Crossbow Realism Rehash?

[Morrolan]

To put it pointedly, not even my 1 hour merchant is going to be afraid of someone with a crossbow.

If you're afraid of someone with a crossbow, that means you saw them.

They have already made the first mistake.

[Malken]

My last merchant made it a career goal to just make and sell the best crossbows ever, I think he was walking around with 5-6 loaded crossbows hanging all over him at all times, too

He never managed to sell -1- crossbow, though ;p

[hyzhenhok]

Also crossbows already have a stronger pull that requires less strength to pull so that translates to a slight bit more damage, and lets not forget you can still pull bows that are above your strength in exchange for stamina cost anyways.

If you watch the link Fantasy Writer provides, the guy states that to equal the longbow's strength, you would need triple the test weight, at around 350 lbs. or so.  The only crossbows capable, he says, is a goat's foot loaded (is that correct?) or a windlass.  Soo ...  Not really.

That's nice. And true but we are talking about the game here that may or may not be coded differently.

And we are talking about potential changes to that game. It just so happens that the idea of making crossbows lower power but higher accuracy than bows is the happy intersection of increased realism and various gameplay/playability benefits.

Re: crossbows with macros being as fast as bows, that's something that should probably change. A handy nerf to go alongside the buffs we are suggesting for crossbows.

[Bacon]

It should be:

Range Advantage: Bow
Max Damage Advantage: Bow


Accuracy Advantage: Crossbow
Minimum Damage Advantage: Crossbow


At least that's what I think. Give a crossbow higher minimum damage, a cap on max damage, and a boost to hit with it (maybe enough that even those without the archery skill have a chance to hit with it though I'm not entirely sure about that). Bows have much longer range and a higher potential maximum damage. Even though someone stated otherwise, my perception is also that there needs to be more craftable bolts for those with fletchery. Maybe make bolts much cheaper than arrows too, though the average crossbow would be more expensive than the average bow.

[Kismetic]

No, no, you've got it all wrong.  The arrow does the damage, the bow is just a 1d4 bludgeoning tool.

[Bacon]

You know what I mean. Lol.

[roughneck]

I always wonder about the reliability of a trigger mechanism made without metal.  Small pieces made out of bone or wood might snap under the tension put on them by the crossbow's string, at least it seems to me.

Armageddon technology is a funny mix of medieval and stone age.  Crossbows seem to tip the balance towards medieval.

I wish we could trade crossbows for atlatl, I think that fits way better.  I believe staff have determined the opposite in the past, however.

[armandhammer]

Atlatl? Why, that would get mepeople started talking about throwing farther than one room! That's just absurd, isn't it?

Wait, would atlatl use fall under 'throw' or 'archery'? I don't even know.

[Maso]

Atlatl? Why, that would get mepeople started talking about throwing farther than one room! That's just absurd, isn't it?

Wait, would atlatl use fall under 'throw' or 'archery'? I don't even know.

Totally 'throw'

[jstorrie]

I've been thinking about this all week. I have an alternative I'd like to suggest.

I don't think tinkering with to-hit and damage values for realism's sake is necessary, given that we already suspend our disbelief about 3-league bows. Subtle changes won't differentiate crossbows enough to encourage their use anyway. Instead I propose we make crossbows fundamentally different, in three ways:

1. Allow hand crossbows to be sheathed/drawn on belts. This would make them VERY convenient as quick little pew-pew guns. You could pre-load with a poisoned bolt and have it as a cool backup weapon.

2. Set all heavy crossbows as 2h bludgeoning weapons with modest damage, so you could bash people with the stock. This would make crossbows much more reasonable as 'infantry' weapons. You could be marching with your crossbow out without that being such a liability. This would make crossbows more of an 'all-around' or 'shock trooper' weapon. The militias and mercenaries would use them more while in groups, etc.

3. Set all longbows and heavy crossbows to be un-fireable while mounted. This would give shortbows and light crossbows a niche as well, rather than them just being chump weapons. Longbows from horseback never made any sense anyway.

This would give you three 'classes' of bow basically - hand, light, and heavy - in addition to slings and blow darts.

[jstorrie]

If bows (not crossbows) ARE currently coded as bludgeoning weapons too, I think that ability should be stripped from them. Crossbows only.

[Bacon]

There are longbows that are shot from horseback in RL.

[jstorrie]

While it is theoretically possible to shoot a longbow while mounted, I think it's significant that basically no armed forces in human history did this. Mounted riders in all human cultures historically used asymmetric or recurve bows, not longbows.

[Armaddict]

    The yumi (longbow), reflected in the art of kyūjutsu (lit. the skill of the bow) was a major weapon of the Japanese military. Its usage declined with the introduction of the tanegashima (Japanese matchlock) during the Sengoku period, but the skill was still practiced at least for sport.[34] The yumi, an asymmetric composite bow made from bamboo, wood, rattan and leather, had an effective range of 50 meters (about 164 feet) or 100 meters (328 feet) if accuracy was not an issue. On foot, it was usually used behind a tate (手盾), a large, mobile wooden shield, but the yumi could also be used from horseback because of its asymmetric shape. The practice of shooting from horseback became a Shinto ceremony known as yabusame (流鏑馬).[35]

A longbow.  But a modified one.

[jstorrie]

Asymmetric bows are generally not considered 'longbows' when we're talking actual weapon classification - that translation is imprecise.

The Zalanthan equivalent would probably be one of the various composite warbows.

[FantasyWriter]

1. Allow hand crossbows to be sheathed/drawn on belts. This would make them VERY convenient as quick little pew-pew guns. You could pre-load with a poisoned bolt and have it as a cool backup weapon.

2. Set all heavy crossbows as 2h bludgeoning weapons with modest damage, so you could bash people with the stock. This would make crossbows much more reasonable as 'infantry' weapons. You could be marching with your crossbow out without that being such a liability. This would make crossbows more of an 'all-around' or 'shock trooper' weapon. The militias and mercenaries would use them more while in groups, etc.

Those are two of the coolest ideas in this thread so far.

[Armaddict]

That is it's classification, is a longbow.  If you want to argue this moot point, you can also notice that not all 'longbows' in game, when described, actually fully fit the real world classification of 'longbows'. (Edit:  This really is a moot point, my point is just that modifications are common, and sometimes the classification is a bit more tricky, and so this particular code could be simple, or could be made very complex, depending on the vision of the coder.  Really not my main concern since I'm mostly in agreement, I'm just nitpicky.)

Regardless, I agree with most of your points, though I'd say a heavy crossbow, while it should be bludgeoning, should come with hefty defensive penalties.  You're able to defend yourself, but I don't want a vanguard of crossbowmen beating people down then shooting bolts into their back.  Which is how this would be with a few 20+ day warriors with crossbows.  Dat parry too stronk.

I've wanted crossbows to be more used for a loooong time.  Along with spears.  Heh.

[jstorrie]

Yeah, I envisioned light crossbows as being very awkward and very low-damage bludgeoning weapons, and heavy crossbows as being moderately awkward and comparable in damage to a one-handed club or mace, with both being two-handed weapons.

The way I was thinking when I was mulling this over at work the other day - I was going to put it in a submission via request tool, but I'm lazy, so maybe you guys can help 'check my work' before I do so - is that in order to encourage their use, each type of weapon should have a niche. I wanted to fit them all in a nice table but I haven't been able to massage the concept that way yet. But here's sort of where I'm at. I list 'premium options' as qualities that could be given to either expensive models, or mastercrafts - mastercrafts might even get more than one of the bonuses?

bows in general
Pros: higher rate of fire (thanks to not needing to be loaded), generally greater range
Cons: vulnerability to melee

light bows (ie, shortbows): generally range 1 (next-room-over)
Pros: cheap, can be used mounted
Cons: low damage
Premium options (ie, composite shortbows, medium/flatbows, recurve shortbows, or rare materials): range 2, and/or higher damage

heavy bows (ie, longbows): generally range 2
Pros: cheapest range 2 option
Cons: not usable mounted
Premium options (ie, composite/recurve/asymmetric designs, or rare materials): range 3, and/or higher damage, and/or usable mounted

crossbows in general (except hand-crossbows)
Pros: can be used as impromptu melee weapons; can be pre-loaded
Cons: lower rate-of-fire (due to loading)

light crossbows: generally range 1
Pros: cheaper and lighter than heavy crossbows, maybe usable mounted?
Cons: lower melee damage than heavy crossbows, lower range than heavy crossbows, more likely to break in melee
Premium options: range 2, and/or higher melee damage or lower melee penalty (spike-ended stocks or whatever)

heavy crossbows: generally range 2
Pros: best for bashin', high damage
Cons: probably not usable mounted? high cost, low rate of fire
Premium options: big damage shots, melee enhancements (bayonets or spikes or what-have-you - what's more Zalanthan than a bow with tusks?); I don't think range 3 is appropriate as I think that should be specific to premium longbows/heavy bows

miscellaneous archery weapons
Pros: straight up style, unique abilities
Cons: narrow utility, short range, lower rate of fire (must be loaded)

blowguns: range 0 (same-room)
Pros: stealthy, good for delivering poison, easily concealable, cheap
Cons: super short range, super low damage, might actually be governed by the throwing skill for all I know
Premium options: maybe none, I don't know how much you can improve on 'tube that you blow in'

light slings (ie, slingshots): range 0 (same-room)
Pros: ultra cheap, ammo is free, bludgeoning damage
Cons: ammo is heavy, very short range, very low damage
Premium options: range 1

heavy slings, (ie, actual slings): range 1
Pros: as above
Cons: ammo is heavy
Premium options: range 2

hand crossbows: range 0 (same-room)
Pros: one-handed (so you can have an off-hand weapon for melee), concealable, can be sheathed/drawn from belts, can be pre-loaded
Cons: low damage, very expensive, low range
Premium options: range 1, or minor melee ability (come on, I know someone will mastercraft one with a reinforced grip so we can pistol-whip people)

I will say straight up that my suggestions here have much more to do with playability and with allowing us to do Cool Shit than with realism. But I think that's a good trade to make. But in general I think it would be cool to push bows as the pure long-range weapons, crossbows as the more medium/versatile weapons, and then to have some consistency in what pros and cons are granted to the 'light' and 'heavy' types of each, as well as to the 'cheap' and 'expensive' types of those.

While I'm on the subject, I think that 'pull quiver' should work with crossbows such that it will draw a bolt and load it (or even draw a bullet/stone and load a sling/slingshot!) Anyone who uses crossbows already just scripts or stacks those commands anyway. Automate it and then adjust the delay on loading, I say.

If you guys have suggestions please share them with me and I will adjust my eventual idea submission accordingly! I'm shying away from damage/to-hit ratios since I worry that going in and adjusting all the damage and to-hit numbers of all the ranged weapons in the database might take an unreasonable amount of staff time.

[Qzzrbl]

Another thing to consider (if we're drawing real-world parallels) is that mounted archery was typically from horseback-- and it never really gained popularity until stirrups did. I'm not saying that it'd be impossible to fire accurately from the back of a dinosaur, but maybe it can be taken into consideration that some mounts are better suited than others to archer from with big honkin' longbows.

[jstorrie]

I'm not sure how we'd handle that, codedly. It is worth noting that we already suspend our disbelief re: charge and trample in the absence of stirrups. I mean, we ride around on dinosaurs and shit. But in general I think we should just say you just can't use a big honking longbow while mounted, and if you want to fire a big bow from atop your mount you need an expensive and/or mastercrafted composite/recurve bow or equivalent.

[RogueGunslinger]

I love all of that jstorrie. Yes please.

[Maso]

I always assumed larger beasts were ridden with big mounted seat type saddles...more like you have on elephants than horses. And then for slimmer animals, like erdlus perhaps, who says we don't have stirrups? I might have even seen them in game.

Anyway, you're on a big mounted harnessed seat type thing on top of an inix...you can probably stand up on the saddle to shoot a longbow tbh...considering the size of them.

[Qzzrbl]

I always assumed larger beasts were ridden with big mounted seat type saddles...more like you have on elephants than horses. And then for slimmer animals, like erdlus perhaps, who says we don't have stirrups? I might have even seen them in game.

Anyway, you're on a big mounted harnessed seat type thing on top of an inix...you can probably stand up on the saddle to shoot a longbow tbh...considering the size of them.

Ever watch someoe ride an elephant with one of those? Shit wobbles -so much-    x-x;;

[Maso]

I have ridden elephants...on those a few times...and also on the necks...also camels and horses....horses are probably the least even, elephants are slowest and easier to slide into rhythm with. Plus...people stop to shoot right?

Also:



That dude has stirrups.

[Bacon]

I was going to say, I'm pretty sure I've seen saddle items in game with stirrups and mounts with saddles included in the descriptions that also have stirrups.