I said before over on the DF forums that the primary reason archery is currently overpowered is because it’s so easy to train.
Well, I just realized there’s one other reason. There’s no penalty for carrying around massive shitloads of arrows. I can carry around 200 arrows and they take up almost no volume. Plus, I’m presumably carrying them around in my backpack or whatever, yet the speed with which I can retrieve and fire them does not reflect that. I can spam all 200 arrows without pause. It really is a bit much. I think if this weren’t the case, archery could be made into a more situational approach to combat.
I propose two things.
Raise the volume amounts for arrows.
Also consider making quivers a part of archery. You wear it on the torso and it causes some encumbrance. Without it, you suffer a penalty to the reload speed of your bow.
These two changes would prevent me from carrying so much ammo, and force me to trade-off a bit of melee ability as well. If I can only carry 50 arrows instead of 200, I’d be forced to be more selective in how I use them when I’m doing something like deep raiding a science lab. Plus, the torso encumbrance from the quiver would cause a penalty to my effectiveness in melee, which balances against my ability to very quickly and quietly dispatch any especially dangerous foes at range.
That’s a trickier issue to tackle, because Cataclysm’s entire crafting system is like that. I can learn how to make and install futuristic bionics by repeatedly taking apart and putting a flashlight back together.
I just had a great idea.
How about, we get a level 2 archer book, that trains you from skill level 2 - 4, as an example. Sure thats fine and dandy, but what about if you want to craft a good quality bow, you have two options in crafting. One without the new book, with a very substantial chance to fail, and one with the book as a tool, almost like you are following the instructions in the book to make the longbow. This could be applied to any resipie you gain from books, really. Just make it so when you learn a new pizza resipie, untill you get very high in cooking (this is an example) you need the book as a tool to help you make it. Obviously, this would clutter up the crafting menu quite a bit but it would be much more realistic, and for me at least realisim =
I think a big thing you could do with archery to balance it a bit better is making arrows take longer to craft, even at high skill levels.
I mean preparing a thin shaft of wood, tying the fletching on, and creating a head and attaching that all sturdily enough to survive several uses, that’s going to take a while even for a skilled fletcher.
In addition to making them weigh more and possibly making them cumbersome to carry without a specialist quiver (high volume without wearing a quiver) you shouldn’t be able to crank out dozens of them in an hour.
I’d say starting you should be looking at an hour or so per arrow, going down to half an hour at mid levels, and maybe 15-20 minutes at higher levels. And this wouldn’t be easier for simpler arrows either, attaching a crappy stone head is no easier than attaching a steel bodkin. Except for the simplest wooden sticks you should be looking at a lot of work to make an arrow and good ones should be an investment.
[quote=“Jotun, post:7, topic:2212”]I think a big thing you could do with archery to balance it a bit better is making arrows take longer to craft, even at high skill levels.
I mean preparing a thin shaft of wood, tying the fletching on, and creating a head and attaching that all sturdily enough to survive several uses, that’s going to take a while even for a skilled fletcher.
In addition to making them weigh more and possibly making them cumbersome to carry without a specialist quiver (high volume without wearing a quiver) you shouldn’t be able to crank out dozens of them in an hour.
I’d say starting you should be looking at an hour or so per arrow, going down to half an hour at mid levels, and maybe 15-20 minutes at higher levels. And this wouldn’t be easier for simpler arrows either, attaching a crappy stone head is no easier than attaching a steel bodkin. Except for the simplest wooden sticks you should be looking at a lot of work to make an arrow and good ones should be an investment.[/quote]
i can attach a metal arrowhead in a few seconds. . . beer cap and a hammer anyone xD
I think to balance archery we need some new books to teach the character how to craft anything beyond a jurryrigged wood arrow. It would just be a book that raises no archery skill but teaches recipes, also skill gained from crafting arrows needs a lvl cap.
The perfect solution would be another skill - Fletching. I see no reason why would crafting arrows make you a better archer.[/quote]
Fletching could probably be rolled into other skills. Making the actual feathering for arrows would probably be part of survival/tailoring, and making the shaft/arrowhead would be survival/mechanics.
So how about arrows use survival/mechanics to make depending on the components? Or add some intermediate components, so you go thus:
feathers + metal skewers > simple metal arrow (tailoring) (these are both thread-working to tie things to the shaft so tailoring fits, wouldn’t need much/any skill to attempt, just perhaps more tailoring ability makes you faster at it/more likely to succeed without breaking the thread)
simple wooden arrow + rock > stone tipped arrow (survival/tailoring) (survival to make the heads via rock knapping, tailoring to attach them)
simple metal arrow + metal scraps > blade/bodkin tipped metal arrow (mechanics) (two different versions, one with more damage, one with more armor piercing, uses pure mechanics because the recipe would require a soldering iron/welder to weld them heads on)
I disagree for ONE arrow taking an hour to craft. I usually one all for realism, but that would just kill the gameplay of an archer. Archery would basicly become “Find a safe place and stockpile craptons of food and water and arrow making suplies and then you can be an archer!” I’d be fine with them taking longer to craft, but not that much.
The perfect solution would be another skill - Fletching. I see no reason why would crafting arrows make you a better archer.[/quote]
Personally, I’m thinking of adding another crafting skill called “fabrication” - and crafting arrows (and bows!) would require and train fabrication, but also require a certain level of archery.
It would also be used for a lot of stuff that is currently stuck under survival (again, with survival requirements as a secondary) and would cover most skills that involve shaping and working with a handful of materials but don’t involve moving parts or mechanisms or attaching disparate parts into a larger whole system (mechanics), electricity (electronics) or chemical/physical reactions (cooking/chemistry).
So Fabrication/Archery would be bows and arrows.
Fabrication/Survival would allow one to make cord from sinews, fibers, etc. and to make most primitive tools like stone axes.
Fabrication/Mechanics would handle basic welding of frames for cars and whatnot and crafting more advanced tools with multiple parts working together, like a crossbow (which might well require some archery too!).
Fabrication/Firearms would allows you to craft gun parts if you have access to a milling machine.
I think it’s honestly worthwhile at this point to consider throwing it in and moving a lot of stuff over to it. But honestly the skill system is getting pretty unbalanced and could do with a general rewrite anyway (supporting skills should provide a required level, not a simple skill boost, and represent a required level of knowledge of the field to make the item in question, but shouldn’t get trained by the actual crafting, while primary skills should be trained by the action in question but should be pretty crafting specific and be the prime determinant of quality)
If you can only make half a dozen arrows in your spare time during the day, archery becomes more about thinking about who and what to shoot, rather than sitting back with your machinegun bow firing an endless stream of arrows into everything.
Half a dozen is more than enough to get you hunting animals, which you can then use to make more arrows and better armor/carrying equipment. You could also clear out the outskirts of a few houses and look in them for better supplies.
Archery shouldn’t be a an instant payoff thing, that’s not what archery is. It’s a long and difficult process to become a skilled archer and reflecting that ingame by making it take several days to build up your supplies would improve the feel of the skill, I think. I think it would be more engaging than just making archery a horrible grind to level up. Better to make your arrows hurt when they hit, and have a good chance of recovery, but each one is an investment of time (and thus food, and water, and the time spent accumulating those) and you can’t carry a lot of them at once.
i generally love playing an archer build, but i agree arrows are far too easy to make, if i can make 12-20 a day, i would enjoy hunting much more, plus it would cut down on my stockpile of rotting corpses(I think corpses should tell you when they are rotten because i was collecting loads of them and not butchering them thinking they would stay fresh until i butchered them. . . such wishfull thinking.
