If you craft an anvil you unlock some weapons, the most powerfull ones are the "poker"(a spear) and the "smasher"(a warhammer), they have the same attack power, and the poker has a better swing speed, but the smasher needs 20 iron while the poker needs 10, is it because the smasher is better in any way or is it for no reason?
Starbound – Smasher or Poker
starbound
Related Solutions
On the Starbound forums there are several complaints about the lack of this very feature. See a couple here and here (note the forums seem under a lot of stress at this time so you may have to reload a couple times).
It appears that as of this time in Beta Stage 1 - Progenitor on 12/7/13 there is no pause feature, but I was not able to find an official developer response to this.
UPDATE (5/11/14): It appears that this has still not been implemented in the game, but I looked for a work-around when a comment was made. This link led me to a suggestion that you always keep a chair around. Apparently you do not get hungry while you are sitting (or apparently sleeping) so you can wall yourself in and just take a seat. I put this to the test and it seems to work.
I took this picture before going to lunch and ate up to full at 12:29PM (Sorry if that's not readable). I made lunch for myself and ate and came back to see if my little Stitch was still doing alright. I clicked the Alt key to see how he was doing at 1:05pm and:
Still full. I left him a fire so as not to freeze to death, but with this chair and a few blocks I feel this could suffice for a pause-like feature. You might also consider carrying a bed with you so you can not only not starve, but also heal.
The map generates as you explore it by rules set by the game (same locations always look the same in same version of the game). The whole planet is not generated at once, but in smaller chunks. This can be seen if the server can't keep up with your exploration.
If you create a new character, that same planet, which previously had naked merchants, will continue to have naked merchants. You can fix it by regenerating your universe by deleting the universe folder.
Best Answer
Weapons are all up to preference.
I've found that swing speed doesn't matter much as timing your attacks is more helpful than just spamming attacks.As for the spear vs. warhammer, the warhammer would be easier to hit with since it does an overhead swing, whereas the spear does a forward thrust.
Another thing to look at when comparing weapons is armor penetration, as that seems to be more important than straight damage.