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[Leonidas]

quote:Originally posted by Lightning4:
<STRONG>Adventurers should be present in Fortress mode as well. Then you can send them off to die some horrible death.</STRONG>

I like that idea, Lightning4.  An adventurer accepting quests is mostly just a mercenary.  So suppose a dwarf fortress wants to offer some money to anyone willing to wipe out the local goblin tribe.  If you were playing in fortress mode you could offer that bounty.  If you were playing in adventure mode, you could accept it.  Perfect!

[Savok]

I'm fairly sure that adventurers, as most people think of them, only exist in DF because DF is, compared to what it will be, a crude, generic hack-and-slash.
(I'm not saying that DF is a hack-and-slash, just that compared to what it will be it is)

[JT]

quote:Originally posted by Jifodus:
<STRONG>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.</STRONG>

I don't think that temporal interpretation really flies, because otherwise people would be able to swing their weapons at least 6 to 12 times per tick, and even more if they were going on all-out attack without regard for defence.

The way I see it, the time is an abstraction and can't be used as a solid basis for balancing ranged weapons unless the rest of the weapons are taken into account.  To that end, I suggest that a bow action involve three stages:

1) Draw
2) Aim
3) Loose

Whereas a melee weapon involves three much different stages:

1) Swing
2) Repeat stage 1
3) Repeat stage 1

Pure baseline, I would say that it would take 3 actions to launch an arrow (regardless of type), 4 actions to launch a hunting quarrel (light crossbow), and 5 actions to launch a war quarrel (heavy crossbow).  This is all in comparison to 1 action to swing a melee weapon.

The specific length of an "action" is dependent on the skill of the wielder, of course: a highly-skillful markself could certainly put three arrows into the air in a few seconds.

But don't be intimidated by that volume at higher skill levels.  Another point of balance that's missing is the amount of work needed to continue firing bows.  A standard longsword weighs about five pounds at a maximum in reality, and you don't exactly have to accelerate the longsword a huge amount to make a swing, either: a bowstring draw weight, on the other hand, is fifty pounds at a minimum and gets progressively worse from there.  (I imagine that as the game currently stands, firing a ranged weapon takes the same amount of work as swinging a weapon; when it becomes a priority to balance ranged weapons, I'm sure Toady will fix that.)

Thus, highly-skilled characters will fatigue faster when shooting rapidly -- regardless of skill, a shot will still require a certain expenditure of energy to make -- so they will probably take a few rapid shots and then wait until they recover before firing off a few more rapid shots.  Ultimately, the skill plays more into accuracy and the ability to unleash an effective barrage at any given moment moreso than it involves the ability to put more arrows into the air.  Of course, most highly-skilled characters will probably have one or two benefits (Very Tough), which would allow them to have more stamina, which would allow them to put a little more iron into the air; that would work fine as it is.

Armour balance also needs to be done, but Bodkin-style arrowheads can actually penetrate armour a lot better than the people are suggesting here: only broadheads (intended for hunting and not war) have pathetic penetration ability, and that's because they're intended to be bloodletting warheads.  For game purposes, I think it's safe to assume that most people would be using the most effective heads at any given time and that arrows are amorphous abstractions of all of the possible arrowheads put together.  IF you want to de-abstract that aspect, you'd have to micromanage the actual arrow loads your troops are carrying at any given time -- I don't think I'd be willing to do that.

[edit]Let me revise my earlier cited actions:

MELEE WEAPON:
* Einshander: 1 action, moderate effort
* Zweihander: 1 action, significant effort

BOW:
* Load bow: 1 action, no effort (represents nocking arrow).
* Fire bow: 2 actions, significant effort (represents total aim, pull, loose).

LIGHT CROSSBOW:
* Load: 2 actions, very significant effort (represents drawing and nocking)
* Fire: 2 actions, no effort (represents aim and loose).

HEAVY CROSSBOW:
* Load: 3 actions, extraordinary effort (represents drawing and nocking)
* Fire: 2 actions, no effort (represents aim and loose).

[ September 27, 2007: Message edited by: JT ]

[MindSnap]

I think that we have to be careful not to make this TOO realistic re: time. Considering that only very rarely will your focus be on both a fight in progress and a mining operation, I think that the non-combat times work well, as do the hand-to-hand combat times.
I do believe that bows should take several ticks to fire, and have a greater chance of doing nothing to someone in armor (either a solid hit that probably cripples, or nothing). I might suggest that only legendary xbow users should fire as fast as <no> xbow users do now, but with the same bonuses to damae and accuracy. Let's not forget that this is a fantasy world.

[JT]

To continue on my former topic after a brief, refreshing sabbatical of doing almost nothing:

The way I see it, the arrows work just fine in the system as-is once their damage is reduced to 50.  The damage dealing potential of an arrow is in its ability to pierce organs, and they still do that quite well at that damage rating.  If it fails to pierce an organ or sever a vital part of the CNS, the arrow really does little other than hampering mobility.  It hurts like hell, it opens a bleeding wound if it's a broadhead, and it knocks you slightly off balance (like getting hit by a big thrown rock), but it has little or no other effect.

Implementing better control over percentage odds of damaging internal organs would be awesome, possibly in the form of a [SEVERITY] flag or some such.  Otherwise, I say the biggest balancing factor is the amount of time it takes to shoot.  Going for a time balanced against melee weapons would probably be a fairly good idea.

Aside from slightly increasing the effect of armour compared to the arrows, the bigger way of defending against projectiles is the ability to intercept the missile.  Arrows do penetrate shields (very, very often), but they almost always get stuck inside the shield when incoming so the only likely way of being injured is if the arrow penetrates the shield directly at your shield arm.

Some proposals:

1) Make shields the penultimate defence against incoming projectiles, providing at least a 50% chance of blocking or deflecting the projectiles (contrary to the paltry benefit they have in d20) if you are standing ready and are aware of the target.

2) Include an "All-Out Defence" toggle that doubles or even triples your chance of blocking incoming arrows, but forces you to forego all attacks and halves your movement rate.  Cancelling AOD immediately restores your movement rate but still disallows attacks during the next round as it takes a round to recover into your normal stance.

3) Include a "Duck and Cover" toggle, q.v. 300 when the Spartans are attacked with a volley of arrows that block out the sun: the Spartans duck and cover behind their shields and completely ignore most of the arrows.  D&C renders you completely immobile but -- provided you have a sufficiently large shield -- you can effectively ignore all arrows.  Like AOD, it takes a full round to recover.

For instance, if you are caught in the open without a shield with a melee weapon while your opponent has a ranged weapon, you are screwed in reality and in the game.  If you have a shield, you are still in somewhat dire straits, but crouching behind your shield and cautiously advancing on the enemy would give you at least a decent chance of blocking, and after the enemy looses a shot you have a turn or two of free time to advance quickly before resuming your cautious advance as the enemy manages to nock and take aim.  If you're feeling ballsy you could just charge like a Teutonic warrior and scream Woden's name and ignore all this silly defensive stuff.

[Tamren]

Good stuff, we should start a missile weapons dicussion panel, the one on melee weapons was very productive.

[Grek]

Or use this thread.

[Tamren]

Well, also starting to talk about longbows, scorpions, trebuches and slings would rather dilute the topic here which is crossbows.

[Savok]

Round? We don't have rounds in DF. We have frames.

Yes, adventure mode appears in round format, but if the mechanics of it are like fortress mode (and IIRC the modes will be merged eventually), a "round" is a number of frames chosen based on what your adventurer is doing.

[Tamren]

It seems the speed of your adventurer is the most important point. If you are slow, say under 1000 speed, everything around you must be computed for multiple "rounds" of game time. It makes visiting villages really annoying when you are loaded down with swag.

[JT]

If you're referring to me, I mentioned that the length of an "action" is variable, dependent on the wielder's skill.  I didn't use "round" anywhere, though, so maybe you're not referring to me.

[edit]Er, wait, yes I did.  But I was going by my earlier definition of "action".  Oops.[/edit]

[ September 29, 2007: Message edited by: JT ]

[JT]

Hmm.  I did some fact checking and watched a show on History Television about Crécy, and it seems as though arrows and crossbow bolts did have good penetration capabilities: but only at close range.  At medium range or higher, the speed of an arrow attenuates so much that it bounces off of armour like nothing, and the only way to inflict appreciable damage is to hit a gap.  However, I only really noticed testing against plate maille -- no idea on the penetration capabilities against chain, but I'd assume it'd be effective at ranges up to medium.

Anyway, we're back to the issue of Dwarf Fortress scale per tile: if we assume, say, 1 square metre/yard per tile (which plays into the fact that only one person can be standing in a given tile at a time), then most of the ranges in the game are very short and would certainly offer considerable penetrations.  If we (wisely) abstract out ranges of arrows to assume 10 metres per tile even in spite of the fact that normal walking distance is just 1 metre per tile, then things get a little more complex to handle.

Food for thought, anyway.