Are the normal size bow stats correct?

Game Talk The Garage
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  1. Recurve bow doing more damage than the reflex recurve bow. Is this intentional, and does it just mean that the reflex recurve bow strikes a balance between the speed of the reflex bow and strength of the recurve, without being the best in either?

  2. Compound bow set to high does a large amount of damage compared to similar strength bows. Is this balanced by how hard it is to craft?

Also, I was looking at bow modifications, and I saw that there was only 1 accessory for bows (arrow rest) even though they have 2 accessory slots.

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The original mentality for bows as they are was that there are large, high poundage bows and smaller, low poundage bows. The recurve is a full-sized modern recurve, so it’s fairly large, thus high poundage. The Reflex/Recurve is relatively small, thus lower poundage. If you look at all the bows and their damage, there’s a linear progression down a “slow” tree and a “fast” tree, with the recurve sitting somewhere near the top of the slow, the reflex/recurve sitting somewhere near the top of the fast.
That’s… not the most correct way for things to be for various reasons, but I intend to sort things out in the semi-near future.

Compound bows work on a slightly different concept to standard bows, and are far more efficient at storing and releasing energy (somewhere in the realms of a 50% advantage). Unfortunately, balance-wise they’re iffy because they’re both quite easy to make, and probably the most common type of bow in the U.S (the game is set in the New England region). The only real disadvantage they have over traditional bows I can think of off-hand is that they’re more fiddly (represented by the higher reload time), the fact that they’re generally louder (already ingame), and can be more expensive (not a concern when you’re either making your own or looting it from a store).

All guns have 4 accessory slots despite there only being 2 actual accessories you can put on a gun. It’s just a matter of leaving room in case mods or later content additions add more possible accessories.
That said, stabilisers used to take up the accessory slot as well, so there was the requirement for 2 accessory slots at the time. Stabilisers were since moved to a dedicated slot when I added a second type of stabiliser, so now it’s just wiggle-room. I may well add more types of arrow rest and some other goodies, so those accessory slots might increase or even be removed entirely.

2 Likes
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Compound Bow isn’t really that difficult to craft, but it’s noticeably harder than most other bows ( needs more tools than most other bows and I think 7 Fabrication ). As I’m a dedicated Brawler/Archer I use it a lot.

Compound Bow, if set to “high” ( requires more strength [ 8 ] but increases force ) + accurizing ( one of the few/ or maybe even the only bow which can be accurized, maybe with the exception of Composite Bow ) is powerful. Ridiculously powerful. I also have arrow rest, bow dampening kit, bow scope and bow stabilizer system modded in, but even without those it’s deadly.

An average headshot to a zombie deals in the 60-70 range ( Normal Zeds have 80 iirc ). A lot of zombie children I shoot not only die, but often are immediately pulped, which saves me time. My Archery is at 9 right now if you’re curious.

Ammunition is important too, and I’m currently using Metal Broadhead Arrows, which have good range, damage and decent armor piercing. Besides skills, arrows are basically all made from the same resources, usually only the arrowhead is different.

I can shoot across 32 tiles, though obviously I won’t really hit much from that distance. Around 20 i have pretty good accuracy ( I always use precise shots ) Honestly, the only downsize to Bows is that they might be resource intensive with arrows, especially early game when arrows break much more often, and with the weight of the arrows if you carry a lot of them, but the second one can be easily mitigated by a shopping cart.

100 good arrows can easily decimate 30-50 strong group of low-rank zombies, especially if you get proficient at luring a few, pulping, recovering the arrows and repeating. Hulks and Jabberwocks aren’t a cause for concern, I can kill them long before they come close, and even if they do, I have full Heavy Survival gear on.

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It’s worth noting that:

  1. Ranged weapon damage is really weird in that there doesn’t seem to actually be the possibility of doing base damage. Grazing hits seem to do around 0.1 damage, good hits 1.2 or so, and headshots deal 1.5 or more. It makes actual ranged weapon balancing quite strange.

  2. I have an archery redux I’m working on which will give all bows fairly realistic damage/range/armor penetration values and will make things more exciting in general.

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Cool, though I hope bolt-based weapons are also tweaked to keep up.

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Yeah, they’re going to get some cool new reloading mechanics.