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[DarkAvenger]

But is also much heavier and harder to aim properly.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

That's debatable.  You aim a crossbow like a rifle.  You aim a bow by straining your muscles to keep the thing pulled back for the entire time until you release.  Aiming is usually rather harder when you're doing that.

Also, you can rest a crossbow on something to aim it.  There are many examples of mounted ballistae/arbellists. Bows on the other hand, you have to stand to fire, and you have to have room for the bow in front of you.

[Tiler]

Crossbows were more or less inferior to longbows. However, they were still, in a way, much more feared than longbows, for the simple reason that they were MUCH easier to use than a longbow. As King Edward III said: "If you want to train a longbowman, start with his grandfather." They were difficult weapons to use for various reasons, and only those that dedicated their entire lives to their use could use the longbow to it's legendary effectiveness.

Crossbows, on the other hand, could be effectively wielded by a peasant trained for a few hours in their use. As I heard it said, a knight with a lifetime of training and a suit of armor costing a fortune could be killed by a lowly pawn with a single bolt from a crossbow. While that is exaggerated, crossbows were still feared for the killing power they provided, and the relatively small amount of training needed for their use.

In a sense, they were a precursor to modern firearms. Killing power derived from the mechanism of the weapon, rather than the skill of the user.

[Jetman123]

Longbows are effective because it requires much more muscles than simple bows.
The only effective crossbow I can think of is the ancient stomach crossbow, where the entire body weight is used to load a shot.

We should also take into acount that these arrows and bolts are not metal tipped, but full metal. Wood is never used in their creation, and i don't think metal snaps as easily.

I really don't agree with this. Why do you need to make the entire thing out of metal? That would make carrying around 30 metal arrows cumbersome. I just think Toady didn't feel the amount of wood needed was neccessary to show in-game at this time. The iron bolts or arrows are wooden ones with metal tips. Wooden or bone ones are just sharpened wood or bone with no metal at all, hence their lower damage (because their tips are soft compared to metal).

Seriously, I have _never_ heard of arrows or bolts being made out of metal all the way through. Why exactly would you do that? Sure, it'll prevent it from snapping, but it will weigh down your archers. And when you consider how much more metal you're using for arrows when you could be using it for spears or swords and the like, it's just a waste of metal, time and effort. I don't mean to seem rude or abrasive, but yeah. I strongly disagree.

In the middle ages, spears and arrows were often improvised by poor militiamen by sharpening wood or bone instead of using metal, which they often didn't have access to. A spear is still marginally useful even without a metal head - at least then you can keep your opponent away from you.

Come to think of it, I bet wooden or bone bolts/arrows were used for practice sometimes, given that they were so easy to produce and didn't waste metal. Just like in DF!