Fallout Weapons Guide: Melee Weapons
by Mazca

Knife
You can get this right from the start - there's one on the body next to the starting point. It's better than your bare fists for killing rats, but that's about where it's use ends.

Combat Knife
This is a good improvement on the Knife - doing twice as much damage. However, it's still pretty ineffective as weapons go, and should only be used as a last resort.

Sledgehammer
This is a pretty effective weapon. It does 10-20 damage (which isn't that great) but the advantage is that it knocks the enemy to the floor and back about 5 hexes. This makes it extremely useful against slow-moving enemies like Mole Rats and Ghouls - you can knock them back further than they can move in one turn, so they can never get close enough to hit you. It's my usual melee weapon of choice until I can get a Super Sledgehammer

Ripper Chain-Knife and Cattle Prod
While they look different, both of these weapons use up a small power cell per use and do 20-50 damage per hit. They are pretty good melee weapons but require ammo to use - the ammo would be put to better use in a power-fist or plasma pistol. They are expensive and aren't really worth it.

Power Fist
This does usually around 20-35 damage to most targets. It's main advantage is the fact that it uses an absurdly low number of APs - either 2 or 3 depending on whether you have the 'fast shot' trait. If you have a character with 9 or 10 agility and fast shot, you can hit someone an astonishing five times per turn with this weapon, which is enough to kill most anything apart from Deathclaws and the two 'boss' characters near the end. It uses

Super Sledgehammer
The most powerful melee weapon in the game, doing nearly as much damage as a plasma rifle (usually 35-60 damage). It knocks the target back a good 6-10 paces and is very, very effective while not using any ammo. Get it as soon as possible.