Well, unless that changed recently, headlights (or light in itself) does not attract Zombies (or “zambies”?); only direct sight of the player’s character (or anything that they like to attack). Unless you have your dome lights on, they will not be drawn in by a driving car (noise of the motor and crashes aside).
I’m usually very careful about wasting resources, so I don’t do that in my plays, but you can grab random working cars to run over Zombies, so you don’t have to care much about damage… And the shock of a crash usually doesn’t damage much - aside from fragile things like mirrors, windows and solar panels.
Well, given that that it’s my goto strategy on most of my plays (test aside)… you can farm them with ease.
As for lasting… they have three charges and last long enough to bash in a zombies head, sometimes even multiple - which is long enough for me.
Well, since you pointed out more drawbacks on mine (or sometimes just rephrased them):
Reach attack weapons usually have a longer swing time than other melee weapons, which can result in the same situation that you said about quick weapons; you can get grabbed/smashed by quick monsters.
You can get overwhelmed in the open if a noise (like a screamer) attracts more Zombies towards you.
Since they are stab/cutting damage, they dont work that well against armored monsters.
Even if you use them at close range without the 30% reduced damage penalty, you’ll have to deal with the slow swing speed.
Most are fragile - they will deteriorate faster than other melee weapons.
This doesn’t make them bad. They are still quite good - just as they would be and have been in real life. In my opinion they are just not as overpowered as this topic probably makes them seem to be.
In using the example Lang provided, for hopefully the best most balanced comparison:
-The Halberd has higher action costs than the Battleaxe
-The H actually has higher piercing damage, higher damage vs armored targets than the BA.
-The Hs/Reach Attacks actually have the same damage types, making the BA even better for weapon swapping on the fly to negate the close range penalty.
-The scenario you provided of being overwhelmed applies to everything, not Reach Attacks specifically. I didn’t say they were great in 100% scenarios, even mentioning hordes already - but for the majority of melee situations.
Still really strong, but higher swing time and close range penalty make it not quite as bad.
The swing times definitely the real killer for reach and why my steel spear spends so much time sitting in my trunk, most fights I have to drop it and punch something to death at some point anyway. Also any weapon that has to be stored on the torso is just a pain as torso encumbrance is a very tight dance with bloody everything competing for it. Reach also doesn’t benefit much from mutations which really nukes it’s dps and simultaneous attack potential as those only kick in when you’re in its penalty range. Why I usually just use a trench knife if I’m going to use any weapon. Sheaths are flexible limb wise for encumbrance and it’s got block while allowing brawling to stun lock.
Go for Knife Spear over Steel Spear - aside for much better armor piercing.
Knife Spear has much lower skill level, proficiency and material requirements as well as having slightly less output aside from armor pierce, but roughly 30 move cost quicker to swing.
The swing differences only seem to get more pronounced later on.
Later on I am though. With so many advanced solders and skeletal juggernaut swarms I need the armour pen. Not sure how well a knife spear does against hulks and juggers though I’ll admit to having not used one in a long time. Struggling to find weapons worth welding lategame though so mostly stopped wielding them altogether. Better to just punch that power armor zombie.
Bone shiv and combat knife are usually my early game weapons. Bone shiv especially being good for shockers and clearing malls rapidly day one.
Now that i look at it - the Knife Spear has neither the adjacency damage penalty nor the higher swing time. Same output as the best in the early game but with reach attacks, no damage penalty, no swing penalty, no flimsy penalty and skill requirement of Fab 1.
Could be another reason for the early game power and why i didn’t take larger swing times into consideration, especially the larger swing times of reach attack weapons mid/late.
Wooden Spear same with slightly less output but not needing a blade.
