Massed archers and crossbowmen are to be feared indeed, but currently even a single markdwarf/marksgoblin is to be feared, almost more than any other creature in the game. Yes, I have read the dev logs over the past year, and I remember some stuff was said about it but it is difficult to search for. I'm not convinced at all that the tissue layers etc. will protect against bolts, nor should they.
A crossbow bolt can kill a heavily armored enemy, no doubt about it, but at 2 rounds per second, even if you miss half the time, the kill ratio for ranged vs. melee is seven to one at 10 meters. Clearly, it's the firing rate that is way out of whack, and that has to be the easiest thing in the world to fix.
I'm not seeing it in the to do list, and that's why I'm asking. I know it has been discussed but not recently.
They fire as fast as a melee unit swings their sword. Given equal crappy skill or legendary skill this isn't that far off.
The thing about arrows has been that they just had the hit or miss calculation and then hit some organ, internal or external, mostly randomly. Now if you're wearing a breastplate an arrow in the heart has to penetrate your armor and still be on a straight path to get through all the connective tissue and then finally slash open your heart. 20,000 wooden bolts from novices are not going to do that. An artifact crossbow in the hands of a legendary crossbowdwarf with super-fine crafted steel bolts? Maybe.
Arrow-hail is still getting hit a whole lot of times but if you've got one unit that can do that alone with the same experience it could flash it's sword around just as much and dice it's enemies up into cubes before they started to fall apart.
As the dev log shows the place the arrow hits comes first so if 99% of your forward facing side is plate steel then 99% of the arrows or bolts don't matter. I don't think the plate Dwarves wear covers quite that much (take the joins into consideration,) but that's more the tune of the new mechanic we'll see.
See...I never noticed this problem. Legendary axe lords are FAR superior to marksdwarves. In my fortresses marksdwarves die off early. Axe dwarves do too, at first, but once they get legendary wrestling and shield user they start becoming WAY superior to the marksdwarves. Any legendary axelord can take down an entire invading army all by himself. Even if they have bolts. Ive never had a marksdwarf who could do that...unless he was on top of a wall sitting next to a bolt stockpile, and the only entrance to the fort was right under him.
Thats a lot of conditions that need to be met to make these guys uber. Meanwhile, you can throw axe lords right into the thick of things repeatedly and never take a scratch.
A legendary axe lord owning the field vs. the usual goblin rabble is fun. However, I have also seen a recruit with a crossbow get ambushed and still kill the whole party of ambushing goblins if it has no bowmen. The usual result of getting hit with a bolt is to double over in pain, and that gives the marksman another shot.
I bet your legendary axelord in steel armor would die if an elite goblin bowman showed up. In fact he might take out a couple of your legendary axelords if you let him take a few shots.
Your legendary melee guys aren't good with shields then.
I have indeed seen stories about goblin kings getting huge skills in world-gen that were able to wipe out whole dwarf armies, and that's very rare unfortunately, but all of that is completely beside the point. The problem here is that a single novice marksdwarf can machine-gun down a large number of similarly skilled melee enemies without being touched in the open field, all without protection of any kind, even armor, due to the extremely fast reloading time.
The fact that bolts can kill and stun is all good! We want that, but think about how long it would take to load a crossbow... If crossbows could fire like a Garand semi-auto, there would have never been a need for spears, maces, swords or any sort of melee weapon. Indeed that is WWII technology.
Novices don't fire at machine gun speeds. Do you have any idea how many times these units swing an axe in the time it takes them to move from tile to tile or have you just been guessing?
Crossbow rate of fire does need work. I'm ok with them being remarkable accurate at close range, and able to kill a creature with one shot. That's what crossbows do.
But in-game I think they fire way, way, WAY too fast. Not just a little too fast. Not like I'm arguing that they take 3 seconds when they should take 4. No. I'm arguing that maybe a wait of at least a second between shots isn't unreasonable, as opposed to 5 or so shots per second.
Like second you're watching or per second with you having paused and using keypresses to advance the game one turn at a time?
A decently skilled miner can dig out enough space for a siege workshop in two seconds the first way. Do you want combat to go at a completely different time scale than everything else?
Champion vs. army of goblins = easy win
Champion vs. army of bowgoblins = many arrows = at least ONE will come up on the freak chance of mangling champion's entire body and killing/maiming him for life
Seriously, last siege, I had some bowgobs show up, sent out my four champs (the entire military at the time) and one died, another got hideously wounded and is still in bed.
Of course, they were only wearing leather, as I was still training up my armorsmith on copper.
Oh how few the people are that have seen the damage formulas.
They aren't going to be relevant much longer though with how Toady is totally reworking things though so don't fret~
No, that throw giant serrated discs.
You could create shurikens, but there would be no way to make them a strictly throwing weapon.
When I was new to the game I thought I would have to set up pressure plates to trigger a hallway or traps of that sort n_n
Pressure plates that could trigger something similar to a ballista would be neat. You'd want the enemies to have the capacity to recognize that the trap couldn't aim at them like manned ballistas though, so it wouldn't massacre legendary and otherwise uber units as effectively.
The fact that bolts can kill and stun is all good! We want that, but think about how long it would take to load a crossbow... If crossbows could fire like a Garand semi-auto, there would have never been a need for spears, maces, swords or any sort of melee weapon. Indeed that is WWII technology.
*ahem*
Very cool link! I still don't think those things can do 2 rounds per second.
I don't think most any of us could carve three mugs from stone in 10 seconds, or grow plants in 3 minutes either.
Nor does a year normally only take half an hour to pass.
DF is not normal scaled time.
You raise an interesting point there, but the problem remains that marksdwarves are able to fire at the same rate as swordsdwarves can swing swords, as each takes only one action to execute. I'd imagine that operating a crossbow would take several actions, each of which would take as long as swinging a sword.
I'm by no means an expert, but don't you have to load the bolt into the crossbow, crank a handle to cock it, then aim, before you can even take one shot?
Have you see how far off a lot of novice shots go? They're not aiming very hard.
Of course, someone picking up a sword for the first time would largely swing it down so it hit the ground and then have to struggle to lift it again for another swing. I expect this to take about as long as it would take me to cock a crossbow and someone who had been practicing shooting for several months (like my father has been doing) could do it much more fluidly, again at about the rate I think someone with about as much practice with medieval swords would swing it.
NOW, what I would like to see is aiming that takes longer at greater distances. The arc of your viewfield they take up is very important for how precise your aim needs to be to hit them. A mile away and I probably couldn't hit a target even if I did have a machine-crossbow firing manically. Close enough to reach out and grab it and I'd only need a split second to point the thing away from myself. Legendary marksdwarves would largely just do this step faster as several seasons is about as long as it would take to get close to as fast as you would ever be at cocking your weapon.