Shovels and Fireaxes are once again designated as tools and not as bladed weapons so I'm pretty sure the spears will be better as spears all around than the shovels. I'll have to give it a test though to see. The shovel shouldn't be better than a spear so if it turns out to be I'll let Madmole know as he works on balancing.
Oh, come on Roland. Really? Your talking about a Zombie apocalypse here. People are going to be using whatever they can to survive and to use as a weapon.
They aren't going to be like. Well this ax here is just a tool so I am going to keep using this knife instead.
Think about it. You wake up an a world were you have these corpus walking the streets in mobs.
The sounds they make, the smell of rotting flesh, the fact that they would be dead but not. Most of all they don't want to end up getting infected. The last thing you want is to get up close to em and getting there gore all over you. Anyone facing that would be scared spit less
People are going to want the longest reach and keep away from them.
Trust me, if it came down to it. You could drive a shovel or an ax through it's skull if you had to. They are not going to be having time forging spears. No they would make them out of scrap or sheet metal if they did.
Why is it that you want to limit the player's creativity and freedom anyway?
Seems that the only strategy that's applied here is the same with the bow and everything else. Nerf. Nerf this and nerf that.
Don't believe me. Try taking a shovel or better yet an ax and smash a mannequin with that. I guarantee that you will smash it up a lot faster than with some spear which is more likely to get stuck it it than the others, making is useless. Better yet, get an ax and chop some wood. I'v split a lot of logs growing up. Watched the wood fly apart, I can only imagine what that would do to the human body.
The main thing is the wider surface contact of the blade's edge. One good hit can do a lot of damage. A spear won't do that much damage against a zombie unless you get the brain. But an ax or shovel will do a lot of damage and takes less skill.
The spear relies on puncture were as the ax or shovel can relive on both that and blunt forced trauma. So you don't need a direct hit to kill as the force of the blow may crush the skull, sending fragments into the brain.
If anything, these two tools should be even more effective than a spear.
Sorry if this is too graphic.
But maybe you should see a bit of this movie just to get the feel of it. Watch first few minuts of this just to remind yourself of the fear.
That and that tools were used as weapons.
