Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[squamous]

Currently DF struggles with ranged weapons in adventure mode. This is primarily because reloading a ranged weapon is both automatic and time consuming. One or the other would be fine, but as things stand using a ranged weapon is essentially suicide, as you'll only get one shot off before you are forced to reload your weapon, during which time you are highly vulnerable and easily dispatched. It makes things like bows and crossbows unusable for solo players, and even with NPC allies you might be rushed down anyway. If the player could choose to reload their weapon, then at the very least they could get one shot off and then look for a good opportunity to reload. If it were made faster, then an automatic reloading situation would be more tolerable. I personally think implementing one or both of these features before adventure mode is re-integrated would be a good idea, as then players wouldn't have to deal with these issues from the get-go, and it would also open up modding opportunities for things like repeating crossbows for faster-firing weapons, or heavy arbalests for more powerful, slower weapons, to give some examples.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Agree with the suggestion.
But you know adventurer parties are a thing now, right?
Start with a couple of tanks and a bow guy, same as you would in any other RPG. During battles you can manually control the whole party, so you'll never be "rushed down".

[squamous]

Agree with the suggestion.
But you know adventurer parties are a thing now, right?
Start with a couple of tanks and a bow guy, same as you would in any other RPG. During battles you can manually control the whole party, so you'll never be "rushed down".

It's true, but even so, that locks the player into having to only play ranged characters a certain way. I shouldn't always have to go out of my way to build a whole party to make a bowman viable, since even a master bowman would still be limited by these forced reloading sequences. You can only ever play them as supporting characters, there's no way to, for example, play a more active style of archer such as a solo hunter with a keen eye on the lower end of the spectrum (he'll likely be killed by the first predator he tries to hunt), or movie Legolas from LOTR in the higher end (outright impossible), which feels odd in a game where you can be a demigod with legendary skills if you pick the right start and train hard enough. I'm not saying that low-skill bowmen should be using their weapons like martial artists and doing trick shots while doing backflips, the average one probably would be best used in a supporting role behind melee fighters, but that the current way it works arbitrarily limits ranged-specialist adventurers to a very specific role no matter how skilled they get. My main quibble is, like I've mentioned, that you can't choose when to reload your weapon, meaning as soon as you fire you're forced to enter a highly vulnerable state no matter what. That really shouldn't be happening unless its a specific quirk of the weapon, like say some kind of magic bow that leaves you catatonic for a moment after you fire it. But that'd be for the magic update. In real life, bowmen weren't arbitrarily obligated to nock another arrow after firing the first one while an infantryman charged at them with a sword, and I can't see any gameplay mechanic-oriented justification in DF for why it does that either. This applies to NPCs too, meaning even if you're up against a very skilled bowman you can still easily win if you get into melee and he misses or doesn't disable you, because if he shoots while you're close enough to charge him, the game forces him to reload, so you've got an advantage you shouldn't have as he'd logically be trying to disengage before fiddling with his weapon. Though that could be something handled by temperament for NPCs. Risk-takers may opt for trying to get another shot in as you charge them, while more careful fighters would flee first. But either way it shouldn't be forced.

Also, the fact you can't target specific body part is also a huge missing feature, given that all of the above would at least be a little more bearable if the one shot you could get off could be aimed at the head. Aiming was trickier with primitive ranged weapons I know, so maybe lock it off until a particular skill level or something (perhaps also a raw-moddable variable, precise aiming with bows would likely be trickier than crossbows). Still secondary to the reload problem however.

[crundle_bone_earring]

i still vividly remember the first time i tried using a ranged weapon in adventure mode: i was a good distance from a night troll that was charging in my direction. Despite having low crossbow skill, i thought i could try to get a lucky shot before switching to my melee weapon. Imagine my surprise when my quick shot turned into my character deciding to stand still in the middle of a field, slowly reloading the crossbow while the night troll kept attacking until i was dead.
Even before the balance matter, as it is now ranged weapons are incredibly obtuse and unintuitive. While it makes sense for you to be unable to stop, say, an axe swing since it is a very quick action that demands you to use your whole body and momentum, a reload is the opposite. It's a slow, premeditated action that most people can stop at any time. I am not against the rather slow reload (realistically, even a master bowman would have trouble surviving alone in a fight in the distances dwarf fortress battles happen in), but it should definitely be something you choose to start and something you can stop midway.
Personally, i think the best way to go about it would be to separate a reload into different sub-actions, which you can start individually. A crossbow, for example, might require you to first pull back the string, then get a new bolt, then place it on the crossbow. This way reloading stops being this monolithic action where you're just begging to be killed during it and start being a series of short actions that allow you to reposition, defend or change strategies in between. This also has the side effect of differentiating more the ranged weapons: a crossbow reloads slowly but can be kept fully loaded indefinitely (or at least for a long time), a bow is quick to load but always requires the last step (pulling the string) to be done immediately before shooting, a blowgun does both but is weaker, etc.

[Egan_BW]

Perhaps at higher skills bow users could hold several arrows in the hand and fire them off rapidly. Not sure if that technique is historical but it is cool and this is a fantasy game. With elves who should be a scary threat rather than a joke.

[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

I kinda like to keep it realistic. I used to do archery, and it just isn't something that is viable in any way in close combat. Off course, it's a fantasy game so you could say you want something fun like Legolas in LOTR, but I'd prefer more realism.

Crossbows IRL are actually famous for long loading times. You simple can't fire them in close combat.

HOWEVER, my counter-offer would be to give archery a bigger chance of one-shotting opponents. This is actually what bows and crossbows are good at. If you have time to aim, you can IRL pretty much hit where you want. I myself shot a plastic deer in the eye actually, and I'd say my level was just a bit above novice!

With high skills in DF, yeah you should be able to shoot a creature in the eye if you want to.

So the attack modes should have something like "aim real carefully", and if you aimed at the head, you'd then get a nice chance to plunk the arrow through the brain of the target. In return it would take even longer.

This would make archery usefull as a sort of tactically interesting thing - where you maybe run away, circle around, turn sneak on, approach the enemy from behind and then aim real carefully for the head.

[squamous]

I kinda like to keep it realistic. I used to do archery, and it just isn't something that is viable in any way in close combat. Off course, it's a fantasy game so you could say you want something fun like Legolas in LOTR, but I'd prefer more realism.

Crossbows IRL are actually famous for long loading times. You simple can't fire them in close combat.

HOWEVER, my counter-offer would be to give archery a bigger chance of one-shotting opponents. This is actually what bows and crossbows are good at. If you have time to aim, you can IRL pretty much hit where you want. I myself shot a plastic deer in the eye actually, and I'd say my level was just a bit above novice!

With high skills in DF, yeah you should be able to shoot a creature in the eye if you want to.

So the attack modes should have something like "aim real carefully", and if you aimed at the head, you'd then get a nice chance to plunk the arrow through the brain of the target. In return it would take even longer.

This would make archery usefull as a sort of tactically interesting thing - where you maybe run away, circle around, turn sneak on, approach the enemy from behind and then aim real carefully for the head.

I agree that with normal weapons and normal people they shouldn't be used to do Equilibrium-esque gun-kata, and crossbows are definitely slow-firing normally. But bows are definitely faster-firing than crossbows (depending on the user and the kind of bow). So why do they have the same reload times? They should be different, and if you're going to make it different I'd say you should make it moddable as well, but I'm biased in that regard. Though also, things like repeating crossbows definitely exist, and with moddable reloading times it would be possible to simulate that mechanically. Also, while again I agree with mundane people being limited to the mundane limits of these kinds of weapons, the game is also built to simulate demigods and superhuman warriors in addition to the average goon, so building the groundwork to allow these weapons to be taken to Legolas-tier stunt shooting wouldn't be breaking the intent of the game too much so long as it was something you had to earn by getting that good at the weapon rather than any low-tier archer being able to do it.

My main issue is ultimately the forced-reload mechanic though, which is just completely unjustifiable and is what actually makes an adventure mode ranged fighter nerfed into the ground imo. When reloading is mandatory you can't do basic things like shooting, running away, reloading in a safe area, and shooting again or fighting in the method you suggest. Every arrow fired is a commitment to standing perfectly still and completely vulnerable to however many turns and getting eviscerated by the enemy once they close the distance. If nothing else this absolutely needs to be changed. If I, as a peasant-level goof with a rusty dagger, can kill a legendary archer so long as he misses once, not because I was lucky but because game mechanics arbitrarily lock him into a reloading "animation" rendering him completely defenseless to my most basic attacks, then something is wrong.