How are bows useful?

Not to be nitpicky, but in addition to what deoxy already said: archers, especially the English Longbowmen, were indeed trained very well in the use of their bow. A bow might seem simple, but to master the art of using it, one has to train from childhood and even then, it takes years to be a proficient archer. Crossbows on the other hand… now that was practically a ‘front towards enemy, then pull trigger’ kind of weapon. Which was one the reasons it was so poorly regarded in medieval times: even a simple peasant could use it to kill a decently armoured and skilled warrior with ease. But this was also the reason why it was still used even after the use of the crossbow was banned by the Pope. It would be interessting to see this modeled in C:DDA, with bows being superior in the hands of a skilled archer, but crossbows being the weapon of choice for untrained users.

The trouble with crossbows and the pneumatic bolt driver are unless you’re using wooden bolts (which are crap, and can’t do shit to armoured things like zombie soldiers) is the ammo is insanely heavy, such that I can’t see how it could be practical. Like unless it’s on a vehicle or you’re always dragging a luggage cart around.

There’s also an oddity in the skill usage, in that the repeating crossbow uses submachine guns and the pneumatic bolt driver uses rifles, but in order to actually make ammo for them you need points in the crossbow skill.