i dont think out damaging a melee weapon is too far fetched, and i feel is more of a personal preference to the one making the changes, but i see the point of it, iirc before archery revamp was a thing, the only bow that outclassed melee damage was the greatbow, at least that how i remember it, some melee weapons just are too effective.
How in tarnation did you manage to get a 1k dispersion? and with a bow, not even the worst gun has that
Why would an arrow ever out-damage per hit a spear used by the same character?
Cripes, youâre right! I just updated to the latest build to try it out and my longbow has a dispersion rate of 1110. 110 plus 1000. You couldnât hit the broad side of a barn with that sort of a number even if you were standing right in front of it.
I really hope this is fixed asap as my archery character just became a melee one and will have to remain so. No one can use bows for anything other than bashing critters over the head!
Currently Iâve removed the 1000 dispersion from my longbow via .json. Which probably means itâs overpowered but at least itâs usable.
Well, the speed of a melee attack is bound by the fast twitch muscles, and they arenât very fast, at least in comparison to a projectile. A bow can store energy over time. This means you can invest all your muscles in pulling the string, not just the fast twitch muscles, and then release it all at once, resulting in way more kinetic energy.
Whatever energy you âstore in a bowâ you can simply add to the spear after the hit connects and you push the spearhead deeper.
Bow absolutely does NOT have some magical energy storage system that would allow it to store more energy by pulling it then you would exert in the same time frame by actively using a spear.
Now, a heavy crossbow that uses a gear mechanism of sorts and takes dozens of second (if not minutes) to reload â sure, that can store more energy.
But not a bow you pull within a couple of seconds.
A faster moving smaller object does indeed project its energy differently from a larger slower moving one, even given identical kinetic energy. These things are more complex than straight kj calculations.
Even in that context, youâre making excuses for the crossbow that you donât allow for the bow. The time you take to draw a bow is functionally identical to spending time gearing up a crossbow. Both are time spent storing energy in a spring. That may be more time than youâre able to spend driving kinetic energy forward in melee before the combat situation forces you to move and adapt.
so basically anyone that cant push a hole through concrete with a spear, is not pushing hard enough?, i mean some bows can, crossbows definitely can. Anyways as i said earlier, irrc the only bow/crossbow being able to out right damage a melee weapon, where the greatbow versions. if the update keeps to that, then nothing changes, and that would be kind of ok, i mean, if a normal bow is able to the same damage as an .50 gun, then that is out right OP, i always felt that melee had it a bit of hard against ranged characters, with all the stamina and storage management one needs, but got other advantages of its own.
Itâs a bit of a fallacy that melee and ranged should be balanced against each other anyway. Melee doesnât need to be a strong viable alternative⌠Zombies are melee enemies, ranged weapons are going to be preferable against them. Melee is always going to have the advantage being silent and not requiring ammunition, and the necessity of always being an important fallback when the zombies start to close in.
Except bows are also effectively silent and (due to arrows being reusable and easy to craft) the ammunition requirements are barely an issue as well. Realistically, running out of arrows is about as much of an issue as your melee weapon breaking down.
So it stands to reason that from a balancing perspective bows should at least have lower damage.
Yea, no. There is no bow in this world that can punch through concrete that a spear (with similarly hardened tip) will NOT be able to punch.
What advantages piercing/cutting melee weapons have over compound greatbow?
I knocked it back down to the 120-150 they had in the Stable.
I think it would be nice if being grabbed gave a high chance to misfire, lose steadiness, etc. every turn. Something that makes adjacent shooting a lot harder so that you canât rely on ranged weapons in winding corridors.
Pushing the spear deeper might cause more damage, but I feel like that would be a separate move after connecting.
Every time you are attacked it resets your aiming progress. This has definitely caused me issues when mobbed as a bow user. Not much as a rifle user though.
So is the dispersion in experimental fixed from the thousands?
Also, a spear and an arrow generally have different head sizes, with arrows being MUCH smaller. This is espically true with arrows that are just pointed at the ends and donât have actual heads. This creates MASSIVE difference when it comes to punch through with arrows V. spears, even when arrows have broadheads. Yes, arrows and spears both have sharp tips, but the angles, general size, and weight of the heads are vastly different when it comes to practice.
To simplify, if you have the force behind a kick with just a foot would it most likely hurt a lot but it wonât PIERCE you unless your foot is going something like mach one, at which point it would just break. A needle though will do so easily with even significantly less needed force. Itâs just science dudes.
According to the item browser it is still ~1000 for most bows. Plus ammo dispersion.
If I recall correctly, a bow can actually reach significantly longer range than that of a crossbow (depending on the bow and personal strength).
Itâs been noted that, realistically, a bow could actually make a great weapon for creatures with above human strength. They could and would, in this case, make bows that require such strength that a human (without sci-fi/fantasy buffs) could never use, reaching much higher damage and range with relative ease in comparison.
Unless you have a sci-fi crossbow, in cases like this a gigantic bow would just straight up be better. At this high level of strength it would even be like a regular human using a much smaller bow in regards to ease and draw speed.
This would notably make characters with high strength and/or boosts to strength potentially actually prefer a bow in the right conditions, rather than a (loud) gun.
If I get back into modding I might go ahead and change/add this stuff regarding bows.
I would probably try and also get it put into the game itself providing proof and comparison to be more convincing.
If that fails then Iâd probably make it as a mod that hopefully will be added into the game rather than a link here to github.
Of course, I might need to deal with a bit more balancing as well.
While superhuman strength may be a decent explanation for high bow damage as compared to firearms, it still does not explain higher damage compared to melee weapons.
Whatever benefits high strength provides for archery, it provides even more of a benefit for melee combat.
Also, strength 18 (the one that is required for composite greatbow) is by no means âsuperhumanâ as far as the actual game goes. You can start with a strength 18 with literally any character by just putting points into strength â you donât need any mutations, you donât need any CBMâs, this is literally a viable starting strength for ANY character.
Iâm not so sure that itâs necessarily better for melee than bows.
Weapons like these are multipliers to oneâs own strength, and only one of these has the typical tendency to be able to launch piercing projectiles at extremely high speeds over considerable distance with considerable accuracy.
Something to note is that TV shows and movies often get something very wrong in regards to archly as well. Is relates to them simply holding the string back with ease, you canât do that, at least for a bow that properly matches your strength.
Iâm no expert when it comes to shooting a bow, but Iâve done it before, and I can vouch from experience that it can potentially be very hard to draw in the first place.
Have you ever drawn a real bow and shot it before? Even a single experience with shooting a real bow can give a fairly good perspective on their power. You can feel it through the draw.
Bows are freaking strong, man. Do not doubt them.
Frankly, it might make sense for you to potentially install-kill some of the regular zeds with the right bow and strength, even without a headshot.
You are correct but in both cases the dominant muscles that are used are back muscles. The reasoning for bow not hitting harder than a melee boils down to stabbing someone with a spear or an arrow. Old style bow doesnât generate extra energy, it only stores it (modern design allows to put more energy by doing more work). The same energy can be used to stab with a spear.
One could argue about how rapidly that energy is released but that wonât make huge difference.