Bows, Crossbows and Their Balance

[crazykiddeath]

You move until it jumps then you attack, it has a cool down on leap and leap doesn’t always put it next to you. It’s like fighting hulks with this build and a spear, once you have the timing it’s easy. Flame resistant gear is pretty common, mitigating shockers is harder I’ll admit though.

[Tamior]

You move until it jumps then you attack, it has a cool down on leap and leap doesn’t always put it next to you.

I can see that working, I guess (not sure if cool-down on the jump is variable or not), but if you have rollerblades (those are down to RNG) and flat road, than killing a feral pred with a bow/crossbow is an actual no-brainer. The spear, on the other hand, requires pretty exquisite timing shenanigans.

[crazykiddeath]

It has it’s pro’s and con’s, I tend to treat spears (and the awl pike) as a short range, unlimited ammo, ranged weapon. I only tend to use them with a build that has traits that favour them though as a normal build simply does better with a normal melee weapon then with a spear.

[Tamior]

I just really like playing with low item/vehicle spawn rates, high enemy spawn rates and with a start about a week after the “day 0”.
That makes melee builds really, REALLY dicey: Z’s are numerous and advanced from the start, and disinfectant is quite VERY rare (unless RNG favors you). But it really just exemplifies the fact that melee builds are essentially “much higher risk, much faster zombie killing”. While ranged are much, much more reliable, but less powerful in early game.

[crazykiddeath]

Well tbf I dunno how much tampering with the spawn rate affects foraging but unless I’m getting the recipes from mods you have quite a few options for cooking up your own disinfectant. Thyme oil and cattail jelly are both directly from forgaging, thyme oil takes a fair amount of cooking skill though I guess but I don’t really get that many bites even in the nastier fights, especially after I’ve got some semi decent gear to wear. You need to get grabbed and stay grabbed before they start nibbling and even semi decent gear will protect you against that with low level zombies.

[Tamior]

I do winter starts. So thyme oil and the like is about 91 days away, and it only takes ONE deep bite to die with bad RNG if you lack disinfectant.

You need to get grabbed and stay grabbed before they start nibbling and even semi decent gear will protect you against that with low level zombies.

My experience tells otherwise. A single slavering biter can get you deep bite pretty much instantly.

[crazykiddeath]

A slavering biter isn’t a low level zombie tbf but I didn’t realise you ment the winter after day 0

[Tamior]

Full disclosure, this is what I normally play:

(+ a wrecked cars mod for extra FUN)

[crazykiddeath]

This for me:

I’m not a big fan of turning down item spawns, It doesn’t make sense to me in an area that has been very rapidly depopulated (in a letal sense) that it would have no stuff, that’s just my preference though. I’ll probably turn up enemy spawn soon/ for the next play through though.

[darktoes]

This is rapidly moving away from the topic of the thread, so if you want to keep talking about it I’d suggest making a new one.

As it stands, i don’t see an issue with the compound greatbow as it is in my current PR, so unless Kevin tells me to change it, I’m not going to.

[crazykiddeath]

Sorry, I take full responsibility. I have a terrible habit of going on tangents.

[Tamior]

As it stands, i don’t see an issue with the compound greatbow as it is in my current PR, so unless Kevin tells me to change it, I’m not going to.

So what’s the base damage on compound bow (high) and compound greatbow in this new PR, and what are the strength requirements for them?

[darktoes]

You can check the PR or the change spreadsheet I’ve linked at least once in this thread. Or reread the message where i listed those stats already.

[Tamior]

If you are talking about this:

Archery Redux

I don’t see strength requirements explicitly listed, unless it’s just (poundage/10).
Assuming that’s the case, we have 24 damage for str 8 and 31 damage for str 14.
So 7 damage for 6 points of str.
Compound bow settings scale at 2 damage per 1 str ratio.
That’s still higher that the melee scaling ratio. I still don’t think bows should outpace melee in how quickly they scale with strength.

[darktoes]

Then go make a pr to fix melee scaling. It’s based on real world values, so melee must be broken.

[Tamior]

I’m sorry, but the is no “real world” 1 point of damage. All in-game damage is relative to whatever the baseline is.

[darktoes]

It’s relative to the square root of the kinetic energy of the projectile multiplied by the terminal ballistics value. I’m sure i explained this before.

Melee damage has no real world correlation yet, why don’t you look into it?

[Tamior]

It’s relative to the square root of the kinetic energy of the projectile multiplied by the terminal ballistics value. I’m sure i explained this before.

And? There is still no clear equivalent of “1 point of damage”, so the absolute value of damage scaling for, say, compound bow, can be 1 point for 1 str, or 2 points, or 4 points, etc.

[darktoes]

You’re either not understanding or not listening to what I say. Luckily, that doesn’t matter, and I’ve got no reason to keep trying.

If you read it carefully, including the explanation section, that spreadsheet will explain everything.

[Tamior]

The only thing your formulas give you (even if we assume they are perfect) is projectile damage in “units of energy” (or something like that). Not in “units of damage”.
It’s up to you how you scale those “energy units” into actual damage.
You insist on using a conversion factor here that results in bows having about 150-200% the scaling from strength melee weapons have.