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[runningoutofcreativenames]

I decided to make a crossbow army instead of a melee one.
TERRIBLE IDEA, do not ever do this ranged attacks in this game suck!
I had 20 dwarves training for two years, then i get a double suprise goblin ambush. I caught all but one pikeman in my cage traps, the one that got away was chasing my woodcutter around. I sent some troops to attack him, and they left the fort but killed EVERY capabara man and woman before finally attacking the goblin.

The goblin massacred my entire army single handedly; Game Over; Try Again!

I suggest that ranged dwarves shouldnt suck so bad that way i can build a ranged-defense base instead of always having melee dwarves. It is pointless to have this feature because it is objectively useless because the dwarves are powerless against a single goblin.

[Mckee]

I'm pretty sure you did something wrong or where unlucky to the nth degree there. Also, try a mixture of melee and ranged. I'm pretty sure plenty of people use crossbows just fine. What material bolts and what skills where the soldiers?

[runningoutofcreativenames]

Maybe it was because i had mostly wood bolts. My woodcraftsdwarf works alot faster than my blacksmithdwarf. i still think it is completely underpowered because even with the starting two woodcutting battleaxes i can kill things much easier than years of crossbow industry development.

[IT 000]

Just out of curiosity, did you use archery targets? I've had no problems with crossbow dwarves being that bad. In fact, most of the time a squad full of competent archers can massacre a siege, or at least force them into a retreat.

[NW_Kohaku]

Or did your dwarves run out of bolts shooting capybara men, and just try to melee rush an armored goblin and try to beat it to death with a wooden crossbow?

[FallingWhale]

How would you make them not "suck so bad" and not make them a win button?

[Christes]

Maybe it was because i had mostly wood bolts. My woodcraftsdwarf works alot faster than my blacksmithdwarf. i still think it is completely underpowered because even with the starting two woodcutting battleaxes i can kill things much easier than years of crossbow industry development.

Wooden bolts are useless against armor.  Metal bolts work pretty well.  I prefer this to 40d where marksdwarves owned everything, tbh.

Also, using fortifications to protect the crossbowdwarves does help quite a bit.

[blizzerd]

wooden bolts are only for hunting and training, bone bolts "work" for everything, but below average for everything (even training, the stacks are often very small) they are a good emergency supply + a few dozen wooden crossbows in case you need to mount a conscripting last ditch effort (conscript reporting!) any metal is fine imo, i dont know how bolts should be to do more damage (light, heavy, easily dent able etc etc) but id go for something you have a crap load of, like iron or silver

[Mckee]

As far as I remember, because the simulation for bolts isnt quite spot on, weight is a very important factor, whereas in reality a stupidly heavy bolt would fall out the air, in DF they do a lot more impact damage. This may have changed or I may be wrong, but this is what i've heard.

[Urist McCheeseMaker]

Yeah, Mckee. A decent fix might be that all projectiles simply have a range of x * UristMcStrongDude's strength / projectile's weight.

Ballistae and catapults (and other wind-up siege weapons) could be dealt with in one of two ways:
1, Simply give it a tenfold multiplier to the operator's strength. You have to be strong to operate those things.
2, Make it so these weapons can be designed for a certain strength. Think of mechanical advantage, length of rope, strength of the flexible parts.. You could put a tame bronze collossus on them if you wanted, but you'd need to build it for that specific purpose. And it would be EPIC. Flying slade epic.

[NW_Kohaku]

The amount of force imparted by a crossbow is based upon the pull of the crossbow, not the strength of the user.  In a winch crossbow, there isn't even a minimum amount of strength a user would need to be able to operate a heavy-pull crossbow, at that.

[Supercharazad]

Maybe it was because i had mostly wood bolts. My woodcraftsdwarf works alot faster than my blacksmithdwarf. i still think it is completely underpowered because even with the starting two woodcutting battleaxes i can kill things much easier than years of crossbow industry development.

Wooden bolts glance off clothing. Wooden ANYTHING can glance off clothing.

[loose nut]

Wasn't it part of the to-do list a long time ago to make crossbowdwarves learn to "aim" better, that is, to get better at hitting the head/body?

Anyway I get pretty good use out of them in the current version when they go where I want them to go, because everyone else is easier to control with burrows, so manning fortifications is more effective.

[tolkafox]

My marksdwarves lay waste to sieges with *bone crossbows* and *bone bolts* as great archer/marksdwarf. I think the quality modifiers are more important, considering goblins don't have tanks yet.

[FGK dwarf]

One thing that bugs me is that once my crossbowdwarves have got in a crippling shot against one enemy they'll continue pumping bolts into his prone figure until he bleeds out or takes a lucky bolt to the brain. Changing squads' kill orders to make them focus on more urgent threats never seems to work for me...