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[Lord Shonus]

Heavier = more inertia = better piercing and more damage.  The question is, can a crossbow impart more energy to a heavier object (I'd say yes).

I can guaratee you that they can. Metal bolts from my crossbow will penetrate things that the platic, metal tipped ones simply bounce off of.

[forsaken1111]

Heavier = more inertia = better piercing and more damage.  The question is, can a crossbow impart more energy to a heavier object (I'd say yes).

I can guaratee you that they can. Metal bolts from my crossbow will penetrate things that the platic, metal tipped ones simply bounce off of.

Is there a notable range difference?

[Lord Shonus]

Some, but not as much as I would expect. Mine's a pistol model (I bought it for rats), so it doesn't have that much range or power to begin with. You might see a much larger difference in a full-sized model.

[Pilsu]

I hope you're not comparing a modern composite carbon crossbow to an ancient wooden design

Arrow or bolt weighting several times as much as a wooden one would inevitably suffer significant drop in range

[LegoLord]

I hope you're not comparing a modern composite carbon crossbow to an ancient wooden design

They have the same principles behind them, don't they?  I always got the impression that the only differences were less breakable materials and better "safety" mechanisms in newer models.

While we're on it, weren't the mechanisms of crossbows normally made out of metal?  I'm no historian, but that's what I saw at the Tower of London exhibits if memory serves.

[Granite26]

I hope you're not comparing a modern composite carbon crossbow to an ancient wooden design

Arrow or bolt weighting several times as much as a wooden one would inevitably suffer significant drop in range

Only that's not true...  With the same amount of initial speed, the metal bolt would fly further

[Neonivek]

Well Granite it all depends on how much force the bow can get.

It is like a pebble and a stone. A weak person could throw a pebble much further then they could throw a stone, but a strong person could throw a stone much further then a pebble.

A Modern Composite Bow is so amazing relative to any before it that it can basically laugh at all the others.

Some Ancient Bows... well... to say the least could barely launch pure wooden ones. Though I don't think we are dealing with those bows anyhow.

[Pilsu]

Before we consider realism aspects, bows need to be made more complex, including things like composite bows made out of horn and the like and breakage due to strain and poor handling and the resultant injuries. Strength should somehow play a part in archery too. Once all that is done, we can start considering reducing or increasing the range of metal projectiles. Launcher quality is probably critical

[Pilsu]

I remembered I forgot to include poor quality goods and tuned the original post accordingly. What do you think? I did away with "superior quality" seeing as it fails spectacularly at being descriptive.

Damage scaling is out of whack. Best way to make lower end weapons a bit more useful would be to add diminishing returns to quality modifiers. Seeing as poor quality items are a sensible and common suggestion, that should be featured as well. "Superior" as a denotation of quality seems really out of place and isn't very descriptive so I'm going to do away with it entirely.

Damage modifiers would be as such:

• Poor x0.7
• -Adequate- x1.0
• +Well-crafted+ x1.4
• *Finely-crafted* x1.6
• ≡Exceptional≡ x1.8
• ☼Masterful☼ x2.0

This way poorly crafted equipment is just that, far below "well-crafted" while the best of the best isn't overwhelmingly superior. Naturally, NPCs equipment needs to be of higher quality lest they be crippled by this. Preferably, generated equipment's quality would be determined by the civilization's level of craftsmanship, not some arbitrary -armor- tag in the raws. It would need to be moddable however and somewhat sustainable despite random factors

While at this point it's difficult to predict the effect of quality modifiers on the new physics based combat, the desired ratio of change in effectiveness per quality level remains the same

[Granite26]

It may be going off the deep end, but I could almost see quality levels being reported as is, but behind the scenes using multiple quality levels.  At the basic level you've got utility versus art, but going deeper, you could have a lot of quality variations...

Sword Example:  Sharpness (could decay), Balance, Strength, Beauty.... (Where strength is how well put together it is,  Sharpness affects damage and Balance affects accuracy)...

That would allow more variation in quality levels without anything going off the deep end.

[LegoLord]

Sword Example:  Sharpness (could decay), Balance, Strength, Beauty.... (Where strength is how well put together it is,  Sharpness affects damage and Balance affects accuracy)...

This is the best idea I've heard concerning quality levels; it's the only one I've seen that's more than "let's go ahead and make stuff from newb workers even worse than the already are!" that doesn't really change much.

[Felblood]

I wonder how much of this is already going to be tracked when weapon properties show up, in the next release, and how hard it would be to apply different quality modifiers to each of them.

When we're all running DF on the supercomputers of the future, I'd love to see this all over the place, but until then, it should probably only apply to weapons, and maybe armor. After all, how much does it matter weather the king's throne is more opulent than it is comfortable?

[Pilsu]

Dents and dullness would be a matter of weapon damage, not quality of construction. Other than that, great

[Rowanas]

Are we going to have to spend a season of every year fixing up armour and weapons?

[Granite26]

Are we going to have to spend a season of every year fixing up armour and weapons?

I can't imagine it not being at least a little automated...  New, Like New and Good condition being 100%, 95% and 90%.... Good lasts a year or 3, and then the dwarf automatically takes it to get smithed