I have a HUGE pile of suggestions for stuff like this sitting on my desktop.
It covers everything to do with combat and the combat arc on the dev page. It has new classes and new weapons, customizable armour sets and lots more.
Anyhow, ill post part of the section on weapons, the entire thing would be too big unless i made a seperate thread. i am currently working on crossbows so ill post that too.
Weapons stuff (incomplete):
Grappling weapons:
These are mosty used by grapplers only.
Knuckle dusters: These are reinforced gloves and replace normal gloves worn as armour. They come in plain and spiked versions. They are simply reainforced gloves with extra durability that increase damage done when punching someone. Bladed versions are reffered to as claws. Spiked gloves and claws can get stuck in the enemy but unlike other weapons are easy to extract and twisting in the wound is simply an effective method of attack.
Garrote: These are strong thin ropes, chains or wires used to strangle enemies. Wires have a tendency to behead people not wearing armour, chains will not cut anything but are far more durable than wires or rope. These are easily lost or broken if a strangling attempt fails but since they weight little grapplers can carry many of them.
Armour spikes: These are automatically added to wrestler armour if available. Use is pretty self explanatory.
Cleats: These are sets of spikes that you can strap to footwear. They increase the damage of kicks. Because of the huge increase in traction, dwarves will have an easier time with certain wresting menuvers such as pushing an enemy off his feet.
Bolas: A bolas is 3 or more weights attached to a ring, if this is hard to imagine, think of a triple flail with no handle. To use it you grab the ring and whirl the balls around, using 2 hands for added range and accuracy. When you release the bolas it will fly through the air with the trio of weights spinning. Obviously anything hit will be seriously messed up. Because the weights are seperate, impact effects are very random. One weight might stick into your chest, pulping a few ribs while the other two swing around and break your spine. If the rope between two of the weights hits one of your legs you are almost guaranteed to trip, if the hit is a bit higher you could have one or more arms pinned. This makes it a very useful weapon for grapplers as it can disable limbs and trip oncoming opponents at range. If you get into melee it can be used to bash people or tangle and weigh down limbs or even as a garrote. If a grappler armed with a bolas trips an enemy he can run up, snap the guys neck and retrieve the bolas before throwing it at another target. Bolases used in melee also bypass shields with ease, parrying one is barely possible and they can disarm enemies as well.
The reason other classes would not have much use for the bolas is that it is heavy. A macedwarf could use one, but he would have to holster his mace and drop his shield to use it well, not very efficient. A skirmisher could carry several bolases as throwing weapons but he would not be able to recover them and for the same weight he could carry many throwing axes instead. A grappler on the other hand could carry a pair of bolases easily because he is armoured lightly and carries little else. If he throws both of them that is no problem because he could recover them later and his style of combat does not rely on having a weapon at all.
Simple bolases are easy to make out of rope and stone. More effective ones are spiked metal balls linked by chains. Also skilled throwers can bring down animals alive by tangling thier legs making it a useful hunting weapon and alternative to cage traps.
Medium weapons: These are the larger weapons carried by on-duty soldiers.
Longsword: 4 foot long swords. They deal great slashing damage and can be used to stab as well. Note that "4 foot" includes enough handle space for both hands so these are not gigantic relative to the dwarf.. Dwarves not armed with a shield will use these 2 handed and will favour slashes instead of stabs. Hits relatively quickly and has a bonus to parrying.
Battleax: A large single bladed ax, deals plenty of slashing and crushing damage. Against enemies where slashing is less effective dwarves will automatically turn the ax around and use the flat side turning it into an impromtu hammer. Hits slowly. Can be used in place of a woodcutting ax but weighs far more and impedes movement.
War Hammer: A big offset weight on the end of a stick. Deals massive crushing damage but hits very slowly and does not parry well. The hammer is unique in that it is nearly impossible to get it stuck except in extreme situations such as as smashed through a mud man or stuck in somethings caved in ribcage (eww)
Mace: A shaped weight on a stick with a counterbalanced handle and covered in spikes. Deals a mix of crushing and piercing damage. Parries as well as a sword and is much quicker than a hammer. Is also thin enough to fit between tower shields in close ranks.
Shortspear: These are smaller spears with leaf bladed tips that can be wielded by one or both hands. They can be used to attack enemies 2 squares away instead of one and have a nasty tendency to get stuck. They deal mostly pierce damage but can be used to cut and bash when 2 handed. Spears do not parry well at all and partner well with a shield. Gains a bonus when fighting in close ranks. Despite the length of the weapon a single skilled dwarf with a spear and no shield can parry by using the spear as a quarterstaff.
Crossbows:
As they are now they work like tommy guns. WAY too much damage and they fire ridiculously fast.
Damage and accuracy seem to compound the quality bonus from both bolts and crossbows, this is unbalanced and lets completly new archers shoot with perfect accuracy.
Btw, all of this applies to bows as well, though they function differently.
THe bow:
A crossbow is just a launching pad, if it is properly made it will not affect the accuracy of the bolt at all. Shoddy work will net you a penalty to accuracy. But even a perfectly made crossbow will only help up to a point. To get good accuracy you need a good archer.
Range:
Maximum range depends entirely on the weight of the bolt and the power of the crossbow. This can be quite high, i own a 36lb draw weight recurve bow and it can fire arrows well over 300 feet. However at that range i can *barely* hit a barn.
Marksdwarves would only shoot at ranges they are comfortable with unless you order them to fire at distant targets.
Damage:
The problem with missile damage now is that armour only absorbs. In reality it also deflects much of the force. Broadhead arrows have a very hard time breaking through well made chainmail, against plate armour they will simply bounce off unless they hit at a good angle. Simply nerfing missile damage would not be enough, armour mechanics would have to be changed a lot.
Armour aside, the damage of each bolt should depend on a few factors.
1. Mainly the power of the crossbow.
2. The quality of the bolt, a weak bolt might simply break on impact.
3. Its weight, more mass = more force.
4. The type of arrowhead vs the type of armour.
5. The angle at which it hits, this would be tricky to calculate, but would make the system far more realistic and balanced.
When a missile is fired it travels in an arc. Once the X axis is in, missile arcs could be tracked and calculated if they are not already as catapult shots seem to be. Missiles fired at distant targets would fly over the head of closer targets. Similarly a shot fired at a prone target 10 feet away would just hit the ground if it missed.
Skill:
At short distances a crossbow is VERY easy to use. You point the dangerous end at the enemy and let fly. But once you start shooting longer distances you end up with stuff like gravity and crosswinds which only a skilled archer can counter.
A noob archer would always aim at the center of mass. He and untrained levies would do pretty well at short ranges. At the longer ranges more skilled archers would start targetting specific points on the enemies body like the head.
Skill would greatly increase the effective range of missile weapons, they can be fired or thrown high into the air but accuracy becomes much more difficult.
Bolt construction:
Instead of solid wood/bone/metal bolts as we seem to have now the system should be changed around a bit and expanded.
First you need a shaft, these can be made from wood or bone. A piece of bone makes a couple shafts. A single log makes a big pile of shafts.
Arrowheads are made of stone, bone/shell and metal. Stone arrowheads are rough and heavy with the exception of obsidian. Bone and shell are easier to work but are not as strong. Metal arrowheads are the best, but metal is hard to smelt.
Once you have a pile of each, you get a bowyer to put them together. Bolts and arrows made this way are good because you can customize how the arrows are built, and they can be taken apart. For Practice you could order up a large batch of bone tipped arrows. If a siege happened to show up, the bowyer could switch all the tips out for more dangerous metal ones.
Special bolts:
Solid wood/bone bolts: Cheap and easy to make but they break very easily, best for practice ammo.
Solid metal shafts: These are the deadliest available. The only problem is they are very hard and expensive to make, and you cannot use non-metal heads as they would not survive impact with the metal shaft behind them. Best to save these for demons and dragons.
Solid stone bolts: These are very heavy, not too accurate and do not penetrate armour well at all. The good part though is they do heavy crushing damage which can be more effective against certain foes. They have a good chance of knocking people back, this can be an advantage if you set up a lava moat and are defending a small bridge.
Arrowheads:
The type of head on a bolt would determine its effect on impact.
None: These bolts are still quite dangerous but they would not be a threat to proper armour, especially a good shield.
Broadhead: The most common, a diamond or triangular shaped flat head. They do the most damage against soft targets. Because of the wide shape, chainmail has an easy time catching the bolt (withstanding the force is another matter) and it is easily deflected off of plate armour at shallow angles. Because of the thin shape broadheads of weaker materials break easily, especially obsidian and bone.
Barbed: Same as broadhead only they have spiky protrusions. Performs worse against armour because of its large spiky shape. These do increased damage (if they get past the armour) and are very difficult to remove from wounds, causing massive bleeding. These cannot be made from stone and tend to break often.
Diamond: Simple pyramid shaped heads. Good for general purpose work. They do not have the raw damage of a broadhead but they perform far better against armour and rarely break.
Needle: Needle tipped bolts do far less damage then other types. However they are far and away, the most effective against armour and the only type that can reliably penetrate plate armour without using high power crossbows. Because of the long thin shape it bypasses chainmail with ease, where other tips would get caught by multiple rings and have to punch through them all, a needle tip will enter just one ring and pop it open from the inside. Needle tips can only be made from metal.
Bolt breakage:
When bolts are fired at a target the head and shaft have a seperate chance to break.
The shape of the arrowhead affects break chance as does the material used. Quality also plays a big factor, masterwork bolt components have a higher survival rate.
Bone arrowheads break easily unless they hit a soft target. A stone or metal arrowhead will only break if it hits a very hard surface. Metal arrowheads will not explode into pieces but will be deformed beyond use. You can probably gather them up later and reforge em.
Even if the tip survives, the shaft of a bolt might still break. Bone shafts break very often. Wood shafts are much stronger but they will still break if the bolt makes a bad landing or you pull it the wrong way while twisting it in a wound.
Metal shafts... well lets just say youll have a better chance of chewing through 15 pencils at once than breaking a metal bolt shaft through normal use.
Arrows vs bolts:
Arrows for bows are constructed the same way with a few changes. Arrow shafts can only be made out of wood, metal would be too heavy unless we added aluminium, but electric anode smelters are probably beyond the dwarves current technology and as far as i know before those came about aluminum was very rare and valuable because it was so hard to make. That said, it could be a luxury substance because it is quite strong and also very light, deserves some consideration. Bones that are not curved beyond usefulness are simply not long enough for arrow shafts and if they were they would yield very few shafts.
Arrows must also be fletched, im not sure what you would use for the fins, bird feathers? Leaves? (wouldnt suprise me for elf arrows), leaves would give us an extra use for quarry bush leaves, apart from simply food. I guess you could hunt ducks with thrown rocks untill you have enough. Anyway, one bird will yield a big pile of feathers that can fletch many arrows before it needs replacement, this is so that you dont have to constantly hunt birds keep up with the demand. To attach then you need thread of some sort. A bowyer will grab one spool of thread and only replace it when it runs out, instead of one bundle of thread per stack of ammo.
Types of crossbows:
Hand crossbow: A one handed crossbow strapped to the wrist. These are actually quite big but lack power unless made with metal limbs. They can be used with one hand along with a shield, but reloading is a bit ackward so its best as a one-shot weapon. Since there is no stock recoil is greatly increased. The upside? the hand you mount it on is free to hold anything other than a shield. Plus it automatically fires if you punch something 
A soldier assigned one of these will wear it at all times but unloaded, if called to fight he will pop a bolt in and move to engage. Loading the crossbow is only hard if you are actually stuck in combat at the time.
Crossbow: This is the weapon we usually think of if we hear "crossbow". Good power but pulling the string back takes a lot of effort, usually accomplished by sticking a foot into a metal loop and pushing the crossbow away while pulling on the string. A marksdwarf will have to stop for a moment to cock the string but loading a bolt can be done on the move.
Arbalest: These are BIG crossbows. So big in fact you can only pull back the string with mechanical help using a ratchet system. Real life medieval weapons of this type often reached 500lb+ draw weights. Because these are unwieldy and take a lot of time to reload they are best given to dwarves manning fortifications or in formation protected by other dwarves.
If you want you can construct a stand for a single arbalest. It has a built in quiver and a shield mount. Mounted this way the xbow has greatly increased accuracy at the expense of mobility. The upside is any dwarf can use it, it does not need to be assigned to him. These are best placed on open spaces or behind arrow slits.
Quivers:
TO carry bolts and arrows dwarves must use a quiver or they will dump the stack of bolts on the ground
Bolt quivers are compact and can be worn in a few places. One will fit behind your lower back facing one side depending on which is the dominant hand. Another will fit up at the shoulder. YOu can fit one more on your chest though that will make going prone slightly more difficult.
3 quivers worth of bolts is more than enough for most uses, more than one will start to hinder movement. If you want mobile missile troops that operate independantly, one quiver should be sufficient. Marksdwarves either part of a formation or in a supporting group would need more than one quiver depending on how fast the whole group is expected to move.
3 quivers is useful for marksdwarves that do not move around such as dwarves defending a series of arrow slits beside your main gate.
I had some ideas about a "master crossbow engineer" sort of noble that would come to your fortress and enable you to create cool stuff. Such as:
Compound crossbows/bows: These weapons combine a complex system of pullies. with shorter stronger bow limbs for increased efficiency. They are pretty much better in every way than conventional weapons in reload time, damage, range and accuracy. The smaller compact size aids mobility.
However they require a lot of work to make. A compound crossbow must be tailored to its user before manufacture. A compound bow must be built by a bowyer. A mechanic then adds a pile of metal mechanisms before being strung.
Compound configured weapons are very sensetive to damage, if one wheel gets knocked loose the whole thing could shatter or explode (seriously).
Improved recocking mechanisms: These would greatly reduce reloading times on crossbows of all types.
On a hand crossbow the mechanism allows you to recock the string by simply folding your arm and bending it out straight again. This needs only one hand but does require a lot of strength.
On a crossbow the mechanism is a lever that resets the string with a simple pull, this can be done on the move.
On an arbalest, the clumsy ratchet system is replaced by a winch/pulley system, this is far quicker and takes less effort. The only disadvantage is you can only use the winch while standing.
Bolt magazines:
Instead of a loose quiver a magazine holds up to 5 bolts. The entire box is attached to the crossbow using a set of rails, the bolts are then gravity fed and a new bolt drops into place whenever the string is recocked.
To use mags a crossbow must be fitted with a few mechanisms. In the absence of mags single bolts fed from a quiver can still be used.
There are a few pros:
1. You can go 5 shots between reloads instead of cocking the string and putting a single bolt on one at a time.
2. The bolts are contained in a box, so you can bash people with the stock of the crossbow and the bolts will not fall out.
3. Box mags fit into any backpack and do not have to be strapped to you, this aids mobility.
4. Hand crossbows loaded with a magazine and a reloading mechanism can be operated entirely by one hand for 5 shots. And yes, even with a box mag they still trigger when you punch stuff
The cons:
1. Cost and time, it takes quite a while to make each seperate magazine and pre-load it with bolts.
2. 3 quivers can hold far more bolts then you would be able to carry with magazines.
Volley sights:
These improve accuracy when arcing bolts over long distances. When a sight is added to a bow it must be tuned by the next person to use that crossbow, this takes about 5 shots at the practice range, 10 shots anywhere else.
Reinforced stocks:
This improves the strength of the crossbow frame without adding extra weight. This makes it stronger for bashing in skulls.
Xbow bayonet:
They put em on guns, so why the hell not! to mount it onto a normal size crossbow you need the expertise of the xbow noble, but the bayonet is actually a shortsword.
You can also mount blades (daggers in practice) to a hand crossbow turning it into a pair of claws.
Couple more ideas i cant recall at the moment, ill add them later if i remember.
Anyhow, cool huh>? :cool:
[ May 18, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]
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Topic: Beefing up ye olde armory- We Discuss Weapon Balance In (Read 2616 times)