Print

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

[utunnels]

Well I hadn't been playing the game for years until 40.13 wa released.

 After several experimental embark, I created my first marksdwarf squad. Everything went smoothly. I got 4 elite marksdwarves (all legendary+) eventually.
 But I noticed, it's very hard to hit moving target and it seemed the target always bleeded to death. Headshot was very rare, almost every target was shot to a hedgehog before eventually died. For example, my hunter, who was one of the elite,emptied his quiver on an unconscious camel without killing it! If the target doesn't bleed then it's almost impossible to kill without a fortification. For example, I killed a mud forgotten beast yesterday and found 18 steel/silver bolts on the corpse(perhaps every body part got one).

 The melee dwarves are doing fine, heads roll, limbs fly, jobs are always done quickly.

[LordUbik]

Yep, specifically projectiles speed has been lowered and armour piercing capabilities nerfed a lot. Now it hard to penetrate a steel breastplate without iron/steel bolts.

Also, now units can walk, run, run at full speed. .. meaning that they can change speed on the go making aiming harder.

[utunnels]

Yeah, I can understand.
But an unconscious camel? Maybe that's the reason why I need hunting dogs.

[§k]

Bolt and arrow are indeed nerft, but what you saw is normal in older versions.

Bolt cannot be aimed to specific bodypart, and rarely kils anything directly. When the target prones, it is difficult to hit at all.

[Rogue Yun]

Headshot was very rare, almost every target was shot to a hedgehog before eventually died.

I think there might be something wrong with the strength of skulls in general. They are no longer like paper, that is for sure. I had 3 level 4-6 hammerdwarves armed with at least superior silver hammers bashing away at the head of an opossum.  It took them WAY longer than they should have and hundreds of strikes to kill it. I don't even think it was a blow to the head that killed it. I had several other instances with random villagers gathered around wild water buffalo punching it in the skull for a period that I'm sure was waaay too long. But that is just my inexperienced opinion.

[Max™]

On the one hand, this is a race which includes things like dorfs punching armored warhorses out from under their riders mid-charge and sending them flying back several metersurists to explode upon impact with another dorf's face.

On the other hand, you would never get through the skull of a water buffalo with your fists, no matter how many people you had punching it or how long they tried, sometimes it takes several high caliber rounds from a hunting rifle to do that.

[utunnels]

I always imagine hunting with a bow should be like in those movies, one-hit-kill.
But in DF universe you have to make small holes over the target until it bleeds out, much crueler.

[The Bard]

As a bowhunter, you usually have to track the annimal until the bleed out/get tired and you shoot them again.

In my fort, however, my commander likes shooting stuff in the eye. It rarely killed them, but they stay stunned like forever once you tear a nerve doing that.

[Melting Sky]

Yes, all ranged weapons have been MASSIVELY nerfed. It essentially impossible to pierce any armor constructed of steel or better. It is very hard to kill anything with projectiles. They should be used for softening targets rather than finishing them. All projectiles that are not metal are a complete waste of time. Just send in armored elite melee dwarves. They are as utterly invincible as ever.

[Urist Tilaturist]

As it should be. Arrows did not pierce solid steel plate, and their wounds were rarely fatal at once. While a storm crossbow bolts could wreak havoc among unarmoured or lightly armoured foes, against warriors in full plate it would do little damage unless it hit them in the face while their visors were up, which is unlikely.

Historical knights were often compared to hedgehogs with so many arrows stuck in their chain mail. They often survived.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Historically speaking, weren't longbows and larger crossbows able to pretty effectively penetrate armor?

[Urist Tilaturist]

Historically speaking, weren't longbows and larger crossbows able to pretty effectively penetrate armor?

Leather jacks (layers of thick boiled leather, much stronger than leather jackets), yes, which was what most soldiers wore in those days. Bodkin arrows and crossbow bolts could sometimes go through mail. But full, steel plate, as worn only by rich knights? Not a chance, unless it went in a gap, which could happen with a sufficient volume of bolts or arrows. Henry V of England was hit in the face by an arrow and lost some teeth, but only because he had his visor up at the time.

When knights were stopped by arrows, it was usually because the horses got hit and killed and everyone else behind fell over them, or that the volume of arrows was so great that enough entered gaps in the armour to cause some wounds (often in the face because people needed visors up to breathe and see, and not always fatal), and the knights were then killed or captured at close range. Arrows were only massively deadly to the bulk of soldiers, who were not wearing full plate. Agincourt is a good example of this - England took thousands of Frenchmen prisoner, not possible if they had all been dead by arrows, and the leader of the French charge actually survived because his ransom was worth too much for him to be killed, and lived the rest of his life in England.

For more information, watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1WZLVZYBwQ&list=UUt14YOvYhd5FCGCwcjhrOdA

TL;DR: Crossbow bolts should have a fair chance of piercing leather, mail, or even plate up to bronze or possibly iron at close range. Arrows should not pierce anything more than mail, and even that only at short range with heavy war arrows (crossbows had more power but much slower reload speed). Steel plate should be basically impenetrable to bolts and arrows unless it is made by a novice armoursmith who botches it in some way. This does not exclude, of course, being hit on an unarmoured bit of the body.

[The Bard]

Full drawn longbow arrows routinely penetrated plate, but lost so much energy that the padding stopped it thereafter.

Romantics often try to paint plate as invincible and the firearm as 'killing' platemail. However, the opposite is true: platemail was engineered specifically to be 'bulletproof' (eg: they straight up shot bullets into the mail to prove it would stop it), while the longbow was still the best murder machine.

The reason firearms took over is because it's super easy to teach people to proficient with firearms and less so to teach thme to be the ultramurder heroes a longbowman could become if they were at the top of their game.

It was only after rifling came about that firearms held a candle to bows n terms of putting bodies in the ground, especially armored bodies.

[Urist Tilaturist]

No. Musket balls had far, far better armour penetration than crossbows, which in turn penetrated better than longbows. A longbow arrow's force is restricted by the strength of the archer, far more so than a crossbow drawn by a windlass, or a musket powered by explosives! The longbow's great advantage was its fast rate of shots and physical and psychological damage to lightly armoured foes - as in, most of the army. Early guns were wildly inaccurate and sometimes exploded, but far more destructive to armoured foes if they hit.

Describing the longbow as a "murder machine" has another problem, and that is arrows' relative lack of stopping power compared to bullets. An arrow, once it has hit someone, usually lodges in the wound and the long shaft blocks bleeding. A bullet is not nearly as polite, and leaves an open hole with the bullet inside for much more bleeding. Musket balls were still survivable, but they tended to bring down enemies much quicker if they hit. Remember that Henry V got hit in the face by an arrow and survived, only losing some teeth. Not exactly a murder machine. There are also many accounts, especially from Arabia, of people losing eyes after being hit by arrows there, including one warrior, Abu Sufyan, who lost both eyes in separate battles. Notably, these arrows did not go straight through their eyes and into their brains, and most of them survived. Again, not really a murder machine.

Arrows were deadly and dangerous, but bolts hit harder than arrows, and musket balls hit harder than bolts. If longbows had made armour so useless, it would have been discarded much earlier than it was.

[Magistrum]

No.

Would hurt less if it weren't so true...
But yeah, that's right. Bullets are better than bolts which are better than arrows. The only problem is that firing something with explosives don't leave much room for aiming, and that's why it took some time for guns to get more widespread. They wouldn't hit a damn thing!