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[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Tormy:
<STRONG>Guys, its nice that you wrote a history about xbows and stuff, but its totally pointless. Ranged weapons in DF are extremely overpowered and game breaking, also not fun. Something must be done as soon as possible.</STRONG>

Of course. We need to make some reloading mechanics, but to do that we need to know how stuff works.

quote:Originally posted by Name Lips:
<STRONG>Actually, a lot of commoners would use slings. A good sling is really easy to make, and ammunition is free and everywhere. A good slinger can bring down a medium-sized animal with one shot. Their only downside is they require LOTS of practice to use well.</STRONG>

I remember suggesting this a while back. Slings are great! If you had a pile of them sitting around the kids would steal them and use them as toys. Later on that would give them a headstart towards using them as weapons. Seeing as rocks seem to be unlimited and free they would be a great addition.

I use slings myself, have been for about a year now and i still totally suck at accuracy.   I can get a stone to fly over 100 feet away, and with enough power to make it "hum" as it flies through the air. THe problem? I cant even hit a barn.

Anyhow back to xbows. If we go by the types i listed above, which are quite general, it would be easy to assign a different method of reloading to each type. The problem is if they are modular like we want, xbows of the same type could have varying strengths, does that mean we need to give them different trigger and reloading assemblies?

Each xbow should be divided into a few components like so:
1. Stock: the size and shape determines the grip and type of the xbow. Every stock above wrist size has a loop attached to the front, this allows one method of reloading and lets you hang it up on a rack. Like the trigger the stock must be strong enough.
2. Bow: The shape, size and power determines how powerful a launcher the xbow is and how hard it is to reload. Bows are interchangeable with other bows of the same size.
3. Trigger: The trigger on any given crossbow must be strong enough to hold back the string. Simple triggers are reliable, but not very safe. Also, how finely tuned a trigger is affects how fast you can shoot with it, hair triggers are good for hunters, more slow triggers would be good for say, siege crossbow operators. If you shoot one of those, you had better be sure its pointed the right way first!.
4. Re-cocker: If the xbow is too hard to reload by hand you will need to add on some method of pulling the string back. This can include levers, ratchets and winches. They are all permanent additions to an xbow stock, attaching or removing one must be done at the workshop.

Each crossbow would be composed of the first 3 parts, and possibly have the 4th attached. The stock and trigger control how powerful a bow you can mount. Now in game terms it would take several turns to fully reload a crossbow. The method controls the speed:

Hand: At the very least, you will need to stop, put your foot in the loop and yank the string back with both hands. Putting a bolt on the track can be done on the move. This is good for hunters. Hand crossbows are weak enough that the bow needs no bracing and reloading can be done with your fingers alone.

Belt hook: Instead of pulling the string back by hand you attach it to your belt and push the crossbow away with your leg. In general your leg muscles will be stronger and this allows you to reload a strong crossbow without advanced doodads. Of course the disadvantage is that its slow and you can not move while reloading.

Lever: Levers simplify the process, you pull back once and the string is reset. This can be done on the move, but still requires 2 hands. Levers can not be used to pull back very strong crossbows but are good for "repeaters" if such are ever added. This is the only practical way to use a wrist crossbow.

Ratchet: Ratchet systems are similar to the lever but you must pump it multiple times. They allow you to pull back massive weights but it is the slowest of all the mechanisms. This can not be done while moving but the ratchet has one advantage over all the other mechanisms, it can be used while prone without shifting away from a firing position.

Winch: Winch systems use gears to amplify the loaders turning force. When you need to reload you attach 2 hooks to the string and wind them up until the string is set. Winches are overall the most efficient because they can re-cock xbows of any strength with minimal effort. To do this you must be stationary and standing.

Each method has different requirements and each works at a different speed. Now if these were added into say, adventure mode. Would they be enough to balance out the power of any given crossbow? With the exception of hand and wrist crossbows, every method listed above requires two seperate actions. You need two hands to pull back the string or operate the mechanism, then you need one hand to load the bolt and another to hold the crossbow.

The fastest you would ever see someone fire a standard hunting crossbow would be once every 4 "turns".
Fire -> Brace -> Re-cock -> Load -> Fire
A siege crossbow with a ratchet system would be very slow, but its power makes up for that. In this example it would fire once every 8 "turns".
Fire -> Brace -> Lever -> Lever -> Lever -> Lever -> Lever -> Load -> Fire
Using a winch instead would cut that down to at least 5 turns. Compared to a longbow, the bow is MUCH faster because loading and pulling the string back can be a single action, IE:
Fire -> Brace/Reload -> Fire =repeating

Does this sound about right? Now keep in mind that this does not include aiming and steadying the crossbow. Aiming takes time and while your doing that the crossbow has to be perfectly stable. Steadying a hunting or hand crossbow takes little effort, but imagine hefting an arbalest into firing position.

Even if you could pull a legolas and shoot off an arrow every 4 seconds or faster, would you? At typical battlefield ranges, your not gonna hit anything. I know english longbowmen could shoot even faster than that but they stood in ranks of 100 or more and fired in a big cloud.

So using your typical hunting crossbow would take about 5 turns per shot while the typical arbalest or siege crossbow would take something like 10-12 turns.

[Grek]

quote:Originally posted by Name Lips:
<STRONG>You could compensate for this by building a collection of levers and gears designed to amplify your own feeble human power... but then you don't exactly have a hand-held weapon anymore.</STRONG>

I'm confident I could make such a setup and still keep it light enough to carry around if I use steel.

[Name Lips]

quote:Originally posted by Grek:
<STRONG>

I'm confident I could make such a setup and still keep it light enough to carry around if I use steel.</STRONG>

No offense, but I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, it's just internet bravado.

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Name Lips:
<STRONG>No offense, but I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, it's just internet bravado.</STRONG>

Hey it cant be too hard! Ive seen someone build a belt-fed machine gun out of K'nex.

[BurnedToast]

quote:Originally posted by Grek:
<STRONG>

I'm confident I could make such a setup and still keep it light enough to carry around if I use steel.</STRONG>

I have no doubt you could, however it would be at least one of the following:

1. Not very strong.

2. Shoot slow.

3. Be REALLY hard to crank.

4. Have to be cranked REALLY fast.

Can't get around it. To fire a projectile with X amount of power takes X amount of input (slighly more due to inefficiency, actually). If you want the crossbow to fire with 100 Joules of energy every second, you are going to need to put 100J of energy in every second (somewhat more actually). This means you need to crank hard, or crank fast (depending on the gearing of the mechanisms).

[Thallone]

quote:Originally posted by Lightning4:
<STRONG>Well, now this gets into the whole "time compression" debate.
Most things in the game are at varying levels of time compression for the sake of simplicity.
Battles would be far less fun if they took place at the uber fast time rate the rest of the game goes at. Goblins would instantly appear, fuck up your dwarves, and leave before you even saw what happened.

So if you get down to it, most miners are taking several hours to actually mine out one square... which is still pretty damn good I think. I have no idea how fast a real world miner could go when armed with nothing but a pickaxe and no explosives.

[ September 23, 2007: Message edited by: Lightning4 ]</STRONG>

An hour, tops, for a legendary. I've timed it carefully as possible by pausing for a date check after every square. 25 squares per day. Depending upon interpretation, that's iether 125 or 1000 cubic feet of stone, for one guy, per hour.

for comparison, when carving the tunnels for the railroad through Donner Pass, a team of miners with explosives were doing well to get 2 feet per day. it took teams of miners (12-15 men) working 24 hours a day 2 years, using 4 faces, to go 1659 feet. From http://cprr.org/Museum/Tunnels.html and quoted here to avoid having to read the entire article.

quote: Tunnel No. 6. — This, the longest tunnel of the road, is parallel to, and about 400 ft. north of Donner Pass. Its length is 1,659 ft., and greatest depth below the surface 124 ft., measuring from grade. The material is granite, of a medium quality, crossed by seams in every direction.  To expedite the work a shaft was sunk about the middle of the tunnel,  <details> In the headings of summit tunnel the average daily progress with powder was
1.18 ft. per day with nitro-glycerine,
1.82 ft., or over 54 per cent. additional progress.
In bottom of summit tunnel, average daily progress with powder, full gangs, was 2.51 ft. ; with nytro-glycerine, 4.38, or over 74 per cent, in favor of nitro-glycerine. The same number of men were used with both explosives.

So it seems to me that our intreped dwarves are possibly made of sterner stuff than we. We can also safely assume, when rationaizing things, that the numbers of dwarves may be an abstraction.

[Jifodus]

To also make speed appropriate approximations of time you have to have a measurement of time.  As well as a reference to something we humans would understand.

Puke determined that one game day is 1200 game ticks long. So if we equate that to how many minutes are in a real day (1440), we come up to a single tick being 1.2 real minutes long (or about 1 minute 12 seconds).

It seems plausible to me that an archer should be able to fire at least 2 arrows per tick.  An experienced crossbow archer could fire around 1 bolt per tick, and maybe 4 ticks per bolt for a dabbling crossbow archer.

Personally I don't see a problem with the damage handling.  I think that having armor actually deflecting arrows would be the more ideal way to go.

[Leonidas]

Other computer games have faced these same questions about the balance between various ancient and medieval military units.  My favorite is the Total War series, but there are many others.  And those games usually come to the opposite conclusion from what people are arguing here: Heavy units do worse against archers because they're slow.

The best response to archers is always cavalry, which can close the range while taking only one or two volleys.  Light infantry can do reasonably well if they march in a loose formation, because 1) they usually have big, light wicker shields that work well against arrows, and 2) they can run pretty fast and far without getting too tired.

Heavy infantry doesn't have any of those advantages.  Shields designed for melee are heavier and smaller, and therefore not as useful against arrows.  It's true that their armor will deflect most arrows, but because they're moving so slowly they're going to take an awful lot of shots on the way in.  And if they run to meet the archers, then they're going to be really, really tired when they arrive.

Dwarves are natural heavy infantry: strong and slow.  That's why they live in caves, where a lighter, faster enemy has no room to run.  That's why the Spartans did so well in a narrow pass at Thermopylae (the real Thermopylae, not the silly one in that movie).

Conversely, the dwarves shouldn't do well out on open ground, where they can be flanked or simply run to exhaustion by a faster enemy.  That's why Persian, North African, and Central Asian armies used so little metal armor and rely on archers, especially horse archers.  On totally open ground, the faster units usually win.

So Dwarves at war should hide in their tunnels, waiting at ranges too short for a bowman to be able to fire effectively.  The attackers respond with a siege; the dwarves respond with catapults.

As for hunting, which started this whole thread, it should be a question of who sees whom first.  If the animal sees the dwarf first, then it should easily be able to run away or close to melee range before the dwarf gets off more than one shot.  That's what the Ambush skill was designed for.  If the hunter gets the first shot, and if he hits, then any wild animal (except maybe an elephant) is going to be seriously hurt by a crossbow bolt.  But that's only for the first shot with surprise.  The second shot, while the animal is moving, will be extremely difficult.

So it's not just the crossbows that need to be fixed; it's the movement rates.  Plate mail is heavy, darnit.  Really, really heavy.  I don't care how strong he is, a dwarf in plate mail is never going to chase down a wild animal or a goblin in a loincloth.  Turn down the crossbow damage vs armor and shield, but then give archers skirmish AI so that they back away from enemies and in groups maybe even move to encircle them.  That's when archers become deadly, when they keep plinking you over and over but you can't catch them, and each passing minute brings a little more damage and a little more fatigue.

[Tamren]

All true. Something that we suggested before was to make the DF soldier more diverse to match real-life warfare conventions. That would mean including light/heavy infantry, light/heavy cavarly, skirmishers and so on. The problem with that now is the combat AI is not very tactical. If an entity sees an enemy, the respose is either to run away at top speed, or to charge at top speed and attack. FOrmation fighting, skirmish lines and such are not yet possible.

The balance should look something like this:
Skirmishers < Missile/Cavalry
Light infantry < Heavy infantry/Cavalry
Heavy Infantry < Mobility/Heavy missiles
Light missile < Other Light infantry/Cavalry
Heavy missile < Light missile/Heavy infantry
Cavalry < Pike or Heavy infantry/Missile
Heavy Cavalry < Pike Infantry/Heavy missile
There are also misc specialized soldiers like missile cavarly, tower shield infantry (romans) pike phalanx (later greek/macedonian) chariots (britons), bolt throwers (romans again) and so on.

Not every race would have an equivalent of each type, or they would develop a local variant that takes advantage of terrain and other factors. THis could be for various reasons, if your enviroment had no horses you would never develop cavarly or deticated anti-cavalry weapons.

From what we know so far dwarves would tend towards heavy infantry, possibly some heavy cavalry (war dog riders), we know they love crossbows and they are proficient with heavy weapons like catapults and balistae. So what does that tell us?
1. Dwarves are good at sieges, if they decide to attack your town they might BUILD a fortress next to it and let fly   :p
2. They are specialized for tunnel fighting. In a tunnel you want the heaviest armour you can possibly get. There is no room to run, no room to dodge, just balls to the wall infighting until one of you is dead.

However since the dwarves have a lot of neighbors, it stands to reason that they would fight them eventually. This means they would use tactics to counter other armies on terrain above ground. Dwarves might get pwnt by an army of horse archers, but the horse archers would turn tail if the dwarves all bunkered down behind tower shields and brought a whole brigade of bolt throwers. Plus crossbows tend to shoot farther than bows through sheer power.

--
Plate armour is heavy but it does not limit movement as much as most people think. If it is properly fitted you can turn cartwheels in it, IF you can stand the weight. Running plate armour is not impossible, but getting up to speed and changing direction are where it really hampers your movements.

There ARE ways around this however, sneaky dwarves would use the terrain to your advantage. Imagine if you were part of a group of archers 100 strong getting ready to shoot at some random fortress. Suddenly a dwarf in spiked plate armour bursts out of the ground!
1. You have no where to run.
2. None of you can hurt him!
3. He has a big hammer and everything within reach is fair game.
Talk about o-shit moments, and its not unrealistic to think that you could set it up so that a whole squad of dwarves can ambush in such a fashion instead of 1.

[Grek]

Dwarfs would use trench warfare.

[Varil]

Posts around here seem to indicate that some of them already do. :|

Maybe dwarves could rely on building "siege tunnels"? Hidden tunnels that lead underground *away* from the mountain. Nothing like dwarves suddenly sprouting out of the ground beneath you in ambush, eh? Make sure the tunnel is trapped, with more ambush spots through-out. Determined enemies who are clever(but not *too* clever) might use that same tunnel to try to sneak into the fortress, to their inevitable dismay.

Dwarves would probably have to rely on thick armor, big shields, and portable anti-infantry siege-class weapons(such as a ballista) for killing enemy archers. Their domain is inpenetrable, but outside of that they have to be clever or overwhelmingly powerful to defeat their target. As the offender in a war generally should be.

[Leonidas]

Come to think of it, why would dwarves need to fight offensive surface warfare when they're so darn wealthy?  It would be much easier to hire mercenaries or foment treason through bribery---both of which have extensive historical roots.

[Name Lips]

quote:Originally posted by Leonidas:
<STRONG>Come to think of it, why would dwarves need to fight offensive surface warfare when they're so darn wealthy?  It would be much easier to hire mercenaries or foment treason through bribery---both of which have extensive historical roots.</STRONG>

I can see dwarves hiring mercenaries - especially dwarven mercenaries. In fact, I think that's a really excellent idea. You should be able to have wandering mercenary groups pass by your fortress and offer their services - perhaps 5000 gold per year of service or some other ridiculous sum (gold coins are essentially free).

I'm not sure they seem the sort to use treason or bribery, though. Sure, they're effective techniques, but dwarves are awefully proud and stubbern. They'd rather fight.

[Tommy2U]

quote:Originally posted by Leonidas:
<STRONG>Come to think of it, why would dwarves need to fight offensive surface warfare when they're so darn wealthy?  It would be much easier to hire mercenaries or foment treason through bribery---both of which have extensive historical roots.</STRONG>

And which can get you only so far, as the history of Byzantium can attest.
Besides, I kinda don't see dwarf diplomats and politicians as skilled and sophisticated as Byzantine ones. And paying off barbarians? No, totally not in dwarf style.

[Lightning4]

Adventurers should be present in Fortress mode as well. Then you can send them off to die some horrible death.