I was never lucky enough to get the bowyer’s buddy or the Zen and the Art of Archery book early in the game. The two libraries my city had were not having any of these books so naturally I used the longbow (actually after using the short bow) from the very start. I started with 13 str (I start with 0 in all skills) so it became my main weapon quickly, replacing most of my firearms. I created the pneumatic assault rifle after that, got my rifle skills to 8 and then crafted the pneumatic bolt driver.
I think there’s no need for the repeating crossbow for a low str character (I think the reload time is modified by strength), the pneumatic bolt driver replaces the repeating crossbow quite nicely (since its not affected by strength, etc). It has greater damage bonus (+20), greater range bonus (+20) and much greater accuracy (dispersion bonus is 2). But if you get a book containing the recipe for it in the beginning then its another story. Right now I’m using the reflex recurve bow which is an awesome weapon, it makes most of the low caliber firearms (.22, .32, .38 and 10mm) useless if you’ve the strength (Strong and Very Strong mutations work good with it), it has good range and works best with the metal arrow. Craft one if you can wield it, otherwise use the longbow + metal arrows.
But for the sake of discussion here’s a quick comparison:
Longbow:
- Excellent range, much greater than the crossbow
- Does good damage with high strength and a good arrow (metal arrow is ideal)
- Reload time is 80, fires and reloads in a single move
- Produces almost no noise, absolutely silent
- Extremely easy to craft, can be crafted at low skill levels (archery-3 and fabrication-3), recipe is automatically learnt
- Requires good strength to do significant damage, damage degrades with low strength
- not very accurate over long ranges
- Almost no mods available to attach (atm, only the underbarrel laser sight can be used on a bow)
- arrows require more materials to craft (a single stack of metal arrow requires: shafts, arrowheads and fletchings)
Crossbow:
- Does much more damage than the longbow, even more when loaded with the (rare) steel crossbow bolts
- Produces no noise, so it works well for night raids
- Has more mods available than the longbow
- Reload time is affected by strength, so low strength would mean a high reload time which makes it a bad weapon for close range combat
and due to this reason it also fails in dealing with hordes.
- range is much lesser than the longbow, not very accurate over long distances
- some other weapons like the pneumatic bolt driver and the reflex recurve bow makes this weapon totally obsolete, so its not a very good choice for a mid-game weapon.
- recipe must be learnt from books like the Bowyer’s buddy or the Zen and the art of Archery, although they’re fairly common they may fail to spawn in some areas
Pneumatic Bolt Driver:
- Does more damage than the longbow and the crossbow
- Has good range, higher than a regular crossbow (but still less than a longbow)
- Much more accurate than longbow and crossbow
- Holds 8 bolts at a time, can be reloaded much easier than a crossbow
- No need for books as the recipe is automatically learnt after the mechanics level is 8
- Produces no noise, so it works as a good stealth weapon
- Can be fitted with more mods than the longbow
- Reload-time/damage is not affected by strength, so low str characters can fire it in the same way as a high str character (though it requires high rifles skill to be accurate like the longbow which requires high archery skill)
- Reload time per bolt is 500, so it may fail in dealing with large hordes or close quarter battles
- Range is higher than the crossbow but is much lesser than the longbow
- Requires more materials to craft than the crossbow or the longbow
Though the crossbow is not a good choice for higher level characters, the heavy crossbow (called “Ganz Rustung” by the wiki) is still very effective and efficient for dealing with stronger enemies due to its long range and high damage.
The pneumatic bolt driver (like any other firearm) requires high rifles skill to be accurate, so make sure you’ve high skill (although you can increase it by firing bolts from it, it’ll take some time).
Make sure to have a bow handy if you’re dealing with a large group of zeds. The bolt driver may fail at times due to its high reload time and low magazine capacity.
