Spear

The spear is a melee weapon that does a large amount of sharp damage with high .
== Acquisition ==
Spears can be purchased from any combat supplier or war merchant, or obtained from several kinds of melee raiders.
== Analysis ==
The spear is a sharp weapon with a very similar damage output to the longsword, despite the in-game tooltips stating otherwise. This is because the game does not account for the melee verb selection mechanic introduced in 1.1. 
Spears and/or longswords are the best sharp melee weapons that colonists can craft. They compete with maces and warhammers for best overall craftable weapon. In-depth comparison can be seen in the below section.
=== Comparison to longswords ===
Spears have very slightly less . The longsword is stronger in raw DPS than the spear, after considering melee verb selection. In exchange, the spear has noticeably more () and costs 25 materials less. This makes the spear numerically superior, but that is not the full story.
Longswords can either Cut or Stab, while spears can only Stab. Cut damage has a chance to "cleave" through body parts. This increases damage per swing by 140%, but its damage is split between body parts. The spear can only stab: its damage is weaker, but always concentrated on one body part. The cleave will cause pain shock faster, due to increased damage. Generally, pain shock is much more likely than body part destruction.
If a cut happens to reduce a body part to 0 HP, it is more likely to be destroyed. But since cleaving will spread out damage in the first place, Cut remains less likely to destroy larger limbs (like the arms and legs). Also, stabs are more likely to hit internal organs. However, both of these factors tend to be less important than the aforementioned cleaving.
Overall, which option is better depends on expected targets:
* At normal to excellent qualities, longswords are often better (definitely more consistent) for fighting against unarmored humans, lightly armored humans, and light mechs like scythers and lancers. This is due to the increased damage from cleaving. Spears would be better for fighting against armored enemies, like centipedes, due to the higher .
* A masterwork plasteel spear / sword is able to one-shot body parts like head and neck, though not the torso. The masterwork spear will more consistently one-shot human enemies, as the damage won't be spread out. Empirical testing suggests that the longsword remains better against unarmored targets. Spears still have more , so are better against armored enemies.
It's worth noting that the spear faces competition with the mace as a cheaper, anti-armor weapon.
=== Comparison to maces ===
The spear shares a niche with the mace, as both offer better Armor Penetration (AP) than the longsword, gladius, or knife. Compared to the spear, the mace requires fewer crafting materials, is best made of uranium rather than plasteel, and is unlocked with Smithing research rather than Long Blades. Before armor, spears deal more damage than a mace of equal quality. Maces are good against armor despite having low AP, since most enemies have very little Blunt armor.
At normal quality, a plasteel spear deals more damage than a uranium mace until fighting enemies with Sharp armor. This means that spear is better against most mechanoids. But uranium mace will be far stronger than spears against flak vests (when hitting the vest) and power armor, dealing more DPS than plasteel spear against flak vest at normal quality. This makes mace generally better against outlander and imperial raids.
This assumes plasteel vs. uranium. If both weapons are made out of steel, then the mace becomes relatively better against centipedes and plate armor and the like. Also remember that maces are cheaper, and that uranium is generally used less than plasteel.
Notes:
* Once you reach masterwork quality, the plasteel spear's AP gets very high. No enemy, short of the empire's absolute best soldiers, has enough armor to justify using the mace. The spear is roughly equal against most power armor (a few % DPS worse), but can ignore all of a centipede's armor for the full 112%-of-mace damage.
* This comparison does not account for the strong melee damage gene. With strong melee damage, the mace comes out ahead due to overkill mechanics (see below).
=== With strong melee gene ===
With the strong melee damage gene, the comparisons change.
# High quality longswords can now one-shot the torso. Legendary plasteel swords can one-shot the torso even in a cleave attack, assuming it split between 2 parts.
# When an excellent plasteel longsword (or better) does a cleave attack, its damage so high that it causes pain shock in a single swing. 
# Meanwhile, the spear can only ever hit a single body part. If a 62 damage spear hits a 25 damage arm, the arm is destroyed and 37 damage (over of the attack) is wasted. If a sword cleaves, much less damage is wasted. Blunt weapons like maces and warhammers will hit the parent part if it would overkill (e.g. destroying the arm will damage the shoulder for remaining HP).
# Strong melee damage also boosts the of longswords. But due to the quirks of the game, it does not boost the AP of spears. Longsword AP becomes nearly identical to the spear.
This results in high quality swords with the damage gene being virtually better against all targets, short of tough pawns. Against humanoids, a sword can either (1-shot torso/head or cleave to pain shock), while a spear can only (1-shot torso/head). Against mechanoids, the cleave damage results in the sword coming out ahead regardless.
The masterwork steel longsword given at the start of the The Sanguophage scenario reaches both relevant thresholds. With your sanguophage, it can one-shot through a torso stab and one-shot through cleaving pain. This longsword is actually stronger per-hit than an excellent plasteel longsword, and likely better than any weapon you'll be seeing for a while.
== Version history ==
* 0.7.581 - Added
* 1.1.2610 - Implementation of new melee verb system. Previously, spears were more likely to use their shaft rather than their point. This now results in spears having higher DPS than what the game's infobox states. 
* 1.5.4062 - Received a new texture
Spear Old.png|Texture prior to 1.5
Category:Equipment Category:Weapons Category:Neolithic Weapons
Category:Melee Weapons Category:Sharp Weapons Category:Spears