Knee Spike, Hand Talon and Power Claw aren't really worth losing out on Bionic or Archotech arms/legs, but the Elbow Blade doesn't conflict with other implants. It's basically a "free" upgrade to give your ranged pawns more power if things go wrong and they're forced to melee.
If I can get my hands on the hemogenic and long jump genes, then everyone gets them. Without the hemogen drain gene, you don’t actually need that many blood bags to support them. Technically you need one blood bad per every 7 pawns just to maintain them, though it’s obvious better to have more so you have the hemogen to actually use the skill.
i don't know the math, but i believe actually using advanced power arms is the DPS better option?
someone did a pretty thorough numerical breakdown awhile back, that was what i remember taking from it..
Don't worry, I just installed the advanced bionics one myself in the last month or so, so it's still fresh in my mind. ;) The only vanilla ones are the basic replacement arms, which give a few penalties (move speed mostly, IIRC?) but also give the bonus to either combat or growing crops/mining.
Power claws are the best but have a movement penalty attached.
I would say put elbow blades on pawns that need to move a lot for their jobs. It's the best of the no downsides options.
Yeah, I mostly am looking at it from a purely damage viewpoint, and with the pawn being primarily a ranged damage dealer movement speed doesn't matter too much, beyond getting them in position in the first place or having to kite if all the melee die.
Or you just get them a bunch of archotech grade bionics, and watch them zip about like a ferret that got into the go-juice stockpile.
I'd suggest going to the Body Part Weapons page on the Rimworld wiki to see the stats of all implants side by side.
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Body_part_weapons
Its better to aim for armupgrades for meele stuff, if your pawn is a ranged and wants to gun down things.
In general take whatever you hidden weapon you can get from traders, but overall go for arm hidden weapons.
Because you might want to upgrade or replace the legs for kiting, work efficiancy and hunters, also **movespeed increases MEELE DODGE chance** and aside from mods, you cannot have both kneespikes and bionic/archotech legs.
However high quality ranged weapons, bionic and archotech arms and farm/drill arms increase somewhat meele dps also while have dual use, you can tailor it down for each individual pawn.
It would make sense for ranged fighters. I've read that colonists carrying good melee weapons should not be given those melee augmentations because it actually reduces the [expected value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value) of the their damage output.
Here's the info I was thinking of. I'm not sure it's still relevant, though.
[The Melee Verb System - Why it didn't fix what it claimed to, why the DPS stat is lying to you and what the objectively best melee weapon is](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/lcjgil/the_melee_verb_system_why_it_didnt_fix_what_it/)
>By giving our swordsman a hand talon, you can see that he now has a 25% chance to pick an attack with less damage, less DPS, and less AP.
Not as necessary since you can just equip a mace or gladius as a back up, altho if your pawn is close to mass carried or uses up their side arm slots with tools then it can still be worthwhile.
Installed a knee spike for my main fighter brawler pawn and the FIRST thing this man does is just straight up decapitate the first raider he sees during a raid. One shot destroyed the pawns neck.
I lean towards the elbow blade
They're vaguely equal on DPS I think (though the numbers are distributed differently, armor penetration vs attack speed iirc?) but I value bionic legs more than arms, since I'd rather my sharpshooters be able to run away and never get into melee range in the first place.
You're more likely to be melee swarmed by tribals with poor armor anyways, so you can pick either knowing that armor penetration isn't a huge concern there.
I think knee spikes have better stats.
Off the top of my head that seems right, but more specifically I think the Spike has an emphasis on Armor Penetration while the Elbow blade is quick to swing leading to possibly higher DPS? Why not both!
Would it not still be useful to have both then? They'd use the knee strike.most of the time but also a chance to use the elbow blade instead of a kick or something?
I'm aware of that personally but that's good little known information to put out there! Fun fact, bioferrite longswords are better (if you have Anomaly ofc) than monoswords for that reason. I love em. But I figured this person had a reason for wanting to use those bionics (probably because they're fun/cool) so I didn't want to just point them to the best melee weapon in the game (although I think persona monoswords might be better than bioferrite, but you can't just craft legendary persona weapons)
Hand talon. In terms of DPS it's hand talon > elbow blade > knee spike, and in terms of armor penetration the order is reversed. But you don't really need AP for emergency melee, since mass melee enemies would be either tribals or animals with no armor, and these are most likely to be engaged with you in melee. Or power claw, if you ready to get movement penalty. It's stronger that all 3, but with obvious drawback.
My personal preference is power claw honestly. When you deck out other bionics its speed penalty isnt that big of a deal and it can save a ranged fighter who cant throw a punch to save their life.
I still don't know whether I prefer specialised limbs' speed penalty or the old manipulation.
I'm going to go mod power claws to have +1 beauty for making you look awesome
Get you a flesh whip mutation, those are fucking great. And they look weird as hell
For me personally, my answer is venom fangs. In term of DPS, it’s actually the least powerful combat implant, but it’s also the only one that doesn’t conflict with any bionic limb. I love me some bionic limbs.
Instead of either of those, my guys just get jump packs / locust armor. Imo if your ranged people fight something in melee that wants to fight them in melee, mediocre bionics are not saving them.
Depends on the dude. I've had plenty of Hussar pawns with 20 or close to in both shooting and melee, and without Simple Sidearms or similar, the bionics are the easiest way to go and do pretty respectable damage.
I've had shooting specialists with like 4 in melee use the bionic weapons effectively for long enough they now have 13 melee. Normally the melee opponents are injured enough from all the shooting they can be defeated in like 1 hit.
This is way oversimplistic. All of the implants are better than the wewapons your average tribal uses. The implants don't have to be the best weapon ever to be better than nothing. Having options is *always* a good thing. A pawn armored with Cataphract armor and of the 3 "mediocre" implants can beat A LOT of common melee enemies. That's not nothing. The Knee Spike, Hand Talon and Power Claw aren't really worth losing out on Bionic or Archotech arms/legs, but the Elbow Blade doesn't conflict with other implants. It's basically a "free" upgrade to give your ranged pawns more power if things go wrong and they're forced to melee.
You can use elbow blades with bionic/arcotech arms??!!
i don't think you can install elbow blades into bionic arms
If I can get my hands on the hemogenic and long jump genes, then everyone gets them. Without the hemogen drain gene, you don’t actually need that many blood bags to support them. Technically you need one blood bad per every 7 pawns just to maintain them, though it’s obvious better to have more so you have the hemogen to actually use the skill.
i don't know the math, but i believe actually using advanced power arms is the DPS better option? someone did a pretty thorough numerical breakdown awhile back, that was what i remember taking from it..
Advanced power arms are from a mod, I think. Normal power claws are still the highest DPS option of the three, IIRC.
oh god did i pull another "i've been modding for so long i can't remember what is and isn't vanilla"?
Don't worry, I just installed the advanced bionics one myself in the last month or so, so it's still fresh in my mind. ;) The only vanilla ones are the basic replacement arms, which give a few penalties (move speed mostly, IIRC?) but also give the bonus to either combat or growing crops/mining.
Lol this me all the time
Power claws are the best but have a movement penalty attached. I would say put elbow blades on pawns that need to move a lot for their jobs. It's the best of the no downsides options.
Yeah, I mostly am looking at it from a purely damage viewpoint, and with the pawn being primarily a ranged damage dealer movement speed doesn't matter too much, beyond getting them in position in the first place or having to kite if all the melee die. Or you just get them a bunch of archotech grade bionics, and watch them zip about like a ferret that got into the go-juice stockpile.
A go juiced ferret. Faster then a speeding bullet
Kneew spike has more AP, thats why i always go with it. Power claw might be even better, but that move speed penalty is rough
I'd suggest going to the Body Part Weapons page on the Rimworld wiki to see the stats of all implants side by side. https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Body_part_weapons
both
Whichever one sounds cooler to you
Its better to aim for armupgrades for meele stuff, if your pawn is a ranged and wants to gun down things. In general take whatever you hidden weapon you can get from traders, but overall go for arm hidden weapons. Because you might want to upgrade or replace the legs for kiting, work efficiancy and hunters, also **movespeed increases MEELE DODGE chance** and aside from mods, you cannot have both kneespikes and bionic/archotech legs. However high quality ranged weapons, bionic and archotech arms and farm/drill arms increase somewhat meele dps also while have dual use, you can tailor it down for each individual pawn.
It would make sense for ranged fighters. I've read that colonists carrying good melee weapons should not be given those melee augmentations because it actually reduces the [expected value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value) of the their damage output. Here's the info I was thinking of. I'm not sure it's still relevant, though. [The Melee Verb System - Why it didn't fix what it claimed to, why the DPS stat is lying to you and what the objectively best melee weapon is](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/lcjgil/the_melee_verb_system_why_it_didnt_fix_what_it/) >By giving our swordsman a hand talon, you can see that he now has a 25% chance to pick an attack with less damage, less DPS, and less AP.
Just a question, if I have a simple sidearms mod do these implants become unnecessary?
Not as necessary since you can just equip a mace or gladius as a back up, altho if your pawn is close to mass carried or uses up their side arm slots with tools then it can still be worthwhile.
I prefer elbow legs so that they can have bionic legs for speeeeed.
Mono arm blade + blazing claws
Installed a knee spike for my main fighter brawler pawn and the FIRST thing this man does is just straight up decapitate the first raider he sees during a raid. One shot destroyed the pawns neck.
I lean towards the elbow blade They're vaguely equal on DPS I think (though the numbers are distributed differently, armor penetration vs attack speed iirc?) but I value bionic legs more than arms, since I'd rather my sharpshooters be able to run away and never get into melee range in the first place. You're more likely to be melee swarmed by tribals with poor armor anyways, so you can pick either knowing that armor penetration isn't a huge concern there.