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[Radivnal]

nah, they just pull back the drawstring with their hands.

I'm pretty sure crossbow operating was a lot more complicated than that, hence why they didn't really replace archers fully.

I'm pretty sure that warhammer651 was making the comment for that exact reason. He's saying in the world of dwarf physics, they just yank the bowstrings back and let loose death and hellfire.

[Karik]

Uh I know crossbows were hard to crankback, I was just talking about dwarf fortress...I was joking :/ lol

[Safe-Keeper]

Aren't crossbows going to be nerfed come the next version?

[Cheddarius]

Crossbows are only referred to as crossbows for convenience. The actual weapon is a massive rack filled with crossbows and stacked full of bolts with an automatic reloader. Recruits run back and forth, using 5 limbs (arms, legs, and beard) to fire as fast as they can. Champions, on the other hand, tie all the crossbow strings to their beards and just laugh maniacally, head bobbing back and forth in vigorous guffawing, and blast hundreds of bolts at enemies at a time.

EDIT: This is also why one fully-grown tree = one crossbow.

[The Architect]

The reasons why crossbows are currently so dangerous are pretty simple, and I think they've been well explained elsewhere.

All of this will change in the next version, including some obviously necessary overhauls like the relative strengths of wooden bolts and plate armor.

[o_O[WTFace]]

crossbows have a few issues, but basically its that a few haulers or goblin recuits with wooden crossbows and cat bone bolts can stand around mangling brains and sometimes punch right through steel plate and instakill things from half a screen away.   

The big one is the 2 critical boost (for the bolts) that you can't just go and decrease in the raws***.  Each attack gets to roll some dice or something for a chance at becoming a critical hit.  Critical boost 2 means that our little bolts get to try them again 2 extra times, which sounds like the reason they sometimes go and mangle 2 lungs and a heart at the same time.  There is alot more to it then that but only Toady really knows how all that under the hood stuff works.

Also, Submachinebows.  Lots of marksdwarves each shooting lots of bolts that each have lots of critical boost = (lots)^3 of dead stuff.  With agility and training crossbows users basically switch into full auto mode and just unload bolts for the second or two the ammo lasts. 

Also, Crossbows also have range and first strike and economic and strategic issues, which are hugely important for a dorf fortress.  Crossbows are cheap, reasonably effective even at low skill, exponentially effective in large numbers and with a champion or two in front nothing gets close enough to fight back.  Remember, goblin/etc life is cheap and plentiful, if a whole siege is slaughtered but they kill your armorsmith or farmer or that peasant everyone is friends with, then the goblins won that siege (or its a tie maybe). 

anyway I have been working on nerfing ranged weapons for the past few forts with surprisingly good results.

***creatures and their organs are highly moddable To nerf crossbows, I went into the raws and removed:
[circulatory] from hearts
[throat] or something like that from throats or necks or whatever
[nervous] from spine, brain, neck (spine+neck seem to be sparring/wrestling things, but taking nervous off of brain seems to drastically reduce bolt instakills)
[guts] from guts, although this doesn't seem to effect crossbows much, I think its a sword critical

And then added:
[sight] to brain, mostly as a backup but you could probly mod out eyes then since at this point all they do is get shot out anyway. 

And then you need to add at least two more lungs (by just copypasting the left and right lung and then naming them left lung 2, 3, etc) because individual bolts can take out 3 lungs at a time, and they often will because there isn't much else to hit anymore.  I have a woodcutter walking around who cancels his jobs and passes out every once and a while because he lost 3 of his 8 lungs, so its not perfect but he gets along fine and only has like 2 toughness anyway.  Now that I think about it, just giving dwarves and everything you fight [nobreathe] might work much better, but that has some side effects. 

[Kyronea]

I have a woodcutter walking around who cancels his jobs and passes out every once and a while because he lost 3 of his 8 lungs

Out of context sigging away!

[Neyvn]

I think people are forgetting how fast a single day is in DF mode...
I if you watch closely you can see that they fire at least 4 or so bolts a day at raw recruit. This in the truth of things is actually unrealistic, they should be able to fire more. So in the end, its only like a Machine Gun when you play DF mode...

[Desiderium]

Crossbows are only referred to as crossbows for convenience. The actual weapon is a massive rack filled with crossbows and stacked full of bolts with an automatic reloader. Recruits run back and forth, using 5 limbs (arms, legs, and beard) to fire as fast as they can. Champions, on the other hand, tie all the crossbow strings to their beards and just laugh maniacally, head bobbing back and forth in vigorous guffawing, and blast hundreds of bolts at enemies at a time.

EDIT: This is also why one fully-grown tree = one crossbow.

Wow, I lol'd hard.

[CobaltKobold]

(multiple)First strike capability, no known disadvantages to fire rate vs other weapons, and critbonus.

It's like asking who'll win in tic-tac-toe when giving one person the first two moves.

[nenjin]

IIRC...attack speed and movement speed are tied together.  It's the reason dogs can't keep up with dwarves, so they don't get craploads of attacks like dwarves with high AGI. So it's probably true for shooting crossbows too.

So it probably should be lower, it just doesn't work out that way with how stats play out in combat.

[yuriatayde]

I ignore the ingame days thing because then you could argue that dwarves don't eat as much as they should etc, instead I rate it based on movement. My newbie archer can get at least 4 bolts off before the enemy reaches him, between the moment he enters range, with no obsticals preventing a straight sprint at the archer. With crossbows, even light crossbows that are reloaded entirely by hand, that's just simply unrealistic. An expert might be able to pull that off, maybe...

However, I will also say that I like how overpowered they are. Nerf? That's fine, but I see the crossbow as sort of the first big step to making melee combat obsolete, so a little argument like "why bother with swords if-" shouldn't hold anything back.

[shadow_archmagi]

I see the crossbow as sort of the first big step to making melee combat obsolete, so a little argument like "why bother with swords if-" shouldn't hold anything back.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyGunControl

[random51]

Seems like there might be something with evade too. Champion dwarfs in good armor/shield  don't even seem to get hit in melee but give one goblin a crossbow and he has no problem hitting your guys. This actually makes sense in reality but not sure it does when trying to have fun.

Is that evade or does the game roll for crit before calculating evade, thus nullifying their evade skill?

[darkrider2]

Question: shouldn't dwarves or even your enemies be able to use their shields to stop bolts and arrows from penetrating the incredibly small hitbox that is their vital organs.

It seems right now that shields do nothing against arrows and bolts. It behaves more like a paper thin bulls-eye.