That was just a random number meant to represent a significant surplus of batteries such that making a quiver full of EMP arrows wouldn’t really put a dent in the battery reserves.
Now that you mention it though, can you imagine the blast that 30k batteries would generate on a single EMP arrow?
Use an arrow wrapped with copper wire and 5 plutonium rods around the head. Use a hacksaw to “taper” them at the head so it flies better and use duct tape and a processor board plus a few other items as a trigger. ZAAAAPPPPP!!!
Although there is not practical purpose by doing this as we don’t usually have robots all over the place going nuts after the player character in one locale.
Project went wellish. My code and our build seemed to work fine, just one of the motors didn’t want to work. We’re pretty sure either we were given a shitty motor or we just didn’t have enough power, which I’m not sure how we could have fixed.
Yep, EMP arrows use the standard EMP function without an explosion, so you’ll have to actually hit the thing. That said, if you want them I could totally make some explosive EMP ones. It might even be better to switch them over to a scrambler effect? In your case I think you’d want an EMP grenade instead though.
They were basically just added for funsies and so archers could deal with robots (semi) effectively. Plus unless I’m mistaken, 5 arrows takes the same resources as 1 EMP grenade, so you do get to stretch your resources a little further. I’d be interested to see how a quiver of EMP arrows and a high-end bow fares against a chicken walker or tankbot.
Nother update kiddos! This is like… Version 4? I think? More or less.
Did a fairly substantial rebalance of the bows. Smoothed the progression a bit and separated them into two main lines. Basically there are now fast/weak/small bows and slow/powerful/large bows, with the strongest taking over a turn to draw. Selfbow is still pretty much just crap.
The hybrid bow is a combination longbow/recurve and fills the space between them, previously occupied by the composite bow, which is now one of the weaker, faster bows. You can now craft a modern recurve, to smooth progression for those with bad luck or low item spawns.
Hopefully this will give more options and allow you to pick between a close-range pewpewpew playstyle or a long-range sniper playstyle. Personally, I’m not 100% sold, so if you think it’s stupid let me know. If you think it’s awesome DEFINITELY let me know.
Crossbows and manual (everything but the bolter and activated Airbower) pneumatics are now quicker to reload since
Pneumatic Assault Rifle is WAY quicker, since they’re just little pellets and probably don’t have that much air behind them.
Again, let me know if you love/hate it.
Arrows/bolts now have a somewhat higher chance of remaining intact after firing since I’ve been using a bow in my current game and found that 10 arrows REALLY don’t last that long. It’s not like they’re that hard to make anyway, so it’s just a convenience thing as far as I’m concerned.
Personally, I think the intact chance should be based on the quality of the hit and your archery skill, but that’s up to the devs. I’d also like it if you got back broken arrows that you could repair, rather than losing them entirely but, again, that’s hardcode.
Now, I have three suggestions I’d like everyone to consider:
Making ALL bows craftable. At the end of the day it probably won’t make much difference, but it should smooth progression a bit for the archery inclined. Might also screw it completely, I dunno. If people want it for some reason I can do it, but I don’t really see the point.
Darts. Basically really short bolts with high range, armor piercing, and accuracy, but relatively low damage. Could be used in anything that fires bolts. Cheaper and quicker to produce, so basically just a disposable ammunition for the bolter, or sniper rounds for crossbows. Possibly useful for the rail-mounted crossbow attachment? May or may not make an awesome throwing weapon, if I can make it both ammo and a throwing weapon.
A super bow. Made from a bunch of the great big springs you find in cars and some coiled wire for cables, it’d basically be a giant (compound?) bow for super strength mutants to use. Probably have a minimum strength requirement of 16 or something. Might use ballista bolts as ammo. Might put a hole through a tank drone.
Also, I’m beginning to feel that the smart arrow returning is a bit overpowered, so i’m trying to think of a way to balance it. If anyone has any good ideas, let me know. I’m thinking either a conversion mod for bows to use it and a UPS cost, or a cooldown of a few turns after firing before it can be fired again.
P.S: Keep an eye out for my (eventually) upcoming Armor Up! mod.
Where’s the link? If you’ve updated the download link the my bad, but I took a quick peek through the JSON and didn’t see the hybrid bow in the bow recipes
The link is the same as usual, I checked and it’s updated.
The hybrid bow was added as an item but isn’t craftable. The only bows that I made craftable are the compound, recurve, and composite. I didn’t touch the existing craftable bows, so the long, short, etc bows are still craftable as well.
Everything else, hybrid included, has to be found/bought/stolen/borrowed/imagined/gotten overly attached to before being lost in an accidental fiery explosion.
Are there shoulder straps for bows in the mod? I find wearing them in the normal torso slot (vanilla game) extremely unappealing.
Shoulder strapped guns and bows are both worn on the torso in the strapped layer. The only difference is that bows have 20 encumbrance while strapped guns only have 3 or so.
I could add a hip sling for bows, if you want. Like a holster, probably on the waist slot, somewhere around 5-10 encumbrance… Probably wouldn’t fit the really big bows, but most of them.
Perhaps I could make a takedown variant of the recurve?
You should make a sentient bow that shoots you instead of arrows with damage based on the weapon you’re wielding. It can fold you and strap you onto its back for easy access and your new goal in CDDA is to find a way to escape your bow overlord.
While… interesting… I have no idea how (or why) I would make that happen.
Eh, I’m playing with no archery mods right now and shoulder straps can’t be installed on bows, and they do have 20 encumbrance on the normal layer. Honestly I have no idea why the game would do this.
That IS weird. I just assumed they were strapped.
I’ll move them to the strapped layer and add that bow holster since I’m starting to really like the idea.
NICE. I’ll see about creating an archer survivor right now. Good job.
Boom, updated.
All bows are now worn on the strapped layer rather than the normal layer, and the smaller bows had their encumbrance reduced to 14, and 16 for the compound bow (really you shouldn’t be able to wear it, but I can’t work out how to remove that functionality).
Added a “bow sling” which is just a torso-waist equipped holster for bows. Fits all sizes, even with mods, which may change in the future if I decide to add multiple types. Craftable with the usual sorts of skills for holsters, and can even be found in sportsy places.
Do you have this up on a git/source site, or just via your dropbox link?
It’s getting hard to keep up with individual mods. I’m assuming the launcher doesn’t update its included mods, yeah?
Yeah it’s just on dropbox. The only way for it to work from the launcher is if the guy who runs the launcher sets it up somehow, i assume.
Or the devs could add this mod to the basegame. hint hint
Kevin just told me that he’s still waiting for that sentient bow shooting you as an arrow game mode before he does anything. Sorry, his words not mine 
It’s going to have to be relegated to a separate scenario until it’s properly balanced. The professions selection will let you choose what kind of bow shoots you, but you have to be careful since if its draw weight is lower than your weight combined with that of all your gear you just fall flat on the ground instead of being shot.
Since you’re just a projectile, there’s no reason to invest in STR, but higher PER and DEX will let you adjust yourself in flight to do more damage/sustain less trauma on impact. Well, physical trauma anyway; if you actually manage to get away in this scenario you’ll be far too mentally scarred to ever actually use a bow.
Mutations are also a problem. If you get any of the size mutations you’ll be bulkier and heavier, making shooting you harder for the bow, but that might be a good thing since your goal is to get away without dying of repeated trauma from being shot at things. Mutating into a fish person would make you very effective as an underwater projectile, but that would see very limited use since the bows may not be waterproof. Chimera would add a bunch of random cutting or bashing damage from the various hooves or claws hitting the target and anything with horns would add piercing. Mutating into a tree-person wouldn’t help much since you would just be carved back into an arrow, and mutating into a bird means you can produce your own flights. A slime makes for a pretty useless arrow, but if you can manipulate the shape of your body into a giant fist as you’re flying at things it would look pretty neat.
Or maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way entirely, and it’s actually the bow that gets the mutations, allowing it to change from a self-bow to short-bow and on up the spectrum. The recipe for the pneumatic weapon mutagens would be far too rare to ever actually be useful, though. Even if you did find the recipe for it, the bow would break you up into little human pebbles to shoot you, and you’d die anyway. It’s better to just avoid that mutation category entirely.
On top of size concerns for how unwieldy you’ll be, there’s also the consideration for the number of humans the bow will be able to carry. Have you ever tried stuffing two humans into a quiver, let alone sixty? It can’t be done, I tell you!
Additionally, you’ll have to find a way to escape before your bow-verlord gets high enough fabrication and/or archery to unlock the recipe where it straps explosives to you and shoots you or it’s an instant game over.
Don’t ever take the “Experimental Military Smart Human” trait since that teleports you back to your bow-verlord after every shot and makes escape virtually impossible. I don’t even know why that’s an option.
Thank you bb ur the best
I’ve been thinking of making a pseudo-artifact bow, basically just a longbow with a few artifact effects (+perception, +dex, etc), but I have two things I need comments on.
First, where should it come from? Being an item rather than a generated artifact I would have to actually pick where it came from, so should it be craftable, perhaps from a special item, and from which book? Found in strange temples (if possible)? Just show up randomly?
Second, how powerful should it be? Should it have negative effects as well as positive? Should it just inherit longbow stats or be better? Should it use arrows or just charges?
If nobody is interested I won’t bother, but if people think it’s cool and have some idea how it should work, say so.