Which do you guys prefer/ think is better? And, more importantly, why?
Personally, I like the bolt driver, but that’s mostly because I’ve been playing weaker (str-wise) characters, where such a weapon is really the only thing available.
However, this time I rolled a power-house and the rng gods have blessed me with a Granade-buff bringing my str to 16(!). And so, per some advice here on the forums, I’ve stuck to bows. But now that my mechanics has been brought up to par, I’m wondering if I should stick with bows (I currently have a reflex bow, which I found randomly in a basement, and metal arrows). It’s doing decent damage, 2-3-hit kills on normal zeds, 5-6 hits on armored foes (military zeds). But I do miss my hand-made bolt driver (which I called “John Henry”, for obvious reasons, in my other file)
Anyway, here is my piece on the matter:
Bows are superior due to increased rate of fire (bout 33% faster) and no need to reload. You can keep shooting until you run out of arrows (which means you can shoot for a long time). They do less damage then the bolt driver, yet I get the feeling that at higher levels of archery (and with a recurve reflex bow) this will cease to be a problem. For someone with the str I think this is the better option.
[quote=“dreamfantasy, post:2, topic:7834”]Both bows and bolt drivers are both good for fighting zombies but both are useless against mil. graded turrets, tank drones or chicken walker.
You may need a weapon of longer range and higher penetration power.[/quote]Really? Have RRBs been nerfed recently?
[quote=“HunterAlpha1, post:3, topic:7834”][quote=“dreamfantasy, post:2, topic:7834”]Both bows and bolt drivers are both good for fighting zombies but both are useless against mil. graded turrets, tank drones or chicken walker.
You may need a weapon of longer range and higher penetration power.[/quote]Really? Have RRBs been nerfed recently?[/quote]
Can’t say this is true in my experience (though I’m playing 2337, not the latest experimental), I was able to take out an entire military outpost using the bolt driver. Granted I did this under-cover of darkness, but killing the turrets only took 2-3 metal bolts from +10 squares away. I would imagine a RRB with metal arrows would potenially fare even better (considering the penetration is higher for metal arrows), or you can just use explosive/flaming ammo, in which case other factors cease to matter.
At 10 marksmanship and 10 rifle skill, 12 per and dex, 0 arm and eye encumbrance, 0 dispersion in both gun and ammo and 0 recoil, a rifle should always score a headshot.
Some rifles can also burst fire, making learning them a good idea if you want to kill very strong stuff fast.
Bows are much better for close range assassinations and have nearly free ammo, making them a superior choice for taking out early shockers, shocker brutes, turrets and the like without attracting an entire horde.
Don’t be discouraged by bows’ strength requirement - unless you’ve got only 5 str, you’ll be able to use even the heaviest of them - just with less range (-2 per str point below requirement) and possibly slower (1 point of str cuts reload time by 20 movement points, but never below 25).