Greatbow balance

[Tamior]

Yes, that’s how it works, and that’s fine . It’s a near top-end strength build niche ranged weapon. Is it also an issue that the Nodachi and Barrett .50 cal can one-shot enemies? Obviously not, so it must be okay.

Nodachi does not leave you safe from retaliation even vs normal Z’s (if you miss) and can’t be used against shockers, acids, etc without taking damage, technicians can disarm you, etc, etc.
.50 cal uses limited rare ammo and alerts the whole neighborhood to your location.
Greatbow is silent, ranged, auto-learn recipe that uses effectively unlimited ammo while still dealing similar damage.

You’re taking something unrelated and applying it to something with a solid rationale and saying it’s not okay because the two don’t match up. The only issue here is that melee weapons don’t scale proportionally with strength, and that’s not an issue with bows.

The problem is, the rest of the game was previously balanced around the kind of scaling melee weapons have.

[darktoes]

Nodachi does not leave you safe from retaliation even vs normal Z’s (if you miss) and can’t be used against shockers, acids, etc without taking damage, technicians can disarm you, etc, etc.

Wear a survivor firesuit and plate armor then. Get your dodge skill up. Take a hit once in a while, no big deal. It still has higher dps and no ammo requirement. The greatbow doesn’t make you safe, you can still get surrounded, swarmed, or sniped by a shocker bolt.

.50 cal used limited rare ammo and alerts the whole neighborhood to you location.
Greatbow is silent, ranged, auto-learn recipe that uses effectively unlimited ammo while still dealing similar damage.

The Barrett does ~126 damage. That’s not exactly similar to 35. The greatbow isn’t silent and the good ammo has decently high crafting requirements. Also, you need 18 strength. I can’t stress enough how difficult that is to get with a normal playthrough.

The problem is, the rest of the game was previously balanced around the kind of scaling melee weapons have.

Where? Around melee weapons? Those scale with skill, weapon quality, and even martial arts in use. Bows ONLY scale around strength, and quality to a lesser degree.

[Tamior]

Wear a survivor firesuit and plate armor then. Get your dodge skill up. Take a hit once in a while, no big deal. It still has higher dps and no ammo requirement.

Greatbow can be made within the first week with material from the wood and no crafting books.
Proper armor is mid-game (if not late-game) stuff that required pretty rare/specific components.

The greatbow doesn’t make you safe, you can still get surrounded, swarmed, or sniped by a shocker bolt.

Not happening if you simply draw Z’s in small groups with plenty of space to retreat into (default strategy with any ranged weapon, really).

The Barrett does ~126 damage. That’s not exactly similar to 35. The greatbow isn’t silent and the good ammo has decently high crafting requirements.

Err, what? Actual damage of the greatbow is in the 80+, 35 is the BASE damage of the bow itself.

Also, you need 18 strength. I can’t stress enough how difficult that is to get with a normal playthrough.

What the hell is “normal play”? When you create a character, you normally already have a build in mind. And we already establish that ANY profession/start can qualify for greatbow.

[kevin.granade]

Good points @Tamior
Exceeding strength scaling for melee weapons with a bow is not ok; both from a mechanical reality and a game balance point of view.
The fabrication 4 requirement is also laughably low. This bow is positioned as being equivalent or better than the old english longbow, I see no indication that this is something a journeyman boyer would be making.
As for the strength requirement, I haven’t checked your assertions about being able to make a starting character with 18 str, but taken at face value I agree that it completely refutes the argument that the strength requirement provides the necessary balance for the weapon.

Regarding construction, it’s immediately apparent that this kind of bow is made from planks, not sticks, meaning what you’re really looking for is taking down and splitting a tree. Thats a bit of a longer term adjustment though.

[Tamior]

As for the strength requirement, I haven’t checked your assertions about being able to make a starting character with 18 str,

Str 18
Dex 4
Int 8
Per 4
Is something you can make on a default multi-pool char, no questions asked.
Dex 4 / Per 4 are effetively irrelevent if you know what you are doing (see https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/side-effects-of-min-maxing-stats/ for details).

[Erk]

Honestly I think a lot of the specialized survival gear, like a custom massive greatbow, should require very high levels of skills, in the 8+ range at least. Like you say, these represent custom-making high quality materials superior to what historical experts made. I feel the same about the survivor armour series… There should be a makeshift armour set that is similar but not as universally awesome, with survivor armour opening up at really high fabrication+tailoring. But that’s another story.

[Sanehatter]

Honestly, being able to play with 4 Dex and Per with no practical drawbacks sounds like the biggest issue here, assuming what @Tamior said about his build is true.

[Tamior]

Honestly being able to play with 4 Dex and Per with no practical drawbacks sounds like the biggest issue here, assuming what @Tamior said about his build is true.

Frankly, I would be glad if someone could actually explain to me what those drawbacks are.
Because from my experience with that build I couldn’t really find an obvious drawback.
Well, you will have below average night vision, but that’s really not a huge drawback per se, since you can start with a profession that has in-build full-range night-vision, or use a light-source, or just not go into dangerous places at night in early game.

[darktoes]

I was under the impression 35 was the total damage, not base, which brings the wooden greatbow to an actual damage of 49, assuming the player is using the top-craftable metal broadhead arrows. (Not sure how that converts to 80+ in practice, but it’s likely a damage bonus from a good-hit, a byproduct of only using it at a couple of tiles range.) Above what it should be for a 210lb-ish bow, but not hugely. Seems too much damage is attached to arrows themselves, but that’s not a surprise to me.

Making a 210lb longbow wouldn’t be overly difficult if you can already make a longbow, since a good portion were around 140lb for military usage, and some even reached or exceeded 215lb.
Which isn’t to say making a longbow is overly easy. As far as construction, the current recipe for the longbow/greatbow is laughably easy and I already have plans to fix that.

As for comparisons to starting with 18 strength/melee damage scaling, it seems these are issues with the game itself and not the greatbows.

A measly +0.5 damage per point of strength seems far too low, but you could argue that most weapons are designed around a particular strength bracket and exceeding that in their use would break them, especially things like the wooden spear. Greathammers and Greatswords for 18-strength characters could be a lot of fun.

Starting with superhuman strength (by the design doc, with 14 being “a realistic world class human”) with no traits, mutations, or real consequences is exceptionally weird. Having pitiful dexterity and perception having no drawbacks seems either exaggerated or unbalanced in and of itself.

[Tamior]

I was under the impression 35 was the total damage, not base, which brings the wooden greatbow to an actual damage of 49, assuming the player is using the top-craftable metal broadhead arrows. (Not sure how that converts to 80+ in practice, but it’s likely a damage bonus from a good-hit, a byproduct of only using it at a couple of tiles range.)

Sooo, you never actually tested this bow in the actual game with an actual character to see how it will actually work…?

Starting with superhuman strength (by the design doc, with 14 being “a realistic world class human”) with no traits, mutations, or real consequences is exceptionally weird.

That’s the way the game works. “Design docs” may or may not reflect the way the game actually works.

Having pitiful dexterity and perception having no drawbacks seems either exaggerated or unbalanced in and of itself.

It has drawbacks. The drawbacks are just not large enough to make that build somehow very obscure or non-viable for an median player.

[darktoes]

Once again, the only issues I see here is that melee weapons don’t scale as well as they could with strength, largely because they don’t actually HAVE strength requirements and aren’t designed like bows are (I’m not sure of the best way to fix this, but an unrealistic nerf to bows is not the way), and that a player can quite happily whip up a starting character with 18 strength for no practical drawbacks (Simple fix, limit starting stats to 14 like is apparently a top-level standard human).

A high-power bow that requires high strength is not an issue as far as I can see.

[Tamior]

Once again, the only issues I see here is that melee weapons don’t scale as well as they could with strength, largely because they don’t actually HAVE strength requirements and aren’t designed like bows are (I’m not sure of the best way to fix this, but an unrealistic nerf to bows is not the way), and that a player can quite happily whip up a starting character with 18 strength for no practical drawbacks (Simple fix, limit starting stats to 14 like is apparently a top-level standard human).

A high-power bow that requires high strength is not an issue as far as I can see.

I still don’t understand what your position is:

• greatbow is fine and balanced, and bows with similar damage-to-str ratio can (and should) exist for str 12, str 14, str 16 etc
• greatbow is unique weapon that is NOT balanced to be in line with the rest of the weapons, the fact that it’s “locked” behind 18 str is the reason it can be overpowered.

[darktoes]

Yes and yes. The greatbow is in line with other bows on that basis that all bows are intended to be balanced around their expected kinetic energy based on their poundage. The wooden greatbow is a 210lb longbow with an IBO rating of 183. As per the derived kinetic energy, this gives a total damage value of around 34. Some other bows are currently out of line with this (for example, the current compound bow is slightly too strong). Once I’ve applied this treatment to all the bows and gotten reasonable values for them, they’ll follow the same curve. HOWEVER, the greatbow IS unique in that it requires 18 strength, which can normally only be obtained through mutations and/or bionics. Most other available bows won’t require more than 14 strength, which is apparently what a top human can reach. And that’s being generous, there are people who can use 200lb longbows today who aren’t cyborgs or bear monsters.

As for it outpacing melee weapons, I think you might be wrong.
I’ve been doing a little (imperfect but reasonably valid) testing and a wooden spear can do ~28 damage at 18 strength, and 20 at 8 strength. Something more representative of a steel tipped arrow like a steel spear can do around 45 damage a hit at 18 strength, with roughly 35 damage at 8 strength. That’s standard hits, criticals do far more.

While they do fit with the idea of +0.5 damage per point of strength, it also fits with bows, as by the equations a 100lb (8 strength) longbow should have a total damage value of around 25, which it currently has. It just has a lower minimum strength value than it should. Oddly enough, the greatbow should only be 34 damage, which is LESS than the +0.5 damage per strength point you get from melee weapons. The issue at present is that arrows have weird damage values, and mess with what the bows should be getting.

That said, 210lbs isn’t exactly superhuman, so I may well adjust my strength to poundage ratio a bit so that it comes out to something more monstrous like 300lbs.

[Tamior]

HOWEVER, the greatbow IS unique in that it requires 18 strength, which can normally only be obtained through mutations and/or bionics.

It can be obtained by just increasing it to this value during character creation.
Like, you know, any other value in any other stat between 4 and 20.
So I really fail to see why 18 is not “normal” from a game-play perspective. Your argument is based solely on some piece of lore stating this should be “superhuman”, but as a matter of fact it’s a possible starting value just like any other possible starting value.

Anyway, I don’t really want to do into details for the rational, the problem is (and has always been) that 35 base damage on a bow is ridiculously unbalanced (overpowered) with the rest of the game.

P.S. The game is not balanced around pure realism and never have been. Don’t give me this “X lbs draw should give Y damage” in a game where you can get shot with 9mm into every limb, torso and head, and then be perfectly healthy again next morning.

[darktoes]

The rest of the game is balanced, where possible and practical, around realism. Things like 8 strength being baseline human strength. If you don’t like it, play something else. Being able to start with 18 strength is weird, I don’t even know what to think of the fact that it’s possible.

34 TOTAL damage on a bow is perfectly fine, for reasons I’ve explained, and will be the value once I get around to it. There’s nothing wrong with a powerful weapon with a high cost, like having superhuman strength, especially when there are plenty of other weapons around that far outperform it.

P.S if it REALLY bothers you that much, don’t use it. Or better yet, don’t start with 18 strength so that you can use it. You’re clearly only hurting yourself.

[Erk]

Starting with 18str is possible (and I’m not sure it should be), but the problem you have seems to be:

1. Bows are better weapons than spears, and

2. There are too few consequences to minmaxing a ridiculously high str.

Problem (1) is strange… In the context of a world like cata, a bow would be a lot better than melee weapons. It’s kind of ridiculous right now that charging in with a quarterstaff or even barehanded is such an excellent technique. However given that a survivor can only do one combat style at a time, ranged doesn’t really have to be all that balanced against melee. It just needs to be balanced to itself to prevent the rather boring “get a compound bow and never think about weapons again”.

There’s a side issue which is that it should be much much harder to use ranged weapons in the dark, even with night vision. Not a fault of this mod.

Problem 2 is not an issue with bows, it’s an issue with attributes being dumpable (although personally I think dumping dex and per just to get a greatbow out the gate is pretty dumb, given how it’ll gimp you for so long in a ton of useful things).

[darktoes]

Bows AREN’T better weapons than spears, though there’s a bit of wiggle room on account of there being no obvious counterpart between each spear and bow, and the fact that spears aren’t the highest damage melee weapons available. Like I said further up, you can do far more damage per turn with a steel spear than with a bow. There’s absolutely no grounds to say that bows are out of balance with melee weapons (or at least, they won’t be once I have my changes in.)

The ONLY issue I can see here, aside from the fact that I haven’t PRed my changes yet, is that you can start with 18 strength with no drawbacks. That’s utterly ridiculous.

[Erk]

I was talking to tamior, that seems to be his concern. I think bows are overall better than spears, because you can use them from half the map away and do comparable damage. That is as it should be.

Starting with a 4 in dexterity and perception means you’ll be terrible at dodging, you’ll rely on a single character class or you’ll have no night vision, you’ll be unable to detect traps, and you’ll be bad at a host of useful skills needed to do things in the game other than “shoot thing with large bow”. There absolutely are drawbacks to that level of minmaxing. And besides, who cares that it’s possible? It’s also possible to turn on freeform point allocation and just give yourself 20 strength and 10 archery and marksmanship.

[darktoes]

I wasn’t trying to jump on you or anything, just making sure that my point was well made and obvious.

I agree on all your points, although Tamior’s argument stems mainly from damage, for which spears actually outperform bows by a decent margin. I’m personally not concerned with balancing around how a particular person chooses to play as opposed to how the majority of people actually play and what the intended way to play is.

[Tamior]

I was talking to tamior, that seems to be his concern. I think bows are overall better than spears, because you can use them from half the map away and do comparable damage. That is as it should be.

That’s open to debate, really, depending what you are balancing your game around. If balancing around game-play, then having weapons types that are effectively moot is not a good thing.

Starting with a 4 in dexterity and perception means you’ll be terrible at dodging,

You will not be as good as with 8 dex, yes. But that’s only an issue if you planned to rely on dodging. Which is a strange choice given that simply outrunning things or having good armor is more reliable.

you’ll rely on a single character class or you’ll have no night vision

There are 4 or 5 professions that start with night vision bionics. And with “night vision” train you will have ok night vision even with 4 per.

you’ll be unable to detect traps

Not true. You can train trapping skill instead.

and you’ll be bad at a host of useful skills needed to do things in the game other than “shoot thing with large bow”.

Namely? I play with this build and I failed to notice that.

There absolutely are drawbacks to that level of minmaxing. And besides, who cares that it’s possible? It’s also possible to turn on freeform point allocation and just give yourself 20 strength and 10 archery and marksmanship.

The baseline for balancing stuff is a multi-pool character.