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[Demetrious]

I agree wholeheartedly with your frustrations. As far as I am concerned, bows make adventure mode completely unplayable right now.

Yes, longbows could penetrate amour well, but there were many bows throughout many eras of history, not all of them powerful enough to reliably penetrate the typical body armor of the period.

[Nerserus]

I agree wholeheartedly with your frustrations. As far as I am concerned, bows make adventure mode completely unplayable right now.

Yes, longbows could penetrate amour well, but there were many bows throughout many eras of history, not all of them powerful enough to reliably penetrate the typical body armor of the period.

With Crossbows, that of course makes sense. Though, normal Bows on steel platebody? Sure, if the arrow is of good quality, and the shooter is very good, then yeah it could go through. But a lethal hit? That would be hard to achieve. I just think arrows and bolts critical boost is alone good enough, i don't think they need 100 damage points ( Adamantine arrows, masterpiece = 1000 Damage, lethal. ) i think arrows and bolts should rely on critical instead of damage ( Just like spears ) right now, i could kill someone in good armour by wielding an arrow as a weapon. Alot of changes need to be done if you ask me.

[kotekzot]

right now i kill people by flicking arrows at them. good times.
i understand it's exploiting the game mechanics, but there's something distinctively awesome and fun about it.

[Neonivek]

Where DF is inaccurate is the ridiculous firing rate. Destroying so many organs with one shot is also inaccurate, but as a single hit is, realistically, pretty much death it doesn't matter so much

Well we already gone through the list of what is inaccurate about Crossbows before... but I will state that one you forgot is their Armor Piercing abilities are greatly exagerated in Dwarf Fortress. While Crossbows can peirce even platemail they can also quite easily ricochette off it.

Anyhow another advantage you are all forgetting is that Arrows also cannot in effect get stuck as you can always fire another one. Pikes are peircing as well but they almost always get stuck making their use limited.

[Yanlin]

In real life, a longbownman can pierce full platemail to kill.

A crossbowman can do the same, but much easier.

But yes. The firing rate is what I hate. It's not THAT EASY to fire a bow/crossbow.

[Nerserus]

Yeah, you can pierce platemail to kill, but hell you can't always one hit someone in real life, some people just keep going and, sometimes you can't pierce the armour at all. Let alone so fast as to just put in another bolt, in real life, that one bolt decided whether that crossbowman came home, or spend the rest of time in a shallow grave. There is no way you can fire a crossbow faster than a man can move, that is just stupid, the dwarves. They have technological advancements, i may be able to believe they figured out a way to make crossbows faster, but not like a M249 speed...

My crossbowdwarf lost his entire quivers worth of bolts on one target, firing super fast isn't always a good thing...

[Muz]

In real life, a longbownman can pierce full platemail to kill.

A crossbowman can do the same, but much easier.

Um, no. Those were myths from like the 80s, dude

They did a lot of tests on it. It doesn't even dent the more advanced steel ones at close range. I didn't see any tests on crappier platemail, though.

Same for crossbows. One of the reasons crossbows were so popular was the ease of use, an average peasant could kill a knight in armor; but someone exaggerated it to say it was able to kill someone in full plate.

Hell, early guns didn't even pierce heavy plate - it actually promoted plate mail technology for a while to make them strong enough to withstand primitive shots. Obviously, a cannon or ballista does, though.

[DJ]

I agree that longbow wouldn't be much use against full plate, but I'm not so sure about crossbow. A bow's strength is proportional to it's draw weight. An exceptionally strong archer could draw a 200 pound longbow at best. A windlass pulled crossbow doesn't suffer from such limitations because it doesn't rely on strength of the shooter. Thus, there have been steel crossbows with draw weights of up to 5000 pounds. That's a whole lot of force, and it might be enough to pierce full plate. I think it was stronger than contemporary guns, at any rate.

[Jetman123]

The new wounding system should prevent the "bolt/arrow ricochet", I think, limiting the amount of internal damage one arrow or bolt can do.

Hold out some hope that Toady will make armor more effective against piercing attacks, too.

[Neonivek]

They Key is that a Straight shot going dirrectly into armor will peirce it some of the time.

A degree in any dirrection and it isn't going through or harming the armor. Many kinds of armor are designed specifically to get peirced by things such as arrows without seriously harming the wearer (Mongol Armor, Some forms of Chainmail, Kevlar). The Image of the Knight comming back with plenty of Arrows in his back actually isn't EXACTLY tough that was just his armor doing its job.

Your not going to get that straight shot in battle in all likelyness as you are often firing on enemies sometimes hundreds of feet away. It happens mind you but Heavily armored Troops and Calvalry have been known to charge through missle fire with few casualties even with some of the lesser armors.

So yeah Longbows and Crossbows can pierce plate but you better be lucky. (Though being able to field TONS of Crossbowmen in a short period of time makes that disadvantage less significant)

Also as for "Tests" I don't know... Id have to know how they are going it. One person used a Modern Day Bow to peirce a strawman wearing a sheet of metal at 15 feet firing right at it using target arrows. Which is the equivilant of saying Kevlar is useless against bullets by using a cannon on a pillow. You need to use period equivilant weaponry on period equivolent armor with appropriate cirumstances.

[Yanlin]

Modern steel: Can stop bullets.

Period equivalent steel: Swiss cheese.

[RAM]

Yeah, but period equivalent equipment is expensive...

[Muz]

The better the material, the better the equipment needed to pierce it. Simply, unless you have a crossbow bolt's head which is made of expensive armor piercing steel, it won't. But if it is made properly, it very well could. However, also note that plate armor is designed to deflect blows, so even when hitting armor at full power, the piercing power will be greatly reduced unless the shot was from a lucky enough angle not to get deflected.

Unarmored areas are fair game, though - I'm pretty sure an unarmored head can't stop a crossbow bolt, at least not all the way

[Yanlin]

Wasn't there a test somewhere where a bunch of guys took archers of varying skill and tested period equivalent equipment?

Longbows and crossbows vs thick platemail?

The bows won...

[Jetman123]

Longbows using "chisel tipped" arrows, as they were called, designed for armor piercing, could do quite a job on plate armor. Crossbows were even more deadly.