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Maga

Archery Overhaul

60 posts in this topic

I mean, I could try, why not. Let's say that one's hands start to shake when he draws a bow, and the heavier bow it is, the quicker it starts and the more severe the effect, to the point when if he doesn't shoot it immediately after he has drawn it, he will most likely miss the shot just due to that. Maybe make it so the ideal time to shoot the heaviest of bows from this standpoint is when the bow has been charged to do about the same amount of damage as a fully charged medium bow, meaning everything after that you'd actually have a chance to miss.

Shaking itself is manifested through the camera movement, so player can actually correct the aim even when it is fluctuating.

 

Something like that.

Ironically this is very similar to a mechanic that i suggested in the original post. Check the spoiler at the bottom and read the section titled Addition of Archery Skill.

The general feeling was that it would be code-heavy and that most people have a hard enough time aiming already.

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How about if you hold a strong bow at a drawn position for too long, it starts to lose durability?

Or perhaps after a X amount of time, the bow slowly loses power until you have to draw it again?

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How about if you hold a strong bow at a drawn position for too long, it starts to lose durability?

Or perhaps after a X amount of time, the bow slowly loses power until you have to draw it again?

For a strong quality bow this is counter-intuitive, if anything they should withstand tension more than weaker bows. The second suggestion doesn't sound bad but I think at this point we're splitting hairs.

 

Personally I think fewer shots per minute is the logical trade-off for higher damage per shot, it benefits people who are better at aiming and keeps pvp across different gear levels semi-balanced but really its such a small detail I don't feel it's worth debating into the ground. D & B will most likely do the tier balancing the way they like regardless. The main focus and what makes my suggestions for archery more unique is the crafting process, target practice and archery skill. The other mechanics are all fairly run of the mill, standard stuff. I just felt like including them for the sake of being thorough.

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Bows definitely need an update, and this sounds like a pretty good way to do it.

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Personally I think fewer shots per minute is the logical trade-off for higher damage per shot, it benefits people who are better at aiming and keeps pvp across different gear levels semi-balanced but really its such a small detail I don't feel it's worth debating into the ground. D & B will most likely do the tier balancing the way they like regardless. The main focus and what makes my suggestions for archery more unique is the crafting process, target practice and archery skill. The other mechanics are all fairly run of the mill, standard stuff. I just felt like including them for the sake of being thorough.

Ah true.....

 

Speaking of archery, what about archery on horseback?

I just thought of this but mounted archers could beat unmounted archers with higher mobility.

Should archers riding something get a disadvantage, or no?

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Speaking of archery, what about archery on horseback?

I just thought of this but mounted archers could beat unmounted archers with higher mobility.

Should archers riding something get a disadvantage, or no?

In my original post the certain bows could not be shot while on horseback, I plan to keep this as a recommendation. For practical reasons the longbow is just too massive to wield on horseback. Historically speaking composite bows were definitely used on horses (Genghis Khan's army employed this and as a result became one of the largest empires in the history of the world). As for the beginner bows I don't think anyone using them would be experienced enough to practice archery on horseback. I'm tired and suspect I'm rambling but here's the short version: I think horseback archery should be restricted to the short bow and the composite bow. There. Said it. That took way too long :_:

 

As for a disadvantage I would suggest the obvious cross-hair jitter but that's already been put to rest, not exactly sure what to do to people shooting while riding... Open to ideas on that one.

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how about not being able to control your horse while drawing a bow?

 

Oh, and I think there should be a 'cooldown' between firing a bow, and knocking another arrow on your bow, with each level in archery decreasing the time taken until you can draw another arrow

 

Finally, rather then a small ingot pile yielding 8 arrowheads, can't we have it so you work a ingot into 8 small ingots then work that into a arrowhead?

I'd also like it if a mold takes in enough metal for one arrowhead at a time rather than four at a time.

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1) Seems alright. I should probably do some more research on horseback archery before I start passing serious judgement.

 

2) The cooldown between nocking arrows and higher archery skill meaning faster reload times is something I had included word for word in my original post. Seems I forgot to include it when writing verison 2.0 Though I'm not sure it'll make a big difference the code would be easy so I'll add it back in where it should be. Thanks for pointing out it's absence.

 

3) In regards to using individual small ingots. Imagine trying to craft a quiver of 128 arrow heads... Hammering out each arrowhead at a time. That's enough hammering to create a bloomery four times over.

Please no.

Hammering out arrowheads should be done with a pile of small ingots (single item) and yield 8 arrowheads

The only way small ingots could be reasonable would be to work the pile of small ingots again in order to make individual small ingots and even then, only if they had good uses (like making jewelry? But that's another conversation...)

 

4) Finally, one mold being able to cast only one arrowhead would be a nightmare. That means in the copper/bronze age, casting a full quiver would take 640 clay balls worth of molds. That's 256 straw and 256 logs for pit kilns. That's excessive.

 

Simply because archery requires so many arrows they need to be made a little faster than one at a time.

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But you won't need to use clay or straw or logs for casting arrowheads if you choose to do it on a anvil.

 

That aside, I guess that would take a nightmare-ish amount of hammering to make all that arrows.....

Yea, let's stick with 8 arrowheads per ingot pile. Getting the sticks and feathers should be annoying enough

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This is all amazing.  As someone who has dabbled in archery, it's good to see this.  As for the people suggesting that they have a hard enough time aiming already...practice.  Archery isn't easy.

 

Re: horse archery...this would be best implemented with the inclusion of a riding skill, which would reflect your skill at handling horses, and your familiarity with your mount.  A novice rider uses reins, but an experienced rider with a familiar mount would be adept at directing the animal with their legs.  As such, to be an effective horse archer, you'd have to be both an effective archer, and an effective rider.  An effective archer would have decent accuracy with the bow but lose control of the horse.  An effective rider would be able to maintain control of the horse but have horrible accuracy with the bow.

 

Also, I'd love to see the inclusion of a cavalry bow (essentially a composite recurve bow).  This bow would require additional shaping and perhaps require a higher bowyer skill in order not to botch the job.

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I can back up what mdtexeira says.

Horseback archery is entirely possible whilst still controlling the horse. A well trained horse can be controlled using just your legs and voice.

 

I frequently ride a horse (granted he's only 14 hands) saddleless, and is very capable even without reins despite no training in the area.

 

Besides how cool and fleshed out this archery idea is. I believe a horse riding skill would be superb as well. There are clear advantages to being capable on a horse if you are living in a plains area. 

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Great comments. Stuff like this though is largely dependent on bioxx and dunk being willing to add these additional skills. I'm not sure that's the direction they want to take though, so my challenge is to keep the archery rewrite within the current boundaries as much as possible. It would be great to hear from the devs what their stance is on having a larger list of skills. Whatever the answer is it would make this a lot easier for the people proposing ideas if they knew what side of the fence the creators are on.

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You are full of some great ideas, i would like to see some more ideas from you, I would also love to see this implemented in TFC.

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Back to the subject of bows. As a metal age bow, why not a crossbow made by smithing metal limbs, carving a wooden stock and adding string or cord or whatever. The crossbow would have really good damage but insane reload & draw time. This would create a new use for the carving interface and a further tier of bow progression. Also the limbs quality would be affected by both fletching/archery skill and weaponsmithing.

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Having looked over your refined post it looks amazing and very much in-line with the other gameplay in TFC. I wanted to show my support but also add a bit. Since the quern is a "metal age" tool it would make sense to use the wheel for other tech than just crushing things. There are dozens of things I would like to add to TFC with wheels like carts to carry home wood in and many more but I digress. Using the grindstone-like mechanic you could create a lathe to make the high end staves (also could be used for making tool rods for forged equipment as popping a stick onto the end of that awesome sword you just spent hours making feels so wrong). This also would make arrows more interesting to craft.

 

TL;DR Use lathe for the best bows. Nice post you have there.

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Holy necro HueKnight....

 

But it's a pretty good thread. I like the ideas presented here (But not metal bows. Luckily that part was never finished anyway)

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Holy necro HueKnight....

 

But it's a pretty good thread. I like the ideas presented here (But not metal bows. Luckily that part was never finished anyway)

 

</3 You're breakin' my heart darling.

 

Hehe, glad you like the rest of it. I actually never finished/added the metal bow section because while working on it I got the same feel, although they do exist metal bows don't feel right alongside the rest of the game. A composite recursive (and maybe an extra large long bow) would probably be the only logical remaining bow types, requiring metal age technology but no metal in the bow itself. Multiple steps, drying times, layering, fun stuff...

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Haha, breaking hearts left and right. Yah, I shoulda elaborated on my comment about metal bows. While we do have metal bows, they are a very recent variant (Discounting a handful of occurences in history, all of which were relatively shortlived). I don't think they'd fit the feel of the game very well. An easy way to enforce needed to progress in metallurgy is to make it so that each tier bow is made with a different wood, which can only be properly worked with higher tiered metal tools. I think it would be awesome if it took quite a few steps to build a bow: I recently started building a longbow, and it's quite the process.

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I think that the main block to making the higher tiered bows shouldn't be the need for metal to get better woods- it should be to make specialised tools. You could probably make a bow out of Yew just as well with a stone knife compared to one made with specialised metal tools designed for bowmaking, but it would take a hell of a lot more practice and wasted wood. Maybe there should be a way to make bows early on, but it should have a really high rate of ending up with low durability bows, which can still deal some hefty damage but would break quickly... like a real life bad bow. They should also take quite a bit of effort to make, to prevent people simply carrying a couple of bows around.

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Think of it this way. If it takes 5 steps and a combined drying time of 100+ days there's no point making the bow before you have metal. That, and things like drying racks would need lumber... So no composite recurve without metal tools. I see no reason to find silly workarounds to design a crafting process that avoids all metal age tech.

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*digs* oh whats that? *digs deeper*

 

Hello everyone! i think we should revive that thread because its an awesome one!

I think that those 2 stone age bows are enough for stone age, better wooden bows and then composite should stay in metal age. Perhaps highest tier bows would be composite compound?

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What if you don't have fixed recipes for fixed bows, but you could customise them.

First you select the wood, hickory or walnut are better than willow for example.

Then you create a selfbow, here you can chose how thick the limbs are for example (thinner limbs = faster shooting, but less durability). Depending on your needs you create the type of bow you need . If you want as small and mobile bow you can operate on horse back, you would make a compostie bow. If you are rather looking for range you could make a longbow. Each bow has its advantages and disadvatages. From this point your bow is shootable, but not very efficiently.

So you need to upgrade it, by backing it with either sinew, or rawhide, adding horn or bamboo/sugarcane. Here again we have pros and cons for each update. Sinew, while enhancing durability also enhances the bows power, but would be rather difficult to make. rawhide is obtained more easily, but only enhances durability. So rawhide would be better as a short term solution, while sinew is better on the longrun..... 

I hope you get my idea.

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This might be a good addon, but there is a problem without killing skeletons or finding chickens or pheasants you cant get feathers, maybe leaf or straw fletch 

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Arrows do not need feathers necessarily, they won't be the most accurate arrows, but the would work. Leaf or even straw are not quit the materials you would need for fletching :DThere could be an easy way of getting feathers, by making them spawn on the ground sometimes, similar to stones, but not that frequent. When you take a walk in nature you will also eventually find a feather.

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