Archery redesign?

Game Talk The Drawing Board
41

I think different draw weight string.
With each bow having a maximum weight string to it.
E.g. Self bow from 5lb to 30lb
Long Bow, 30lb to 60lb
The type of bow should also affect accuracy slightly with self bows being the least accurate and compound bows with a sight being the most accurate (as they were mechanically manufactured).
You should not be able to change the draw weight on a compound bow (unless different cogs are added, then you can replace the cogs and the string)

Strength needed would then be based upon draw weight, with each bow allowing a bit more maximum weight. Perhaps as your skill increases, the strength needed would be reduced. (I use bows, they become much easier to use with practice as you get the technique right) e.g. 1 less strength every 2 levels.

For a person who likes using bows. I find the current system very simple, and lacking a lot more than guns.

42

Basically that’s what’s happening. Instead of overdraw you can consider that what’s listed as a 40lb bow is a 60lb one which 40 lb is the minimum you can draw out of it. The more strenght you have, up to the maximum, will mean the more you reach into the potential of the max poundage of the bow. It is a bit backward, but it has to work for gameplay before anything else.

Bows that i have in plan will definetly have a huge focus on dispersion, but not in a way you might think, as most of it will come out of skill instead of gear. Though you are right, compound bows, uncraftable ones, i do plan on having them with a reduced dispersion for the same str req as a recurve. Seriously, considering the same style of bowshooting, you will get the same performance out of any bows, poundage-corresponding.

Again, for gameplay considerents, it will be way too involved and difficult to explain to the player why less strenght is used now that they have leveled up, and i find the degree of how it affects pulling back the bowstring to be tiny enough to not matter. Sure you can pull a 40lb bow easier now than six months ago, but you can’t say that it requires ‘significantly’ less strenght than before. If 8 is average jock strenght, and 10 is trained soldier with say 12 being mostly a body-builder, you can’t say you decrease a bow from requirement 12 to 8 due to your newfound bow-firing skills. You may tire less, but that’s about the real extent of it.

43

[quote=“Cosmitz, post:42, topic:5611”]Basically that’s what’s happening. Instead of overdraw you can consider that what’s listed as a 40lb bow is a 60lb one which 40 lb is the minimum you can draw out of it. The more strenght you have, up to the maximum, will mean the more you reach into the potential of the max poundage of the bow. It is a bit backward, but it has to work for gameplay before anything else.

Bows that i have in plan will definetly have a huge focus on dispersion, but not in a way you might think, as most of it will come out of skill instead of gear. Though you are right, compound bows, uncraftable ones, i do plan on having them with a reduced dispersion for the same str req as a recurve. Seriously, considering the same style of bowshooting, you will get the same performance out of any bows, poundage-corresponding.

Again, for gameplay considerents, it will be way too involved and difficult to explain to the player why less strenght is used now that they have leveled up, and i find the degree of how it affects pulling back the bowstring to be tiny enough to not matter. Sure you can pull a 40lb bow easier now than six months ago, but you can’t say that it requires ‘significantly’ less strenght than before. If 8 is average jock strenght, and 10 is trained soldier with say 12 being mostly a body-builder, you can’t say you decrease a bow from requirement 12 to 8 due to your newfound bow-firing skills. You may tire less, but that’s about the real extent of it.[/quote]

Keep in mind that archery is a sustainable ranged skill, so there’s no need to make crafting arrows precisely realistic. For example, we’re content to have the same “steel frame” stand in for car doors, structure, trunks, flooring, and so on (and be freely convertible between those, so I can take the trunk from a car and make it the frame of a bicycle).

As for points/chargen translation: 8 is human average; 10-12 is fit-to-athletic, 14 is definite bodybuilder, and more than that indicates someone who devoted their life to muscle-building. This breaks down once mutations and augs start happening, but that’s how I interpret chargen values. I’d say a high-school or college jock is 10-11 ST. Military might be 12-14.

If you make taking an archery shot need more than 100 moves (the whole turn), the player needs to know that. I’d want to be able to hold a shot drawn and ready to release (realistic or not) for ambushes or other such “expecting a target shortly” situations.

Damage: living critters would probably take somewhat worse punishment from arrow wounds than zeds, FWIW. This doesn’t mean that arrows ought to instakill living creatures or be ineffective against zeds, but I could accept needing two or three more shots to kill the zombear over the bear. (Once bleed damage is a thing for all critters, that ought to accomplish the desired effect, I think: living critters bleed out, zeds not so much.)

44

[quote=“KA101, post:43, topic:5611”]Keep in mind that archery is a sustainable ranged skill, so there’s no need to make crafting arrows precisely realistic. For example, we’re content to have the same “steel frame” stand in for car doors, structure, trunks, flooring, and so on (and be freely convertible between those, so I can take the trunk from a car and make it the frame of a bicycle).

If you make taking an archery shot need more than 100 moves (the whole turn), the player needs to know that. I’d want to be able to hold a shot drawn and ready to release (realistic or not) for ambushes or other such “expecting a target shortly” situations.

Damage: living critters would probably take somewhat worse punishment from arrow wounds than zeds, FWIW. This doesn’t mean that arrows ought to instakill living creatures or be ineffective against zeds, but I could accept needing two or three more shots to kill the zombear over the bear. (Once bleed damage is a thing for all critters, that ought to accomplish the desired effect, I think: living critters bleed out, zeds not so much.)[/quote]

Interesting points. I think my problem with highish damage is that archery is always going to have infinite ammo and be completely silent - two things that give it a HUGE boost over any other type of attacks (especially as ammo becomes a bit more rare/balanced).

Giving it less of an effect against zombies is a very good way of handling this, and makes a lot of sense. Similarly, I think the player should definitely need to take a whole turn to load and another to shoot. Perhaps this could be done in one keypress with ‘f’ but reloading could keep an arrow notched and be ready to be shot in half the time.
As in, I don’t think there’s need for anything to do different actions for loading, drawing and shooting, it can just be loaded and shot, with each taking 50/50 - I think it’d be far too complicated otherwise for timing

45

I could actually see making bows cause a small amount of noise, as bows in RL aren’t TOTALLY silent. This would also give us a reason to add string silencers in-game.

46

Although I agree they’re not totally silent, I think we can stretch it to mean that it’d make so little noise that zombies/enemies wouldn’t bother checking it out.

47

[quote=“Binky, post:44, topic:5611”]Interesting points. I think my problem with highish damage is that archery is always going to have infinite ammo and be completely silent - two things that give it a HUGE boost over any other type of attacks (especially as ammo becomes a bit more rare/balanced).

Giving it less of an effect against zombies is a very good way of handling this, and makes a lot of sense. Similarly, I think the player should definitely need to take a whole turn to load and another to shoot. Perhaps this could be done in one keypress with ‘f’ but reloading could keep an arrow notched and be ready to be shot in half the time.
As in, I don’t think there’s need for anything to do different actions for loading, drawing and shooting, it can just be loaded and shot, with each taking 50/50 - I think it’d be far too complicated otherwise for timing[/quote]

The issue with ‘infinite’ ammo is one i know of. As mentioned, i’d want ‘good’ arrows to be extremely hard to make. Sure you could spend a week cutting down 2by4s to get a shaft out of it, then make a proper arrow out of it by finding some real fletching materials like feathers and plastic, that alone another hard thing to make, and you end up with one good arrow, or you can just use whatever and make ‘shitty’ arrows that do almost nothing. Still have yet to look in the crafting system, but in the end, i want those four great arrows that you have for you to treasure them.
Arrows in a post-apoc situation are NOT consumables, and they shouldn’t be. Sure raiding a sports shop might net you some (for the sake of gameplay, just a few, maybe 10 a quiver), but shoot them willy-nilly and not bother tracking them down and you might find yourself up a creek of zombies without a paddle… of arrows.

As for pull-back and use, that will require serious coding which i’m not sure i can do. Etiher way, you’d be able to hold it for three movement turns or something of the like. Don’t know how much would be balanced or how it would look like in-code. As said, i still want shooting to happen after the critters move, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. Or something like that. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyhows, after i made stupid inquiry in a message to kevin (sorry about that), and a weekend of shooting guns (my pistol-shooting skills are improving, irl), got back on track to coding.
First thing i did, make archery a lot more dependant on skill.

// Measured in quarter-degrees. // Up to 0.75 degrees for each skill point < 8. if (weapon_skill_level < 8) { dispersion += rng(0, 3 * (8 - weapon_skill_level)); } // Up to 0.25 deg per each skill point < 9. //Make bow double-use the archery skill, great increase in efficiency as it moves on if (weapon->has_flag("BOW") && weapon_skill_level < 9) {dispersion += rng(0, 2 * (9 - weapon_skill_level)); } if (skillLevel("gun") < 9) { dispersion += rng(0, 9 - skillLevel("gun")); }

The game checks if generally the weaponskill is under 8, if so, it adds dispersion, then i made it check if the weapon is a bow and if the skill is under 9 again (high ceiling), if so it adds a decent truckload of dispersion, 20 max at 0 skill. Numbers can be tweaked, but the broad stroke of a character really having trouble hitting things with a bow is in. It will also become easier as he gains skill levels.

Also modified the reload bonus due to skill to something less:

//Tweaked perfect-skill 9 bow reload bonus to 0, else a minimal addition. In rounding out, a bow should be shot just a third or so faster with great skill. if (p.skillLevel("archery") > 9) time = 0; else time = (90 - 10 * p.skillLevel("archery"));

Around a third, maybe a fourth of the time to shoot a bow should be a max increase of your posture in order to shoot that bow faster. So a 400 reload bow at first will be 500, with the max lowering it to 400. For the moment it’s still in limbo, will see after an extended gameplay testrun.

Had a bit of an initial test, my options really opened up fast. With my testbow 40lb and fletched wooden arrows, it was a fun little romp. I could run around like a headless chicken and shoot at max range, for petty results and wasting a lot of arrows, or i realised that my firing took a zombie about three tiles to move, and started choosing my shots when he’s 4 tiles away. I quartered my number of shots fired and he went down. Much more fun and interesting and was a challenge at skill level 0 in both archery and marksmanship.

Sadly, long-range the results failed to transform. Missing was fine, the problem i’m having is nailing down keeping a consistent damage. It appears that somewhere the damage is decreased over range, and that needs to stop in case of bows. Looked over the code in both ranged.cpp and damage.cpp and i can’t find a relation. Maximum i found was a LONG_RANGE thing for rifles but i don’t think that applies. I know damage is related to how well a shot your peformed, which might be related to dispersion, but if that’s the case, i see little way around it minus a huge retooling.

I can keep the dispersion, but i need the bow to do the same damage potential pretty much in short range as in long. Will see tomorrow, but i’d really like a bit of help on this from fellow modders.

48

Fantastic! that all sounds and looks great. I think the problem will be making sure that arrows are rare enough - DDA doesn’t seem to do rarity well, and it’ll need to be monitored closely to make sure that we don’t end up with arrow madness. Dispersion helps a lot, especially with it being so tied to skill.

However, I’m not sure about the being able to ‘hold it for three’ (or any set number of turns) - I imagine that’d just mean a lot of repetitive pressing of the holding button whenever you’re around stuff, and frustration if you forget/your char. decides to stop holding the turn before something jumps out. I’d much rather have it like a one bullet gun which needs to be reloaded after each shot. Sure, it’s not as realistic, but I think any other way would add too much tedium.

I’m not sure if I can help much, but I’m sure it shouldn’t be too tricky to turn off damage going down by range. I actually remember a lab or drawing board topic on a similar thing, so it might be worth searching around for how that was fixed (if it was).

Keep up the good work!

49

regarding “hold your aim” with bows, I think my aiming system would provide a framework for that, aiming becomes a persistent activity, so holding your shot would naturally fall out of it.
regarding damage, while arrows are more aerodynamic than bullets, it still seems a bit odd to say there’d be no dropoff of damage with range.

50
regarding damage, while arrows are more aerodynamic than bullets, it still seems a bit odd to say there'd be no dropoff of damage with range.

The damage-downscaling over range is true, and i don’t want it removed, but i do want it limited. It’s a tricky thing, while for bullets the chance of grazing is actually feasible and can explain low damage rolls since a bullet can still do damage even if it grazed your cheek, for arrows grazing should not really exist since unless a direct hit, the damage done should not really be anything measurable. I’d like a very clear case of hit or miss. The issue i’m having is the ‘2 damage’ rolls which i think happens exactly due to some damage dropoff, which seems confirmed by the LONG_RANGE tag and the function existence that minimises this for ranges over 10 for rifles.

If an bow/arrow can do a combined 24 damage, i’d like that 24 damage to be 24 damage (plus/minus rng and crits) up until the last third of the arrow’s flight.

I think the problem will be making sure that arrows are rare enough - DDA doesn't seem to do rarity well

Work in progress. Will see.

In any case, glad to see an ‘aiming’ system is being worked on. Will help out with bows immensely to cover the current issues.

51

I’m not thrilled about making arrows more rare without also making them less breakable. As it stands, you can lose a LOT of arrows in target practice if you don’t do it properly, and making decent arrows take weeks by default is out of the question. Default DDA-time is compressed to 1 day ~ 1 week of calendar time.

Although I agree they’re not totally silent, I think we can stretch it to mean that it’d make so little noise that zombies/enemies wouldn’t bother checking it out.[/quote]

Maybe noise 4 or 5? You’d only hear that if you’re already within short range; it’s quieter than a default melee attack (6 or 8, IIRC) but louder than Ninjutsu.

52

Yeah, I’d imagine good arrows would have a low mulch rate, although for target practice it’d make sense for the player to use rubbish arrows and we should expect them to be able to make mental leap (good arrows = save, bad arrows = waste). All in all though, ammo needs to be a lot more rare.

Maybe noise 4 or 5? You'd only hear that if you're already within short range; it's quieter than a default melee attack (6 or 8, IIRC) but louder than Ninjutsu.
That makes a lot of sense.
53

bows should make a noticeable amount of noise, they’re definitely not silent unless you take special measures to make them so.
for literal target practice we should probably add targets, they could catch the arrows for a much lower break rate.

54

Hi,

I still think Archery damage needs a buff - but I understand a lot of the concerns. I like the idea of ‘good’ quality arrows doing more damage and rubbish ones being poor. Seems balanced and is pretty close to real life as I understand it was before modern tech made great arrows plentiful (apparently in ye olde days a of effort went into crafting great arrows - more than the bows themselves - and fine and accurate arrows were treasured).

So I agree that good arrows should be rather rare and damaging. I think they should also be more durable (if only to reflect the care you might take when using them).

So - I propose a percentage chance of a user created arrow being high quality, the chance going up with the skill of the maker and possibly influenced by gear (eg. fletching jigs, straightness measuring tools etc). All Modern/PreCataclysm arrows should automatically be high quality. Maybe even change Carbon to just ‘Modern’ an/dor ‘High Quality’ as a description to reflect a single or dual special arrow type that covers Carbon, Aluminium and very good arrows.

Also allow a string crafting stream off survival and fabrication (allowing string to be made from threads or plants (e.g. nettle) or sinew) and allow strings to break (rarely). Replacing a compound string needs a string and a bowpress (portable or fixed in place), other bows you just need a string.

So a revised arrow sequencing chart -

Improvised Arrow (let’s forget about the point entirely) (low damage, not so accurate at range, good for practice, smaller animals and point blank shots, fragile) (Can be made from wood, plastic, or metal with duct tape, plastic, or feathers for crating material, also put in glue or pine resin as a requirment if you want to get fancy) (matches up nicely with Improvised Bow in descriptive terms)
High Quality Arrow (accurate, does a lot of damage, not particularly fragile) (Created from Survival stream - needs wood - sapling/withy/dowel for preference if introduced (see below) - and feathers for shaft, plus glue or pine resin)
Modern Arrow (accurate, does a lot of damage, robust) (Created from Fabrication stream - needs wood or metal and feathers or plastic to make, plus glue)
(Both High Qual and Modern do comparable damage?)

(And that is an extra thing you could put in crafting - glue from animals, fish, or trees (resin))

I’d suggest any arrows found spawned in a shop (or house) should be ‘high quality’ or ‘Modern’ if possible. Basically you assume preCataclysm crafting unless made by player.

At risk of suggesting too much detail - I’d suggest allowing player to harvest/bushes and Trees for arrow shafting (low percentage of shafts per tree) - in reality it would be more likely to use a sapling or withy for arrow shafts. Getting a good one from 2by4 would be very hard to do - if you got it, it would be low quality. In real life Dowels can be used, as a poorish arrow shaft. For game purposes, maybe just allow them to be used.

A person with high construction type skills could even get into Coppicing to produce wood shafts (and straight wood for other projects too). That would be a cool addition to a cabin in the woods type of hideout :). Be slow to produce coppiced wood though, if kept to a real life timeframe!

Also as a side-note - in real life you usually don’t shoot wooden shafts out of compound bows, less the arrow fail horribly (ie break or shatter) possibly breaking the bow (equivalent to a dry fire) or hurting the user. I know some people do use lighter/older-style compounds with wood arrows but it is not recommended. I’d say that’s safe to ignore ingame though. Just let compounds shoot wooden arrows.

As for Bows making noise - fair enough - have them make a bit, they can be a little noisy if not fitted with silencers and maybe some leather or velcro on bit of the wood where the string can slap. That also lets you put silencing mods in game, as previously suggested.

As for strength requirements for bows - 20-30 pounds should be a 6 strength requirement, 30-40 should be 7, 50-60 should be an 8 strength requirement (assuming 8 is ‘average’), 70-80 should be 10, and if you are going higher than that (rare in modern world, common in medieval times for warbows) then 80-100 should be 12 and 100+ should be 14. Compounds should be a flat 8 requirement (they do much of the work for you).

55

I do like that. But for it to work, we need more birds in the game so we can get feathers more easily.

I do like the jigs. But they should be a requirement for high-quality arrows.

Arrow tips still need be there though. I think the tips should be Wood<Bone<Stone<Metal With 3 types of heads, broad (blunt), Serrated (cutting) and Bodkin (piercing, if/when separated from cutting damage). There should be a slight increase between Wood and Stone and a large increase with metal. A generic cutting item would be needed for wood and bone. A hammer would be needed for stone. And a hacksaw would be needed for metal. The head would need to be attached with glue/cord/string.

You should be able to fire unfletched arrows, but these should be horribly inaccurate.

I, like most people who use bows in DDA want to become more sustainable, and pine resin as well as other products will help a lot with that.

56

Yo! I had to make an account just for this.

While I agree with the idea of the OP for the most part, there are a few points I would like to make.
(Understand that, while I did read everything in this thread, I may have either missed or accidentally brushed over some things, so if I repeat what others have said, I apologize.)

Point 1: Fire rate
Keep in mind that there are numerous examples of blinding fast firerate being the norm for Archers.
The Apache Native Americans were known the world over for their capability to get off accurate deadly shots every 3 seconds using 45# bows… at 50 yards (musket range, mind. Note also that they were being compared to muskets.).
A certain Russian (Cossack, I think) style was known for 1 shot every second, but individually suffered from inaccuracy out past 5 to 10 yards… hey, it was meant for mass volley fire.

Point 2: Accuracy/Range
An example from Japan here (Kyuudo), but…
Wielding a ~55# Daikyuu Yumi, it’s expected of the students to be able to consistently hit a solitary man sized target at 150 shaku (~50yds), higher students are pushed to double or even triple that. I knew one man who would nail a watermelon at 200yds every single time (of course, he was the ‘master’ after all).

Now, I don’t know if there’s been any official measurement for tiles (I’m sort of new here), but assuming that every tile/square in-game is roughly 6ft/2yds (enough room to comfortably hold a human or zombie and whatever they may be carrying, while still supporting building sizes), accurate shooting at ranges of 25 should not be out of the question, while harassment (shooting at something in order to draw their attention, knowing you’re never going to hit them) at 50 should be possible (although I’m not certain that such a mechanic is in the game, since I’ve only ever done this within standard bow ranges in order to draw the Zed into my Melee range without alerting the Shocker that was some 30 farther in… call me paranoid, but after the third time I died to those things, I started looking for alternatives).

Point 3: Bow Types
You seem pretty satisfied with having just 3 Bows and 2 flavor bows. Why?
Wouldn’t it be so much better to allow a magnitude of bows by creating categories based on bow type much like the firearms?
Now, I don’t mean creating new skills for them, I mean as a design base.

To the best of my memory, the IRL basic bow types are Hand Bows, Short Bows, Long Bows, and Great Bows (or ‘War Bows’). All bows, including modern composite and compound bows (with the obvious exclusion of crossbows), fall somewhere in here based on their size.
So, wouldn’t it just be much easier to allow for these 4 categories and design the generics around the concept?
I mean having things like Improvised Hand Bow, Improvised Short Bow, and Improvised Long Bow all being craftable relatively early on (Great Bows are reserved for later), then progressing to ‘plain’ Bows (Hand Bow, Short Bow, etc) when the survivor rightfully has an idea what they’re doing, then traditional composite bows, then your recurves, reflexes, recurve/reflex, laminated, compounds, and so on.
I think you get what I mean.
This allows our Archer-Survivors just as wide a selection as our Gun-toting Survivors, but makes getting them a little harder (by the time you’d get to the high modern bows [all entirely craftable IRL with tools already in-game] you’d be a master archer and fabricator).

Hand bows, if anyone is curious, are very short bows of 1 to 2 feet in length; 3-8# (depending on quality, I’ve seen some Korean Hand Bows that were 20# or greater); usually made of bone, horn, and/or the limb of a small tree; and usually reserved to small game hunting (or assassination, if you’re Korean, as their more advanced models were attached to a wrist guard for concealment under robes).
Wouldn’t this be a decent option to start out with, seeing as they’re ridiculously easy to make? (Take a springy limb and tie some string to it. Done.)
Force players to gain skill by hunting squirrels.

Point 4: Crossbows/Arrows
Yes. Just yes.
(Just please don’t get too complicated in the early game.)

Other
All in all, I approve of the way this idea/material seems to be shaping up.
I just wanted to throw my two cents in as a bit of advice (on the bow types, specifically).

But, all this makes me wonder something…
Martial Arts Styles for Bows.
Apache-style for Rapid Fire and a slight fire rate (reload?) boost from dexterity. Kyuudo for high accuracy precision attacks (scales with Perception), but a relatively slow firerate. English-style for range, but suffers penalties the farther away the target (Reduced by Strength). Landsknecht-style for crossbows and melee weapons mix (who knows what that’d do…).
Yeah, I’m dreaming here.

Also!
This is pretty much a random, just for fun, response directed towards a commenter whose name I cannot remember. Sorry 'bout that.
Yes, there are Bows (not crossbows) out there that can punch arrows through steel, and almost any bow can punch an arrow through so-called ‘bullet proof’ kevlar soft armor (ironically, IRL Bullets kill mostly through blunt trauma, not piercing capability).
However, no one is asking for that.

57

@Deadman -

I have never heard of hand bows - you learn something new every day. I am not sure they would be useful to include ingame as they are esoteric, and from what you said about power they are too weak for anyone to bother using them much. I think you could stick to improvised bows, longbows, recurve bows, and composite bows (and crossbows). Also I have not heard the term great bow very often either (in some fantasy games, yes, not in real life - even a quick Google search turned up only fantasy references). I think it may cause more confusion if used ingame as a label.

Also - in real life you couldn’t just take any sapling and use it with string to get a bow - well not for long. Springineess varies and most wood rapidly takes a set (a permanent curve) that robs of power. You hit the same issue using saplings for snares for prolonged periods or repeatedly. Eventually they lose their whippiness, and some just don’’ have much to start with. That said, for game purposes you could ignore all of that. :slight_smile:

As for variable styles ala martial arts - I like that idea but you can’t necessarily use say a Mongolian style with a modern right handed recurve or composite with a shelf because Mongolian style shoots from the opposite side of the bow to traditional English/European techniques (also, you shoot with the humb, not fingers but that wouldn’t stop you changing style - the shape of the bow would). You would actually need a left handed bow. Now using a traditonal English longbow with no shelf it may be possible to change over to Mongolian style(?). Whether this should be ignored for game purposes I leave to others but I thought I’d note it. Also there certainly some interesting speed shooting techniques that can lob multiple arrows per second or two that work(accurately) over very short ranges (check out Russian Dagger style archery on youtube, and there is some fellow in Northern Europe who is even faster). Speed techniques all use low poundage bows though and accuracy goes way down as range builds up (as far as I know). Be cool to start shooting traditional english style and then go speed draw at point blank!

58

@Cam -

I agree that your current garden variety hand bows are next to useless as the game sits right now (the better ones would still have a role though), but it’s where people are talking about going with the game that they start to become useful.
The thing about hand bows (apart from their small size) is, they’re frighteningly accurate when in their range (a decent archer would have no excuse to not hit a stationary head sized target at 10 yards every single time) and create very negligible noise, blowing out a candle is almost louder.
If the stealth system ever gets revamped (has that been done already?) or the other bows are given noise, this would become a stealth character’s best bet.

The term ‘Great Bow’ is actually modern in origin, it refers to any bow longer than 7ft in length or a long bow (4 1/2 to 7 ft) above 115# draw weight. The actual bows themselves are still referred to by their original names.

I was exaggerating when I said that about the springy limb; yes, that’s true. I was mostly thinking of the game there when I wrote it that way.
…But it is a prime example of an improvised weapon, is it not? Lasts for all of 6 hours.
However, with a little time put into it (and a nearby fire and water source) you could press most common tree woods into service (although the quality and durability would vary widely based on wood type and grain… I don’t think the game’s code presently allows for that).

In response to the Martial Styles and bow compatibility -
This is all true, but I had waived mentioning it in favor of balance (technically speaking, Taekwondo is meant to be used with any weapon that you can get your hands on [which is why it prioritizes the feet], so…). However, there’s not much of that that a little improvisation couldn’t fix.

On Speed Techniques, I’ve known some Native Americans (they were Cherokee) that pulled ‘it’ (3 second shots) off with a 65# bow. Whether that’s ‘low poundage’ depends on one’s perception on the matter, I guess.
But yes, the much faster reloads are usually low poundage bows and, as I mentioned, suffer from accuracy issues. But at short range, they’re like taking a smg in the gut.
Basically, you’d be needing a commonly activating “RAPID”-like for the Apache-style and something that emulates burst fire on command but with an dispersion penalty for the Russian Dagger-style (I had actually thought about those videos, but I forgot the name and therefore skipped the style).

Yeah, I’d love to be able to mix it up like that (though that’d mean NPC’s would need to be fixed…). After all, it’s what’s been going on in my head this entire time; seeing as I, myself, use both Kyuudo and RTA (a variation of the Apache-style, but works with Yumi and other long bows).

59

something that could drastically simplify a lot of the suggestions in this thread is simply adding quality, material, and components to just about everything, similar to dwarf fortress, though that gets a bit squirrely when you look at the names of items.

each crafting operation determines the outcome item’s quality, which has a worst/standard/best stat range to pull from, in addition it’s stats are pulled from it’s components which are in turn affected by it’s material and quality.

it sounds complicated, but once set up it would become incredibly streamlined and intuitive.
better fabrication = better arrows, better bows, etc.
better archery = better accuracy, slightly better range, better crit chance, faster reload, etc. this would scale much more than with guns, starting out cripplingly poor, and taking some time to increase to a high skill.

so an example for arrows

its name could be affected by it’s shaft type, ie: wood arrow, and it’s arrow head could be plastic, metal, stone, or something else.
arrow quality would also be added, as say: awful/bad/poor/(nomodifier)/good/great/perfect.
perfectly crafted wood arrow
made with:
bad steel arrowhead
good wooden arrow shaft
poor plastic fletching

this obviously takes a lot of code-monkey to complete, but it seems like it’ll have to go in eventually for the various reasons hanging around

60

Dies at the million pounds of coding this will take for the devs