I've done a fair amount of weapon testing, and unfortunately a lot of half-truths get repeated endlessly. For one thing, whips are almost but not quite entirely unlike lightsabers.
They're still better than they should be: the game calculates the impact of ~1kg of rigid metal moving at supersonic speeds, rather than just a bullet-like tip accelerated by the rest.
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Despite the modeling quirk, whips aren't something to wield in numbers in the unmodded game. Their main advantage is that they almost ignore armour, and that they can be decent at impairing (not killing) tough material beasties. Against softer targets, a good blade will perform better; whips are equalisers rather than the ultimate weapon.
Lashers are barely favoured against naked miners, but they remain a threat to candy-clad champions who laugh at almost everyone else.
Morningstars concentrate a lot of force (decent size, high velocity) in a very small point. As such, they penetrate steel armour quite handily regardless of their own material and are more lethal than blunt weapons despite not penetrating very far.
Very dangerous to our dwarves, and if we need dedicated can openers they're worth using over hammers, maces and even whips.
Scourges have the same contact area and velocity, but are smaller and penetrate even less deeply. They're not very lethal but capable of causing grievous wounds through armour... and very overrated as a consequence (an instakilled dwarf may be written off as bad luck, one missing all the small bits hammers it home that the weapon defeats our armour consistently).
Daggers hedge their bets quite successfully: The slashes are weak but any slash is an asset against unarmoured civilians. Their extremely fine stabs get through most armour despite not having much force behind them, and twice the penetration depth of morningstars means that they may actually hit something important.
Long swords do the same for the other end and would be great weapons for dwarves above average size: wide slashes to utterly butcher soft targets, respectable stabs to kill harder targets that axes would struggle with. The only problem is that blades with a large contact area really require a decent weapon material to shine.
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The others aren't terribly interesting: Scimitars are an almost exact short sword clone, flails suck (large contact area makes them relatively poor can openers and blunt weapons are outclassed for everything else) and even if our dwarves can wield the big stuff, it's not worth giving up a shield.