Bow and Crossbow

[Turk]

There is in game?

[Phobeseneos]

Nope maybe in 5 years they will add crossbow.

[Marmottty]

Here they talk about it:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/592885762520790507/

[GMA]

Well, they said it's coming soon (didn't make b42 because it's not working as they intend to) and even showed somewhere the (huge and needlessly complex) archery crafting tree, but...

Don't hold your breath. In theory, bows would be the perfect weapon to kill zombies, and that is a no-no for the devs. So expect bowstrings that break after three uses, having to know rocket science and have enough materials to build a rocket to make a single average bow and shots dealing not only negligible damage and being impossible to place well but being almost as loud as a marching band.

Or try to find a good bow in a sports store and two carbon arrows with a .00002% chance to spawn. Probably will damage yourself too and bleed to death or get an infection if you don't have an archery armguard.

Yeah, after spears, I'm really bitter about TIS nerfing weapons below real life standards.

[xenon]

Originally posted by GMA:

Don't hold your breath. In theory, bows would be the perfect weapon to kill zombies, and that is a no-no for the devs. So expect bowstrings that break after three uses, having to know rocket science and have enough materials to build a rocket to make a single average bow and shots dealing not only negligible damage and being impossible to place well but being almost as loud as a marching band.

Can't you make your argument without sarcasm or exaggeration? You have a few valid points, but this is just nonsense. First, sure you want an easy-to-craft, easy-to-use, high-damage, silent ranged weapon with a lot of duration? Wouldn't you complain about how overpowered that is, making the game boring?

Originally posted by GMA:

Or try to find a good bow in a sports store and two carbon arrows with a .00002% chance to spawn. Probably will damage yourself too and bleed to death or get an infection if you don't have an archery armguard.

Yeah, after spears, I'm really bitter about TIS nerfing weapons below real life standards.

Sorry to hear that. You will certainly agree, that having "real life standards" in any game does not really work out well. You can only try to simulate some aspects to make it "more realistic".

Have you ever built a bow or fletched an arrow so strong, that it would be capable of piercing flesh & bone?
Also, if we ignore that fact and just assume you found a compound bow in a sports store. Would someone not trained with it immediately know, how to use it? Aiming with bow & arrow is not as easy as you see it in movies, it takes a LOT of training. And especially in the beginning even just pulling the bow is very exhausting, because you don't have developed the muscles required for that specific movement.
Real life standards would have you end up with a weapon, which you can't effectively use for months.

And if we just take durability to work like real life... Any metal rod would NEVER break? You find only one and have a solid weapon for the rest of the game... does not seem very exciting?

[ricky dicky doo dah]

u have a mode for crossbow

[GMA]

Originally posted by xenon:

Originally posted by GMA:

Don't hold your breath. In theory, bows would be the perfect weapon to kill zombies, and that is a no-no for the devs. So expect bowstrings that break after three uses, having to know rocket science and have enough materials to build a rocket to make a single average bow and shots dealing not only negligible damage and being impossible to place well but being almost as loud as a marching band.

Can't you make your argument without sarcasm or exaggeration? You have a few valid points, but this is just nonsense. First, sure you want an easy-to-craft, easy-to-use, high-damage, silent ranged weapon with a lot of duration? Wouldn't you complain about how overpowered that is, making the game boring?

Originally posted by GMA:

Or try to find a good bow in a sports store and two carbon arrows with a .00002% chance to spawn. Probably will damage yourself too and bleed to death or get an infection if you don't have an archery armguard.

Yeah, after spears, I'm really bitter about TIS nerfing weapons below real life standards.

Sorry to hear that. You will certainly agree, that having "real life standards" in any game does not really work out well. You can only try to simulate some aspects to make it "more realistic".

Have you ever built a bow or fletched an arrow so strong, that it would be capable of piercing flesh & bone?
Also, if we ignore that fact and just assume you found a compound bow in a sports store. Would someone not trained with it immediately know, how to use it? Aiming with bow & arrow is not as easy as you see it in movies, it takes a LOT of training. And especially in the beginning even just pulling the bow is very exhausting, because you don't have developed the muscles required for that specific movement.
Real life standards would have you end up with a weapon, which you can't effectively use for months.

And if we just take durability to work like real life... Any metal rod would NEVER break? You find only one and have a solid weapon for the rest of the game... does not seem very exciting?

Considering I didn't break any TOS and didn't offend anyone, no, I won't change my tone, sorry. If you're going to police the gaming community on hyperbole and metaphor, oh boy, you got your work cut out for you. Should start teaching your kids now, since it's probably a multi-generation undertaking.

But let's stick to the subject at hand then. I didn't say I wanted an "easy-to-craft, easy-to-use, high-damage, silent ranged weapon with a lot of duration". I want a middle ground, grounded in reality (and I do know a fair bit about archery and bowcraft IRL). The learning curve you mentioned there also would relate to any combat activity - including swinging a lead pipe in a zombie's head. If we're being coherent about it, PZ combat should be nearly impossible with ANY tool or weapon. Still, there's this archery bar near my house; I've seen children that never saw a bow bullseye targets consistently with a few hours of practice. Takes training? Yes. Is it as difficult as you suggest? Not at all.

Granted, I can't know how bows will turn out when they are released, but if it follows the same trend as the spear (which is the most used weapon in human history for a reason - powerful, simple to use, sturdy and reliable), it will certainly be worthless and much inferior to real life counterparts.

I won't touch the realism / fun / difficulty subject even if I'm paid to do that. It's a moot conversation. For 95% of the gaming industry, those are used interchangeably when it's convenient. For instance, zombies that take ten seconds to move two yards and then suddenly lunge like an athlete when they fall over a fence is ridiculous, but that's okay since "it's for fun and difficulty". Yet, apparently banging my hammer 30 times in two hours will make my arm muscle strain horribly, because "it's for balance and realism". So I'll just avoid this subject like the plague if you don't mind. Consistency is key to any creative work, most of all video games. I like TIS' work very much, but they are very much not consistent, in any aspect.

Finally, to address your main point - you're right, of course I don't want to kill zombies like I'm Legolas in Helm's Deep. But I know bows, and I know how powerful they are IRL. There's a reason they were crucial to warfare for thousands of years. The main weakness of the bow are moving targets - the Archer's Paradox, I'm sure you heard about that . Now, a target that slowly scrambles your way without changing course at all, or stands still staring at nothing for days on end? If you're going to implement bows realistically, they would be - have to be - the perfect zombie killers.

[JupiterSky]

Absolute gold mine right here

[Quazy]

it doesn't have to be op because its cheap. easy to supply ammo. and silent. make it extremly inaccurate and causes alot of strain to use till you get into the higher lvles of shooting and reloading. make the strain and range based off strength. balanced.

i would love to see some 3str 0 shooting toon fire like 5 shots then become fatigued. and not hit anything

[Daynen Drakeson]

I don't honestly think bows would be that unbalanced...as long as they're thought through and their inherent drawbacks are properly represented mechanically, such as:

Reload: you have to manually pull an arrow from somewhere and put it on the string before you fire. All guns are capable of storing more than one shot internally; bows are not unless we're talking about repeating crossbows, which are a discussion of their own. We're not getting into the whole hand-quiver technique here because that's an entire mechanic in and of itself that I doubt TIS is interested in bashing together. Thus, despite being a great weapon for assassinating a zombie or three, they would NOT be a horde-killing weapon like a shotgun.

Encumbrance: arrows are much bigger than bullets and require a different kind of container to carry effectively, thus you're not carrying hundreds of rounds without major encumbrance. Naturally the bows themselves are generally of a minimum size and encumbrance as well, assuming you want one with any real power. As the game's encumbrance is an abstraction of both mass AND volume, most bows would require meaningful inventory space to use effectively.

Strength requirement: not only are they a different task to carry than a gun, they require a very different kind of strength to fire effectively, much less repeatedly. In game, this would naturally translate to more fatigue/muscle strain than most kinds of gunplay, limiting your zombie slaying based on your character's physique. Incidentally, I would think bow usage would contribute to your strength XP.

Sound: While far less jarring than the literal explosion of a bullet leaving a firearm, bows are not literally silent. The snap of a string being released and the THUNK of an arrow hitting a target (or anything else, for that matter) still make SOME noise, just not "every zed in a three-block radius" noise. Incidentally, if done accurately in game, this could lead to some very tactical uses of arrows as distractions and possibly to specialized arrow types, but then we are again potentially drifting into an entirely different game that I'm not sure the devs feel up to making. Can you imagine going deer hunting and forgetting you had fire arrows equipped? OOPS. XD

[Quazy]

Originally posted by xenon:

Have you ever built a bow or fletched an arrow so strong, that it would be capable of piercing flesh & bone?

not related to the forum but try thrusting a straw threw a potato(dont stab yourself). then try pushing the straw threw the potato. youll notice the straw isnt strong enough to push threw the potato. but when it has momentum. (and because momentum takes time to change) the straw can travel into the potato before it breaks from the force of pushing threw the potato as long as its "straight as a arrow".

for the same reason. a metal rod is not a good arrow. its so heavy it wont obtain enough velocity for its moment to penetrate. it would bounce like a low velocity cannon ball off a fat mans belly. you would need a 200 lbs test bow and 10 strength to even hope to make a metal rod effective. https://youtu.be/vSCibX41YNs?t=492

[PandaBear]

Theres a mod that adds them as a recipe, as well as crossbows. None in vanilla as of yet.