Crossbows are so busted

[Red Purger]

I have something like 600 hours in this game now and I can safely say that crossbows are stupidly OP. Even a 1 damage bolt fired from the crappiest bow in the game will stagger someone in full plate armor.
Case in point: I was able to kill Eyegore with two low level recruits with toothpicks because they were firing at him non-stop and he couldn't take a single step towards them due to the constant stagger. They also bleed high level targets dry in seconds. Leviathans stand absolutely 0 chance against the toothpick horde.

I hope for Kenshi 2 they manage to nerf them without making them completely useless. I would like to see the stagger negated by sufficient armor, while also reducing the bleed amount caused by Crossbows. Currently I find myself avoiding them on my guys since they make the game so easy. Funny enough, they make dust bandits and slave raiders some of the most dangerous enemies in the game to fight, since it doesn't matter if you're 100 stat man himself, you will lose all your blood and pass out like a wet spaghetti noodle.

[bunny de fluff]

A masterwork Ranger team is pretty OP, but fun.

[Fryskar]

Until you find eagle crosses.
Why do you need to stagger something thats dead?

Sidenote, from my own experience, 2 baseline recruits with toothpicks shouldn't be enough to staggerlock someone. They'd need very high skill and mastercrafted ones to get the needed firerate, if its possible at all.

Also to bleed out a leviathan, you either need a lot of arrows or the bleeding setting set very high.

[Shidan]

There are two things that were originally in the plans that would have significantly helped against crossbow dominance, one that used to exist and was removed, and one that never got implemented.

The first is stagger nullification. Essentially back int he day it used to be possible to negate staggering entirely if you had a high enough toughness and received a low enough damage. Essentially your toughness level created a threshold where any damage number lower than that point did not stagger you. This would completely stop the stagger locks with low end crossbows for high end characters, and I'm not certain why it was ever removed.

The second is arrow defense. It was a skill that was in the skill list for years, but never got added. Never got explained what form it was going to take, but it obviously sounds like a skill regarding avoiding damage from ranged weapon. Something besides armour to actually nullify damage would be extremely handy for nerfing crossbows.

Hopefully for Kenshi 2 they take a good look at crossbow gameplay and find a way to more appropriately balance it, especially considering they've said crossbows are likely to be more common in this time period.

[Cellar_Cat]

Yeah, it does get a bit silly. Not only because of stagger, but that enemies slow down to melee before they are in range to actually hit you, and reloading is a progress bar you can seemingly interrupt and resume without losing progress. So you can just fire and back up in small increments until they die. It's really a paradise for kiting.

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

in a way this mirrors real life. at one point way back when. they tried to outlaw crossbows on battlefields because they are so OP. anyone could pick one up and use it. they decimated troops and knights.
they where basically considered a terror weapon because anyone could use them. removing bowmen from their life long training as the superior weapon at the time.

[Cellar_Cat]

Not sure they were a weapon of choice for kiting so much IRL tho lol. IMO they should only stagger if they do non-trivial damage, and if you interrupt loading to run away, you should have to start over when you stop running. So kiting would only be viable with little ones that load fast, and if you wore heavy armour and had high toughness it wouldn't slow you down much.

[Jäger]

I've added this mod to nerf the crossbows in my current play through. You might want to check it out.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1879117921

[Xyebane]

My first experience with the bugmaster, My Eaglecross user shot him straight in the chest and insta-killed him as soon as the fight started.

[muffins]

Originally posted by Fryskar:

Also to bleed out a leviathan, you either need a lot of arrows or the bleeding setting set very high.

Killing Leviathans with a squad of crossbow guys is mundane. Bleeding damage is constant and stacks so if you have 10 guys and each put 10 bolts into one that's a hundred injuries that bleed. Leviathans die like punctured blood-filled water beds. Their bleed rate stacks to ridiculous levels.

[Fryskar]

Originally posted by muffins:

Originally posted by Fryskar:

Also to bleed out a leviathan, you either need a lot of arrows or the bleeding setting set very high.

Killing Leviathans with a squad of crossbow guys is mundane. Bleeding damage is constant and stacks so if you have 10 guys and each put 10 bolts into one that's a hundred injuries that bleed. Leviathans die like punctured blood-filled water beds. Their bleed rate stacks to ridiculous levels.

It just takes a couple minutes with baseline bleed settings.

[davetlow]

[ancient ninja[ I love masterwork tootpicks and eagles... and I solo it. It's not possible to do that with solo, except maybe with an Eagle... lost an arm... that's a lot of blood.... how is he so fast... wait... where did he go.... another direct hit... that's really a lot of blood....

Meh, I think MAD CAT LON'S FALLING SUN (That's a tough toon) is absolutely broken, go try that, or lose both arms, use industrial lifter arms and TRY ESATA'S FRAGMENT AXE (Wiki says she can't use it because she's too weak, which is true, but she will also absolutely wreck you with it, if you're only fairly strong). Those are broken AF as well.

[tebow baggins]

pretty sure bleed can be nerfed with a 5 minute mod

would be cool if stagger was a changeable value

[Amogus]

Isn't that more realistic tho? In real life projectile weapons dominate battlefield, there is a reason why ancient Chinese field army of conscripts with crossbows.

[Red Purger]

Originally posted by WAFFLE:

Isn't that more realistic tho? In real life projectile weapons dominate battlefield, there is a reason why ancient Chinese field army of conscripts with crossbows.

the game's not very realistic in general though. Where in real life do you see guys swinging around weapons that weigh 70lbs, naruto running at 30mph, or healing debilitating chest wounds by sleeping in a grimy bed for a day? It's more of a balance issue.

[Bandy]

Yes, gameplay and balance is very different from 'in real life', there have to be compromises at times.

Of course, play the game the way you want it to be, that is the beauty of modding.