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[MisterMister]

An English source that *has* to advertise the "mighty longbow" in an article that ain't about it  :p

Notice that it constantly uses the phrase "this researcher" and yet presumes longbow awesomeness at the beginning.  How hard were they trying?  And all that business about projectiles "flying" without saying anything about fletching? Jeez. Not to mention it's so cheekily written...

The original source where those measurements of time comes from I believe is an older book, "The book of the Crossbow"  mentions additional info.

1. A trained soldier would load it much faster than an academic ("this researcher").

2. A great deal of that time is aiming NOT loading the weapon.

3. A regular bowman would never shoot at max speed (part of it is same reason that soldiers now don't spray and pray).

Meaning of course that rates of fire are much closer than what is generally perceived.  The source isn't lying exactly but being extremely deceptive.

While dying horribly is a major part of DF, combat isn't the focus as much as building things IMO.  Such changes could compromise the building of things.  For instance you say to make the steel crossbows 2-3 times slower.  Isn't steel 133% of damage?  Doesn't that kill their dps?  Such a thing would make the production of higher weapons pointless and make the management of resources easier as that's one less steel item you have to make.  That would compromise part of the rising difficulty as you go deeper into the mountatin.  The better solution, IMO, would be keep the steel xbow ROF the same but increase the amount of ingredients: loading mechanism, stock, etc.

Another game example is a castle builder, Stronghold.  Crossbows there while slower they're only slightly so.  The accuracy and power makes them across the board, with the exception of firing flaming arrows to light pitch, stronger than the bowman.  However, they're still balanced combat wise because they take more materials to make, more gold, and require leather armor which needs cows.  If you butcher too many cows you kill your cheese production and ruin food variety affecting happiness.  The key is that the cost/benefit is focused on management not tactical hoohaw from the interwebs' idea of "realism."  Stronghold 2 compromised this balanced by having bowman better.  Combined with their ROF they took over every other unit on the field meaning you never had to build advanced buildings and you could rush straight out the door.  It killed the game.

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

Um, who really gives a crap about xbow vs longbow and their rl armor piercing capabilities? The title of the thread is "Ranged weapons are imbalanced", I agree. If others do too, perhaps it'd be more productive to think of how to balance them in-game than bickering over contrasting semi-historical examples of their potency.

Personally I'd vote for a reduced RoF, and *slightly* reduced acc. and crit. for the bow and xbow. Rocks, butterflies, etc. need total nerfing. And you probably shouldn't be able to throw a javeling and retrieve a new one from your backpack in .04 seconds either.

[Tommy2U]

I wrote my post with game balance in mind and presented some solutions. I believe it's in the vein of game to give semi-realistic solutions to problems, not ones taken out of ass.
Damage per second as a main factor to evaluate weapons is ok for Diablo or LOTRO, but DF has a somewhat more developed combat system.
Anyway, dwarves cannot shoot bows in the game, so we don't have to worry to much about bow vs crossbow balance, except for human adventurers and some enemies.
Kobolds and goblins don't shoot longbows by the way, being too small, they use either laminates or crappy short selfbows.
Longbow pwnage is a known vice of most English language sources. The one I cited is not the worst.
I wanted to reduce RoF of all crossbows, now a skilled marksdwarf can shoot several bolts before the first one reaches the target.
Realistically, steel xbows should require spanning aids and even longer loading times, I do not propose to have it in game. Anyway, I'm not sure if launcher material increases missile damage or only melee damage with crossbow.
I believe dozen arrows a minute could be achieved for a short time while firing unaimed volleys. In the game nobody's shooting at 3000 Frenchmen, but at single targets or small groups, so every shot is aimed.

[Stromko]

They shouldn't cause multiple criticals in one hit, as they do now. Right now when you get hit with an arrow or bolt, pretty much every organ in the struck limb is obliterated. Given that it's a piercing weapon, this often makes no sense.

I think, balance-wise, melee weapons should be more lethal than ranged weapons. Ranged weapons incur far less risk on the attacker, whereas melee automatically exposes you to counter-attacks. This isn't so much realistic, it's just a question of risk/reward. If it were up to me I'd reduce projectile damage rather than increase melee damage, because I prefer longer fights, and at really high skill levels it's already possible to slaughter someone in one turn.

Something that should be pointed out, on the topic of really high skill levels, is that what often kills people are Elite bowmen. They do in fact appear to be much more lethal than other Elite mobs, but anyway this may have a lot to do with why they get so many criticals. Perhaps their skill critical boost and the weapon critical boost have some kind of exponential effect.

[AlanL]

When it comes to thrown objects, i say the actual damage should be based on weight, sharpness, density, and the strength of the thrower.

Weight should be a multiplier for the damage as well as the strength of the thrower, and if the sharpness is high enough damage would be increased as well as the damage type being changed to pierce instead of bludgeon. Low density should actually have a deviding factor, as less dense objects objects take more air friction and distribute the force of the impact over a larger area for the same force.

So, understandably, an Ultra-Mighty adventurer throwing a big, heavy boulder should really be able to bash someones head in, and someone playing darts flinging an arrow at someone should be able to do quite a bit of damage to an unarmored target, although not as much as using a bow of course. But, butterflies weigh so little that all of the shots would glance away, and the same with mittens as mittens have a fairly low density compared to say, stone or iron.