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[Derakon]

Pilsu: weapon durability will become a factor eventually, which will be the appropriate nerf for the obsidian swords, etc.

But why should flint-tipped arrows be slower to fire than pure-wood arrows? Or are you just repeating the general complaint that bow-users are gatling guns?

[Silverionmox]

Obsidian (and probably flint ones too) arrow heads are sharper, and thus have more penetrative power than ordinary metal ones. The downside is that they take ages to fabricate, they break more easily, and once they're broken or blunt, they're useless. Metal ones can be remelted, sharpened, hammered back into shape etc.

Arrowhead and the arrow shaft are usually fabricated separately, by the way. The shaft is the hard thing to make (and has the most impact on range, precision etc.): fletcher was a separate profession for a good reason. Arrowheads are for business and tend to get mauled often, but the shaft remained intact usually. They were designed with that in mind, so hunters or soldier carried only a limited number of shafts and plenty of arrowheads.

[Ampersand]

I think that all of this is is really about a larger issue, which is about the distinction between stones and gems. Although they are treated as two separate things in DF, the reality is that they are not, and the real determining factor between what can be done with a given rock is a matter of hardness and the brittleness of the material.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I wouldn't mind seeing "fletching/fletcher" being a separate skill. For one thing, it'd employ some dwarfs, and it might also nerf the crossbow a bit, if the quality of shaft strongly determines (potentially curtailing) precision and range.

[Pilsu]

Just put fletching under Bowyer. Either that or do away with Bowyer skill entirely, it's pretty pointless anyway

Having to chop down a forest's worth of trees for training just to get good arrows seems kind of silly though

[SirHoneyBadger]

Trees should really be harvestable for an effectively unlimited amount of shafts, so yeah, as the game currently stands, it would be silly, but hopefully that'll change.

Right now, yeah it is kind of pointless. In the (possibly far) future, though, I could see a fletcher skill becoming atleast more important than soapmaker.

[Footkerchief]

Trees should really be harvestable for an effectively unlimited amount of shafts,

Really?  Are you talking about just pruning branches and using those for shafts?  I don't think you'd get many strong, straight shafts that way.

[LegoLord]

Trees should really be harvestable for an effectively unlimited amount of shafts,

Really?  Are you talking about just pruning branches and using those for shafts?  I don't think you'd get many strong, straight shafts that way.

Depends on the branch.  Some would be better than others, and those better ones are the ones I'd imagine they'd prune.  They'd most likely leave the thin ones.

"harvest twigs"
"harvest branches"
Are two additions I can see in addition to:
"chop tree"

[SirHoneyBadger]

Trees should really be harvestable for an effectively unlimited amount of shafts,

Really?  Are you talking about just pruning branches and using those for shafts?  I don't think you'd get many strong, straight shafts that way.

Footkerchief, I think there has to be a point in the game where we can safely handwave the vaguely defined minutae of what we propose is reality.

Trees have branches. Some will be straight enough, and long enough, to be used as shafts. That's not hard for me to accept, or to make the leap to branches being processed into shafts.

Maybe only some types of trees can be harvested? And maybe only one or two are useable per tree? The idea that it takes the time of a skilled worker, and a tree that can't otherwise be used as a log (and may only be harvestable for branches once a year, anyway) to make arrow and bolt shafts-for me anyway-is more than enough trouble to have to go through (with maybe a few reasonable further limitations, here and there, if there seems to be a need for them), without requiring the game track the angle, flexibility, and variation from true, of every single twig in the world.

As an option, we could keep the current method of still making shafts from logs, but that's a pretty wasteful method of making them, when Nature provides shafts that are already mostly complete, only requiring a degree of finishing.

[Pilsu]

Branches are used for firewood. Saplings are used for arrows

Guess the issue is with the leveling up system in general. You get 30xp per stack so you need to make 600 stacks. It's not very flexible as is. Now, becoming "legendary" of course takes effort but I don't think grinding will give it prestige

[SirHoneyBadger]

Branches are used for firewood. Saplings are used for arrows

As Legolord already mentioned, it depends on the type of tree.

For that matter, I've made my own arrows out of branches before. They were crap, but they flew.