It is fair it think, there are weapons that just work better or feel better. I think of it as like a tier of weapon that are good for a specific purpose.

I have used a punch dagger to good effect, risky if your character is not melee focused, but performs better than I thought as it has great action economy.

Hatchet is no slouch for early game either

From the weapon I have seen but haven't used I can see them being useful, feel more comfortable with what I know from experience that suits my playstyle.

Martial arts are also a great tool to make weapons useful and even unarmed can be fun - for example throwing a zombie off a building with a judo throw

I think since I found the monomolecuIar blade cbm like to rely on that and that does base 28 damage and it can kill a lot of things in the game when skilled - even able to kill Frogmothers when suffieciently skilled in melee.

So I like to think of the base damage as a soft guage for threshold

Like less than 20:

Early game, "soft" targets ( low or no armour), great action economy or has some sort of "gimmick" like archery does 10 times more damage on a critical hit.

20 to 30:

Mid game, solid damage and should be able to hurt most enemies, with the right type of levels, skills and martial art( in case of melee) could be able to scale into late game if the correct damage type is applied

30 - 50:

Late game, barring the really strong enemies should be able to quickly take down most enemies, targeting weakness can be lethal damage

50 + :

That is the role of specialization, can get some really powerful stuff like high explosives, .50 caliber, rockets, heavy sledgehammer

If you can hit something in these damage ranges only the strongest stuff will not be pulped on death however the stuff if usually difficult to hit.

Also is in the tier of destroying things like walls and terrain.

Conditional tier :

Just placing here for stuff that is unusual but is really strong for what it specialises in

• Insecticide spray is strong against wasps and dermatiks with an added bonus the chemicals cannot be dodged

• Flashbangs disorientate ( blind status) things with eyes

• Fire is strong to most things and some mutants and animals are scared of it

• Emp ( situational) and electricity stuns = free hits

• Acid is almost like a less destructive fire, but has more things immune to it

Within that idea, that I admit there are weapons stronger than others but overall considering how many weapons there are I think the weapon balance is good all things considered.

If I recall grenades also ignore armour and like a shotgun do damage per fragment so it can do a lot of damage.

I just remembered if you ever find a slime pit, it is a great place to test noise as the slimes hear a lot better than it sees and because of its huge numbers it is looks almost like a graph when it moves towards sound