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Author Topic: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?  (Read 2710 times)

AzuredreamsXT

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I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« on: March 30, 2012, 06:03:10 am »
Will wooden bolts get the job (of perforating goblins) done? And does quality of the bolt affect weapon damage?
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kaijyuu

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2012, 06:07:11 am »
They'll kill goblins dead with a decent marksdwarf.


I've heard conflicting stories as to how much they pierce armor, but since gobbies only show up with basic covering, they'll at least be disabled very quickly.
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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2012, 06:18:04 am »
just have enough crossdwarves so that wooden bolts blot out the sun. The goblins can't block all of them.
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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #3 on: March 30, 2012, 06:32:12 am »
The quality of the xbow only affects the accuracy of the shot

If youre going to use wooden bolts, id say go with bone instead whenever you can get around to it. If you look on the wiki "Crossbows can regularly pierce even adamantium armor with wooden bolts. Copper and other low-grade metals can do so virtually every time." someone posted a bugreport about it in 34.04 but im not entirely sure if it has been changed in our current version.
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slothen

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2012, 07:33:48 am »
the effectiveness of wooden bolts varies by the type of wood.  Wood is plentiful and makes 25 bolts at a time, so its very useful.  However I've seen tons of combat-logs of vannila goblin copper/iron armor chain deflecting many many wooden bolts.  Bone bolts have a slight edge.
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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #5 on: March 30, 2012, 07:44:22 am »
featherwood is most likely not the best choice.
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rampagingfrodo

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #6 on: March 30, 2012, 08:08:01 am »
I'm fairly sure bolts are more effective the denser the material is. If this is the case, then bloodthorn and glumprong wood bolts would be particularly effective, and silver bolts most effective.

If you look at the RAWs, bloodthorn's density is 1250, glumprong is 1200, and silver is 10490. So yes, essentially wooden bolts are terrible (with respect to metal bolts). They'll still pincushion your enemies to death, but in my experience I only use them for practice.
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nightwhips

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2012, 10:17:10 am »
I use them for practice and for buzzard control, but when things get dicey I would rather have silver for seiges. Bone is a little better than wood but can take a long time to skill up, though this has gotten better because the CLT bug is fixed.
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Frogwarrior

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #8 on: March 30, 2012, 10:37:20 am »
If you want to use wood bolts, and you have glumprongs and blood thorn, modify your stockpiles so all your glumprongs and blood thorns are stockpiled next to your workshop. BLood thorns and glumprongs are both at least twice as dense as pretty much every other sort of wood.
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GavJ

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #9 on: March 30, 2012, 11:12:56 am »
Silver.  Who doesn't have silver sitting around?  Seriously.  It is a byproduct of like every common low grade ore.

If you have galena, lead for bolts is even better.  It is a tad denser, but also, importantly, has fewer trade uses, which makes it a significantly better choice for bolts that just get destroyed anyway.

Honestly, this is the exact same reasoning for why lead is used for projectiles in real life! Lowest cost per density by far.
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AzuredreamsXT

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #10 on: March 30, 2012, 11:24:04 am »
I'm using wood because it's within the set of limitations i established for this fort. This game is often easy as hell if you make use of everything available to you.
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jaxy15

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #11 on: March 30, 2012, 11:30:08 am »
I once had a hunter with wooden bolts seriously injure an axegob. They can still kill things.
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martinuzz

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #12 on: March 30, 2012, 11:34:09 am »
Has anybody done !!SCIENCE!! yet on using nethercap bolts? Do they cause cold damage?
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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #13 on: March 30, 2012, 11:38:07 am »
Quote from: martinuzz on March 30, 2012, 11:34:09 am
Has anybody done !!SCIENCE!! yet on using nethercap bolts? Do they cause cold damage?

Useless, nether caps are 10000° U, and cold damage point for tissues is 9900° U.
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Marshall Burns

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Re: I know wooden weapons are terrible, but what about bolts?
« Reply #14 on: March 30, 2012, 12:00:30 pm »
I don't worry about the lethality of bolts. All you need to do is chip a few bones in unprotected body parts so the enemies drop from pain, then release the melee squad for free headshots.
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