Bow overhaul

[Kacey 1]

I have several ideas for redesigning bows, as well as implementation of a tier bow system.

Bows should be makable from a wood source, such as plank, and then bow string should be specifically made and then a bow and bow string crafted together. The different wood types will define the damage quality. These will be for early on types of bows, because simply making bows from sticks isn't terribly realistic, though it can be done, it wouldn't scale as well to the damage it currently does.

 

Now, long bows, composit bows, and recurve bows can all be made purely from wood, and fully and entirely hand crafted. These would be low tier, like stone age weapons, and could be crafted from either log or plank using even just a knife to widdle it.

 

The tier based bow system:

Compound bows.

They involve a semi-complex, but not too far of an advanced mechanical system to them, I don't personally think it'd be a stretch for them to be craftable.

You'd need a bow press to actually string them, so a special assembly station could be made being a Bow Press, made from probably bronze, or even copper perhaps.

 

You'd need to make the bow body itself, the limbs, the cams, and the bow string to assemble one fully.

 

The cams would be the center point of the tier system, made from metals.

A poor quality cam is more likely to have the string hop off the tracks, or have a mechanical failure that will cause the bow to explode (well, in real life it would), and this can make sense of the cam being the defining quality of durability and tier.

A better cam to hold better wight for better damage, though actually mostly the stress is in the limbs, but have to start somewhere with an idea.

 

 

Bow strings are typically a braided string with a wax/silicone blended finishing in order to prevent fraying.

So, in order to make a bow string in TFC, you would require a fair amount of string and some wax.

I suggest adding Bees & Bee Nests to TFC. I have no ideas for the bees though. The hive would provide Honeycombs when broken, which you can extract Honey into a Glass Bottle with for food and/or adding Mead as another alcohol. Perhaps craft Honeycomb Bottle = Bottle of Honey.

Braided String could be crafted from a few string pieces in a pile, since a line would need a crafting table and become unavaliable early-game and really doesn't need a crafting table.

To make the final Bow String, you would mix the Braided String with a Honeycomb.

 

 

 

Anyways, this is just an idea I had to give a little balance to bows, and make them a viable weapon.

[Gwtheyrn 70]

There is a mod that addresses some of this, though not compound bows. I didn't much care for how it was done, though.

[corki99 23]

Yes, In the mod section of the forums there is a post called TFC bows (or something) that adds something like this

[starXephir 30]

Compound bow? No thanks. Depending on how the mechanical systems get integrated in the future. Including Compound Bows could be interesting, but not at this current stage of development.

 

I think the direction bows should go in is related to vanilla. This will require the player to be able to get Horn. Other animal products I would 'nay', as they wont have any other uses.

• Currently we have "Self Bows", single material bow. The vanilla bow would be the "Short Bow" of the game. Short draw, 'low' power.
• The step up could be a Flatbow (A "longbow" equiv for game sake). Made from planks, not sticks. If you have a saw, you should be in with flatbows. Long draw, 'high' power.
• Then comes the the Composite bow. Made out of horn, bone and wood (somehow throw it in a crafting bench!).  Short draw, 'high' power.

Perhaps all steps above the Short bow require you to make a bowstring as suggested in the OP, or some other method. I don't know how I feel about the progression I outlined. However it could work or game sakes.

 

Rather than a Compound bow, I'd like to see an arbalest. Right clicking "Cranks" the winch a step. Fires arrows, not bolts. Does an impressive amount of damage. Once winched you need to hold right click for a short amount of time to fire it, preventing a miss-fire from over-cranking.

Arbalest use some level of mechanical knowledge, like the compound bow. But are not just a +Tier item to the normal bows. As it has it's own function.

 

The shape of the bow is a bit hard to emulate in Minecraft. As such I've tried to ignore it.