Medium weapons are one-handed swords, axes, spears, or other obvious implements of war. While they can’t be effectively concealed in anything smaller than an enveloping cloak or coat, they’re also more damaging to an unfortunate victim struck by them, albeit they’re somewhat less nimble when the wielder needs to strike at unprotected flesh. Spears and similar aerodynamic weapons can be thrown up to 30 meters.
An advanced weapon has been given a monoblade edge, kinetic sheathing, thermal wires, a chainsaw blade, or some other TL4 touch.
Advanced weapons can ignore primitive plate and hide protections.Shock Damage
Shock damage represents the inevitable cuts, bruises, exhaustion, and terror of close combat.
Shock damage is only inflicted on a melee target if the hit roll fails, and it only applies if the target has an AC equal or less than that listed for the Shock.
Shock damage always includes the wielder’s attribute modifier and any bonus damage granted by weapon mods, foci, advanced tech, or other damage bonuses. An actual hit with a weapon never does less damage than Shock would otherwise inflict; if the user somehow rolls less damage, use the Shock damage instead.
Thus, if you had a Strength score of 14 and were swinging an oversized alien battle axe at a target with AC 13, you would inflict 3 points of damage on a miss; 2 from the weapon’s Shock, plus 1 from your Strength modifier. If you hit, you’d do at least 3 points.