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[Alogism]

I wanted to make my current fort entirely trapless, And have succeeded for 10 years so far with many many marksman, However any attempt to face the goblins not hiding behind walls and fortifications leads to the massive slaughter of my troops, Due to the one or two goblin marksman with every ambush squad

Example, My militia commander defends, 17 pages of him blocking and deflecting everything, Then a marksman walks over:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My commander is in full steel (1 Helm, 2 Caps, 3 Mail shirts, Greaves, 2 Gauntlets, 2 Boots, Etc) However has no cloth on. Someone told me this was the lack of capes, And he was "Getting shot at the seams" However the combat log pretty much consists of a ton of iron bolts destroying his internal organs through layers of steel.

How to I make this stop?
Clownite? Waves of migrant attackers until the marksman run out of bolts? Apparently steel doesn't work against iron

[FleshForge]

While I do have a few traps in my current fort, it seems the best way to deal with archers without totally cheesing them is to force them to path through a region in which they have no range advantage, e.g. a series of diagonally staggered wall tiles:

Code: [Select]

x_x_x_x_x
_x_x_x_x_
x_x_x_x_x

This also tends to keep your overzealous melee guys from running too far forward of the kill zone, unless they're chasing a fleeing enemy.

[Alogism]

While I do have a few traps in my current fort, it seems the best way to deal with archers without totally cheesing them is to force them to path through a region in which they have no range advantage, e.g. a series of diagonally staggered wall tiles:

Code: [Select]

x_x_x_x_x
_x_x_x_x_
x_x_x_x_x

This also tends to keep your overzealous melee guys from running too far forward of the kill zone, unless they're chasing a fleeing enemy.

That actually works perfectly, I had a big area under my gate I was going to use for traps before I decided they were undwarfy, Perfect spot for something like that

[Hyndis]

Animal pit as an ammo sponge.

Create a small pit near where invaders will walk. Dump all of your animals into the pit. Make sure the invaders will have clear line of sight to the pit with the animals.

They will expend all ammunition into the pile of animals. If you have enough animals they will not be able to kill all the animals, particularly if they are large animals which can be very difficult to kill. The animals will replace losses on their own.

[Valdus]

Apparently steel doesn't work against iron

Crossbow bolts and arrows have a fairly small contact area so they have great armour penetration, which is also accurate - most bows and crossbows are capable of putting a projectile through plate or chain.

When going against goblins with ranged weapons I with either stand back and let marksdwarves deal with them if I have superior ranged forces, or if I am outgunned it's an all out melee charge to close the gap.

[FleshForge]

Crossbow bolts and arrows have a fairly small contact area so they have great armour penetration, which is also accurate - most bows and crossbows are capable of putting a projectile through plate or chain.

People argue this notion back and forth, but chivalry was killed by gunpowder, not crossbows.  A suit of steel plate armor in the real world represents an immense amount of labor and wealth; you wouldn't have had units outfitted in stuff that takes years to pull out of the ground and manufacture if it can be defeated by a weapon that costs a tiny fraction of its resources and labor, hence personal armor stopped showing up on the battlefield entirely once guns became common.  Modern crossbows made of modern materials may be a different story of course.

[decius]

Crossbow bolts and arrows have a fairly small contact area so they have great armour penetration, which is also accurate - most bows and crossbows are capable of putting a projectile through plate or chain.

People argue this notion back and forth, but chivalry was killed by gunpowder, not crossbows.  A suit of steel plate armor in the real world represents an immense amount of labor and wealth; you wouldn't have had units outfitted in stuff that takes years to pull out of the ground and manufacture if it can be defeated by a weapon that costs a tiny fraction of its resources and labor, hence personal armor stopped showing up on the battlefield entirely once guns became common.  Modern crossbows made of modern materials may be a different story of course.
[/quote]

Archers were never cheap. It takes roughly a lifetime of training to become a longbowman, including the strength and stamina to pull and fire arrows.

Early firearms were inferior weapons to late fletched weapons. Given the long reload times, poor accuracy, and tempremental nature of preindustrial firearms, they could hardly have contributed to the fall of plate mail. The one advantage that guns had was that a shooter could be conscripted and trained in weeks or months, instead of years. Conscription killed the armored knight, not guns. Political factors, like the fall of fuedalism, helped too.


OP: An ambush room with limited sight lines works well. I also find the using war dogs results in acceptable losses. "Acceptable" may vary.

[WrathNail]

I keep saying it: War elephants are DF's tanks. Unless they are all Elite crossbowmen or get really lucky, even a full squad of goblin marksmen does not carry enough bolts to kill a single elephant before it is able to close the distance and do (significant) damage. Make it a set of five and back them up with your own archers and you have an unstoppable goblin steamroller.

[Hyndis]

It wasn't gunpowder that killed the armored knight, it was economics. Making a suit of armor that was immune to gunfire was and still is entirely possible to do. The problem is that it is immensely expensive to do.

For the price of a single gunfire immune soldier you could probably get 50-100 unarmored soldiers. That is 50-100 times more firepower than your single guy with the immensely expensive armor plating.

Thus, because lives were cheaper than making your soldiers immune to incoming fire, nations fielded vast armies of unarmored, barely trained soldiers with inaccurate firearms.

[FleshForge]

We're kind of saying the same thing there, with a bit different ideological spin - although I don't disagree.

[nordak]

The Crossbow was still more effective than early guns.
Back to topic:
  A med-evil crossbow could definitely put a hole in plate armor.  Try using fortifications 2 z lvls up, it works.

[HermitDwarf]

A medieval crossbow could put a hole through medieval plate armor.

[Hyndis]

A medieval crossbow could put a hole through medieval plate armor.

Only at short range. The heavy crossbows also often times had to be reloaded by winch, which didn't make it a rapid fire weapon.

[NinjaE8825]

At close range at a 70-90 degree angle. Unfortunately, DF doesn't yet take into account the sloping and fluting that helped plate turn blows aside instead of having to stop them outright :/ .

[Skorpion]

A medieval crossbow could put a hole through medieval plate armor.

Not quite. There was an arms race, after all, so they could only really punch through the prior generation of plate armour, and only at close range.
Longbows were a pain because, once you had an army of 500 longbowmen, you could pepper knights with arrows capable of punching through the weaker plates, horses, and footmen, from a few hundred yards right down to close range. Knights were forced to up-armour and slow down, exposing themselves to more fire.
The downside was that longbowmen were expensive and a big investment of time and resources, especially compared to just hiring italian crossbow-armed mercenaries.

What killed off plate armour was not the introduction of the gun. It was accurate, powerful, plentiful guns, a shift away from the feudal system, and the introduction of cannons that would rip your arm or leg off regardless of armour.